What to Eat?

In general, my eating decisions are pretty straightforward.  I generally just go with whatever I think will taste the best.  I make sure to eat some vegetables or fruit with every meal, but that is usually in addition to whatever I have chosen to be my main course.  If I have had red meat a few times already that week I might opt to go with something leaner, like fish or chicken.  Ultimately, my decisions rest on one thing more than any other.  They depend mainly on what Sodexo offers me.  If the entrees that are offered just do not seem remotely appetizing, I go with grilled chicken or a turkey burger from the grill.  I certainly don't eat enough salads and other roughage but I make up for it with eating lots of cooked vegetables and fruits.

How We Eat: Comparing Men and Women

How We Eat, similarities and differences

Eli Cherry

            “I recently observed a server bringing a middle-aged couple their dinners. Not sure who had ordered what, he looked at the plates, then offered the woman the vegetarian entrée and placed the beef dish in front of her male companion. What sort of gender profiling was going on here?”  It turns out that the waiter in this scenario, as described by Ms. Rachel Johnson Ph.D, was absolutely spot on.  She goes on to explain that one of the many differences in food selection by gender, is that men will often eat more meat and bread, while women often choose things like fruits, vegetables, and diet beverages.  However, this observation was clearly made at a sit-down restaurant with table service and large menus.  How would some of these differences in eating by gender play out in an inherently less healthy setting?  I found out during my trip to Anthony’s Pizza on East Evans Ave. on Friday evening.

            As I sat in Anthony’s, quietly enjoying my own pizza, the droves of people began coming through the doors trying to get their fix of delicious new york style pizza.  Groups of two, three, and four began occupying tables around me, and I started to notice patterns first in the gender makeup of these groups, and then in the differences based on the makeup of the groups.  For instance, groups that included women tended to focus more on talking than eating, and wound up taking much longer to finish their meal than men, even though they often ordered less than most men.  Johnson says that many women take smaller bites and longer to eat than men, and the smaller bites may be to accommodate and allow room for the amount of conversation expected in a group of women.

             I also noticed some examples of women watching what they ate more than men.  For example, I didn’t see one woman eat a pepperoni slice the entire time I was there, many women dabbed grease off of their pizza (interestingly enough, only when they were with other women), and per Johnson’s statements, generally ordered water and diet soda to drink.  I’ve noticed things like this in other situations too.  Even in our dining halls, I rarely see a girl drinking soda, and often groups of girls linger in the dining hall for over an hour while most guys tend to leave as soon as they are done eating.  I also see guys making 1 or two trips to get huge plates of food, while girls often make as many as 5 trips with less food on their plates, so as to appear, either to themselves or to those around them, that they are not consuming as much food. 

            Interestingly enough, Johnson points out that, “Women, generally, have also been shown to eat less when they are with a desirable male partner than when they are with other women.”  While I can’t attest to whether or not the women at Anthony’s considered their dining partners to be desirable, I did notice a strong relationship between how much women eat and who they are eating with.  I nearly always saw women eat only one slice when eating alone with another man, mostly saw them eat only one slice when with multiple men, but when with other women, generally chose to purchase the same amount as all of the other women.  They did not want to be perceived as eating too much by their female companions, thus only ordered as much as everyone else, and assuming men are supposed to eat more than them, generally chose to eat less around men.

            I think that one of the big problems with eating is that we use it as a way to judge people.  Many people make decisions on what to eat not based on what they actually want to eat, but rather what they want others to see them eating.  Men sometimes ate more around women than they did around men, so as to come of as manly and possibly “bigger”, while women generally chose what to eat based on what others around them were eating.  The value of food lies in its essence: it is food!  We need food to live, and we like to enjoy food, so there is no reason to feel pressured to eat what others may believe you should eat.  Eating is something that gives us satisfaction, and that value has slipped in our society and our culture.  Regressing back to the days when eating was for fun would be socially healthy for all of us!

http://www.eatingwell.com/nutrition_health/nutrition_news_information/his_hers_eating

Rachel Johnson, Ph.D, February/March 2006, Eating Well (magazine),

read online on Apr. 16^th, 2013

Cate and O'Donnell Readings

          There's a saying that goes, "one man's trash is another man's treasure," the meaning being that what one person may consider invaluable or distasteful, another may consider useful or perfect.  Sandra Cate and Mary Anne O'Donnell both speak to this old saying with their recounts of their experiences.  Cate spent time talking to many prison inmates about special prison foods they call spreads, while O'Donnell addressed cultural and social changes in China by learning about different eating habits in different regions.  

           I found Cate's writings about prison spreads to be very compelling.  She explains how many inmates have certain snack-type foods they can purchase in prison and how some of them learn to combine them in special ways to make what is considered a prison delicacy.  Generally, the spreads are based around ramen noodles, a food us college college students regard as a rather low-quality dorm room necessity, and incorporate such things like crushed red hot Cheetos for spicy flavor, or chili beans that they purchase from the jail.  Inmates make the most of what they are allowed by inventing these culinary masterpieces out of what most people on the outside would consider junk or cheap food.  They do this for lack of resources, but in China, O'Donnell learned that the differences in what is considered good food lie more with cultural necessity rather than a simple deprivation of supplies.

