Information about the Aspen Ideas Festival is here. I am scheduled for a session, The American Wellness Paradox, currently scheduled from 11:00-11:50 a.m., at the East Lawn Tent. This will be a discussion with senior HHS policy advisor, Calley Means. Here’s the blurb on it: “Americans are spending more than ever on healthcare, supplements, wellness trends, and “clean eating,” yet rates of chronic disease and metabolic illness continue to climb. As skepticism fuels the rise of movements like MAHA, debates over what Americans should eat have become deeply cultural, political, and economic. Two influential voices with sharply different perspectives on nutrition and food science explore how food systems, farming practices, consumer culture, and the wellness industry collided to create one of the defining public health debates of our time.”
For your Food Studies library: Eating Asian America
Robert Ji-Song Ku, Martin F. Manalansan IV, Anita Mannur, editors. Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader. New York University Press, 2014.
This book was a most welcome gift from the author of one of its chapters, Nina Ichikawa (thanks, Nina). Her chapter is about how Asian farmers and retailers became food system pioneers.
Others reflect on the Asian-American food experience from the perspective of, to give just a sample, Cambodian donut shops and taco trucks in Los Angeles, Chinese restaurant workers in New York, the incarcerated Japanese mess hall experience during the Second World War, the Filipino culinary diaspora, and the Asian Queer kitchen.
The chapters cover a century of Asian food work in America, necessarily getting into deep issues of culture and politics.
The book ought to stimulate plenty of conversation and argument—perfect for a course in food and culture.
Enjoy the weekend!
