Currently browsing posts about: Books

Joeva Sean Rock.  We Are Not Starving: The Struggle for Food Sovereignty in Ghana.  Michigan State University Press, 2022.  188 pages

I enjoyed getting to know Joeva Rock when she had a fellowship in my NYU department, and was honored to be asked to blurb her book:

We Are Not Starving is an utterly compelling account of how the failure of international donors to understand and respect the recipients of development aid contributes to the failure of their projects.  Through the industry’s attempts to introduce GMO crops in Ghana, anthropologist Joeva Rock draws lessons essential for anyone who wants international development to work.  If you want to understand the real, on-the-ground politics of GMOs, start here.

A couple of excerpts from the manuscript:

• Ghanaian officials recognized the limitations posed by IPRs [Intellectual Property Rights] as an important way to collect financial benefits from GMO.  Thus, rather than describe GMOs as a humanitarian technology, as donors sought to do, Ghanaian officials and scientists went out of their way to stress that, when coupled with IPRs, GM seeds were “the secret” to obtaining profit, revenue that was sorely needed in the post-structural adjustment era of gutted state infrastructure.
• Ghanaians continually critiqued global discourses and development industry standards wherein philanthropists and professionals in the Global North set boundaries for conversations about hunger, collapse Africa into a homogenized, starving entity, and the prescribe solutions based on these racialized myths.  These critiques are reflective of recipient fatigue and are often held in tension with discourse emanating from the same donors that sponsor the work of GMO advocates, who rely on images and texts that depict Africa as languishing and starving.

Douglas Frantz & Catherine Collins.  Salmon Wars: The Dark Underbelly of America’s Favorite Fish.  Henry Holt, 2022.  (355 pages)

I was asked to do a blurb for this one.  Here’s what I said:

Salmon Wars is a deep dive into the damage caused by current fish-farming methods to ocean environments, wild fish and their habitats, and to the farmed fish themselves.  It is also a dismal account of the failure of governments to stop such practices.  Salmon farming needs reform.  Until it does, read this book, and you will never eat farmed salmon again.

As for what to do about the hazards of salmon farming—lice, pollution, reduction of wild salmon, escape from pens, requirement for feeder fish and the depletion of those stocks, the authors have three suggestions:

(1) Know the risks and rewards of eating farmed salmon and insist on more transparency.

(2) Take responsibility for insisting on better ways of raising farmed salmon.

And (3)

The third step is for governments to stop putting a thumb on the scale when weighing economic interests versus the public wellbeing.  Governments should take responsibility for protecting the environment and public health.  They should adopt strict curbs on the use of chemicals by salmon farmers.  They should require notification of all relevant authorities of every escape or suspected escape, and those reports should be made public.  Food labels should be thorough, accurate, and reflect how the salmon was raised…There must be similar global efforts to protect the public health and the welfare of salmon.

This is a hard-hitting book and, as you might expect, it’s gotten some pushback.

Saving Seafood, a group that “conducts media and public relations outreach on behalf of the seafood industry,” says “New ‘Salmon Wars’ Book Is Full of Fictions. Here Are the Facts.”  Here are a couple of examples:

FICTION: Farmed salmon are crammed into cages.

FACT: Salmon occupy less than 4 percent of a typical marine cage. Farmers intentionally keep stocking densities low so fish have room to swim, grow, and mimic natural schooling patterns.

Farmers take great care to ensure the well-being of their salmon. Fish are vaccinated against several diseases, and pristine marine cage conditions are ensured with proper siting, regular fallowing (leaving sites unused), underwater cameras, and diver inspections.

FICTION: Farmed salmon are doused with pesticides and antibiotics.

FACT: Antibiotic use on salmon farms is far lower than that of any other agricultural animal producing industry in the world. In the rare instances when treatment is necessary, it is prescribed and overseen by licensed veterinarians under the oversight of government regulators.

In 2012 I visited a salmon farm above the Arctic Circle in Norway’s and wrote a post about it.

That one looked pretty good.  Now?  Others?  Who knows?

My recommendation: Visit one if you can.  Short of that, read this book.  Than decide what you think are the facts.

R.C. Harris.  Party Food: A Partisan History of Food & Farming in America.  Common Ground, 2021 (147 pages plus an index).

The author, a politics professor at Washington & Lee University, sent me a copy of her book, which I have now read.

I love the cover.

This is a book about the differing views of Farm Bill provisions among Democrats and Republicans.

Harris points out, correctly, that recent books about food policy in the United States, mine among them, say practically nothing about the role of the two political parties in deciding food issues.  Here, she corrects this omission.

She does so using a sports analogy–red and blue teams with one goal: to win.  A brief excerpt:

Setting the Stage: Farmers on Welfare in a Capitalist Society

The main problem in our story is that farm policy is really about giving farmers federal dollars to stay in business—and this idea tends to divide the red team from the blue team.  The history of modern farm policy in the United States is essentially the history of social welfare policy—a policy designed to prop up the incomes of farm families…As a nation of independent, hardworking, self-sufficient citizens and immigrants, America has always been more likely to embrace capitalism and less likely to expect government support than nations with a history of kinds, vassals, and peasants.  This means America is much more centrist and market-oriented in its economic policy, making welfare the exception rather than the rule. (p.53)

I get what she’s saying and her points are worth considering, but I wish she had used a word other than “farmers.”  The ones who get corporate welfare in America are not your small subsistence farmers or even those of medium size.