           In China, explains O'Donnell, people in southern provinces, many people ate fish often because it was readily available, whereas in northern provinces, beef was a much more common meat to have at a meal.  This is due to the fact that cattle graze on the flat plains of northern China and are therefore not available in the south.  Because of this, Chinese southerners had to become wily, cunning, and quick to catch the fish that would be served on their plates.  Shenzhen, a booming city in China's south, is home to a capitalist revolution, regarded as being fairly corrupt by many Chinese socialists.  The fish, readily consumed in this southern region, is not held in high regard by many people that live in northern China, because they see it as a symbol for the corruption and trickery that is constantly going on in Shenzhen.  This is another situation where a certain culture may have disdain for another culture, simply because the second one relishes a food that the first finds distasteful.

           Both accounts were wildly different in their subject, but achieved a similar result.  They explained a cultural/situational difference that could have been seen as being bad or unfavorable, and brought to light the significance and value that would otherwise be overlooked.

Comparison between two ads

http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/print/2011/5/coca-cola-125-years.jpg

http://anadaday.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/5hourenergyprint1b.jpg

            Both of the ads I chose have drastically different approaches to seducing their potential customers.  I found a retro-style Coca-Cola poster that is fairly simply designed, and compared it side by side with an ad for the energy drink / shot, 5 hr. Energy. 

            The Coke ad is plain and simple.  Its face depicts the white silhouette of a Coke glass bottle, bursting with fizzy bubbles, with the words “125 years,” written alongside the bottle.  It then shows a very “typical,” “Classic American Family,” that looks straight out of the 1950s, having a picnic with doughnuts, sandwiches, potato chips, and a cooler stocked with Coca-Cola glass bottles.  It aims to appeal to the audience’s pathos, using tradition and nostalgia to convince the buyer to purchase their product.  Coca-Cola has a large number of these retro-type ads out in restaurants nationwide.

            The Five Hour Energy ad is entirely different in its approach.  It instead uses logos to entice the consumer into financially endorsing the product.  It displays an unusually attractive woman dressed as a school teacher who appears to have just composed a T-Chart with chalk on a blackboard explaining the differences between “5-Hour Energy,” and “Many Energy Drinks.”  It shows how 5-Hour Energy only has 4 calories, 0 sugar, and 2 ounces of liquid, as opposed to the 16 ounces, 12 teaspoons of sugar, and 200 calories that it claims many energy drinks have.  It also goes on to claim that while many energy drinks can give you a bloated, sugary, and “fizzy” feeling, 5-Hour Energy will give you no crash and no bloated feeling whatsoever.  The negation combined with the claims about 5-Hour Energy compels the reader to use logic to decide that 5-Hour Energy is the solution to their energy-related problems.

            The two ads appeal to different types of people.  The Coca-Cola ad seems to appeal to middle class families who want to feel like upper class traditional families like the one depicted in the ad.  The 5-Hour Energy ad, on the other hand, is more directed at young men who might need a boost in the middle of the day but want to stay healthy and enjoy exercising.  The logos applies to young men, but pathos is more of a family dynamic.  Coca-Cola is more of a kid’s drink and thus is consumed more by families, whereas 5-Hour Energy would never be consumed by a family, but rather by a working person.

Food Associations

            Food can mean different things to different people.  Sometimes, certain foods can bring back painful memories, while other times, it can remind you so vividly of a happy time that you almost feel like you are there again.  Some people associate different foods with different events or times of year, like pumpkin seeds with fall, and candy canes with Christmas.  Personally, I feel like I associate food with locations I am fond of.  For instance, every time I go to Los Angeles to visit my cousin, I eat breakfast at a small place in Santa Monica called Main Street Bagels.  I get two poppy seed bagels and fresh squeezed orange juice.  These are no ordinary bagels, they are some of the freshest, most savory bagels I’ve ever had.  Even eating a bagel that good is enough to bring me back to a time when I was relaxing on the beach in Santa Monica. 

Another thing that has this effect on me is fried dough.  Any time I eat fried dough I think back to spending time in Salisbury, Massachusetts.  The sea breeze blowing through the town center while my friends and I wait for our delicacies to be ready.  I love these memories because they are from a time when none of us had much on our minds, no responsibilities, no commitments to attend to.  I think that food should be regarded a vessel for memories, the rich flavors transcending sensory boundaries and turning into vivid memories in our minds.  I can’t smell fried dough without thinking back to the summer of 2012 sitting on Salisbury Beach. 

            I also think that the reverse of this happens.  Certain things can bring back memories of places, and can leave you with a lingering flavor on your tongue.  For me, any time I talk to my friend Geoffrey, I can’t help but remember a time when many of my friends were at his cabin on a lake, eating barbeque.  I can almost feel the juices of the meat trickling down my throat, and I can always taste the red meat, peppery and hot. 

I think food is overlooked sometimes as an important detail when describing an event.  The connections between food, memories, and other senses are too overwhelming to think of food simply as nutrition.  Food can set the mood of many interactions, soaking up all of the emotions flying around in the moment and cementing certain feelings in your memory.  I associate many fond memories with the food that was eaten at the time.  I believe that more often than not it is a subconscious association and that may be the reason that many people don’t consider food to be any more than a conversation piece.