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.

#Sodexoproblems

One thing I gathered from reading these blogs was a collective displeasure with the "cuisine" provided by Sodexo.  In what was almost comical fashion, I noticed in numerous entries that an aversion to the dining halls was expressed.  In some it was subtle, like mentioning a choice they made to deliberately eat somewhere other than the dining hall, or thanks that they didn't have to eat there.  In others, I found bloggers that simply stated they don't like Sodexo's food or were frustrated with the choices they had.  I think what surprised me most was how nonchalant they were with their complaints.  What made me consider it comical, was the sense of hopelessness displayed and the general acceptance of their dining fate.

Family Table

The United States regards itself as one of the great "Melting Pot" countries.  Its land is home to a multitude of different cultures and lifestyles.  This means a large scale integration of music, language, interaction, and of course, cuisine.  While our own classic cuisine is widely regarded as only including food like burgers, hot dogs, fries, and anything greasy or fried, we have countless establishments dedicated keeping culture alive in our country.  But that is no small task, and the responsibility lies on us, the consumers, as much as it does on the restaurants.  Both Ahn and Nicholson expressed the desire to keep their culture or tradition alive within themselves, largely through the food they choose to eat.  Ahn by continuing to serve Korean food to his son, and Nicholson through his ceremonial meal to commemorate his mother's love of white food.  My own experience with food comes from the american south.  My mother is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and boy do they know how to cook down there.  I've grown up with the chinese food, McDonalds, grilled fish, and bagels that everybody knows, but every time I ate dinner at her house, I knew that she might serve me some crawfish gumbo, or meatloaf with collard greens and cornbread.  I still jump at the opportunity to eat anywhere cornbread will be served.  My mother also kept alive the general belief that if you love three or four different things, they will be great if you put them all in the same dish together.  So that's just what we did.  From the time that I was 2 until I left for college, I always had an interesting dish in my dinner rotation at her house.  She decided that since I loved ham, eggs, rice, and cheese so much, she ought to make them into one seamless dish.  Some of my fondest memories from my early childhood are of me opening the plastic cheese grater, putting in some monterey jack, and cranking the handle, spinning the wheel until I was satisfied with the cheese drizzling over my scrambled eggs with ham in a bowl of rice.  The southern way is to serve you food that tastes good, and fills you, and that is exactly what she did when she cooked for me.

Charming Breakfast

Some say the most important meal of the day is lunch.  They say it gives them that extra boost to get over a midday slump and carries them straight through to dinner.  I would have to disagree.  What meal jump-starts your day and can get you feeling energized? Breakfast.  Nothing starts my engine like some eggs, bacon, and toast with a glass of OJ.  It's so vital to my daily mood that I often eat enough to skip lunch.  My last meal was breakfast, and to be honest, my meal was far from that "hearty" breakfast which I adore.  I sat down with a few friends to catch up with them and hear their outrageous stories from spring break with nothing more than a rather small bowl of General Mills' Lucky Charms.  Sure, they're full of dyes, preservatives, and something that makes their marshmallows somewhat crunchy, but they get the job done, and when you don't have time to spare they are pretty satisfying.  While the meal itself was unremarkable, the speed at which I bulldozed through my bowl and headed out to class certainly impressed me.  Even after that small bowl of cereal, I felt ready to start my day with enough energy to get through class.  Don't get me wrong, the value of breakfast doesn't lie just in the energy you get to start your day, it also provides a setting to discuss plans for the day, last nights events, and acts as a buffer period between being asleep and having things to do.  My last meal was a very simple breakfast, but even as such it was essential to help me start my day.