A more precise term here would be Big Agriculture.

The Farm Bill is welfare for the rich.  That’s why the red team is for it.

But her contention that the food movement needs to pay more attention to party politics demands attention.

Voting really matters to our players on the field.  In fact, we learned that partisan farm policy is really field policy—what will keep the team on the field.  And, interestingly enough, this has a lot to dow with what is in the fields and on the tables (and on the menus, and in the regrigerator, and for sale at the store or local farmers market) where the players are elected.  In other words, political teams want to be re-elected so they can keep making political plays.  (p. 131)

As I keep saying, if you want the food movement to have power, run for office.

Maybe it’s time for a third team?

Marcus B. Weaver-Hightower.  Unpacking School Lunch: Understanding the Hidden Politics of School Food.   Palgrave Macmillan 2022.

I did a back-cover blurb for this one:

Unpacking School Lunch is a wonderfully written, fresh, original, and utterly compelling account of what advocates are up against in getting schools to serve healthier, more sustainable meals to kids.  This book is an absolute must-read for anyone who cares about what kids eat, not least for Weaver-Hightower’s remarkably astute analysis (“unpacking!”) of conservative opposition to improving school food.

And while I was reading it, I collected a few choice excerpts.

Why school food matters:

[S]chool food broadly touches society in ways few other policy realms do, so school food should enjoy wide civil debate…School food (a) affects students’ health, 9b) affects student attainment and achievement, (c) affects teaching and administration, (d) teaches children about food, (e) implicates identify and culture, (f) affects the environment and animals, (g) represents big business, (h) provides a window into educational politics and policy, and (i) impacts social justice.

The key questions:

• I argue, principally, that school food remains so controversial nearly 75 years after becoming federal policy, because the policy’s fundamental political tensions have never been resolved.  The United States still struggles with key debates: whether the government should provide nutritional aid to individuals; whether such aid robs individuals of drive and self-direction; whether federal aid infringes on basic, often religious beliefs about culture, gender, race, and class; whether the government can tell us what to eat; whether support for this program benefits children or corporations.
• We lack, though, a progressive vision within national-level politics to fundamentally rethink and improve school food.
• Why is feeding children different [from everything else in school that is free]?  Why is food somehow seen as a welfare giveaway with moral ramifications and worthy of recriminations?  In a progressive vision of school meals, feeding is part of the infrastructure of schooling and should be as free as the rest of the facility.

This is another terrific book about school food, and it could not be more timely.

Fabio Parasecoli.  Gastronativism: Food, Politics and Globalization.  Columbia University Press, 2021.  (226 pages)

My NYU colleague, Fabio Parasecoli, has just published this one.  I blurbed it:

Fabio Parasecoli draws on his deep international experience in this thoughtful analysis of how food gets ensnared in political ideology to separate “us” from “them.”  Gastronativism argues convincingly that food systems are indeed global, and the sooner we get those systems to bring people together, the better.

A few excerpts:

On the connection between gastronativism and populism:

Not by chance, some of most infamous manifestations of gastronativism have appeared in countries where these leaders operate.  Food is able to activate emotions and does not require much mediation; it is shared by everybody, everybody experiences it, everybody is an expert.  Gastronativism interprets people’s tangible experiences and frustrations as consequences of all-powerful, stealthy, and ruthless global dynamics, and it often does it through the language of victimization and suffrance.  Gastronativism provides a sense of rootedness, comfort, and security against the globalization. (p. 15)

On how gastronativism fosters a sense of community:

Instability has made the desire for community and rootedness more urgent, for good and for bad.  Food, as an expression of individual and shared identities, constitutes the perfect vehicle to make such aspirations tangible.  As such, the passions it elicits are ripe to be channeled ideologically.  Ideas of locality, nation, tradition, heritage, and authenticity have been activated in political projects operating at movements that range from anarchic anti-globalism to various forms of populism, nationalism, and sovranism, tainted at times with racism and xenophobia.

On gastronativism as a representation of “us” vs. “them”:

A deeper awareness of the political, non-neutral quality of all processes defining food traditions and the quest for authenticity can provide a better grasp of the dynamics that allow dishes, products, or customs to be experienced as “local” or “ours.” Understanding their emergence and changes over time and space would not diminish their emotional power, but it could blunt their exploitation by belligerent political actors. Appreciation and pride in one’s culinary world should not necessary imply debasing the food of the others… By chipping away at ideas of an ageless, essential “us,” greater awareness of the possible destructive impulses of gastronativist motivations and strategies could generate more openness toward “them,” whoever they may be.

David Gelles.  The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy. Simon & Schuster, 2022 (264 pages).

One good thing about being stuck in Covid quarantine (mild case: 3 days of fever but no other symptoms for the last 5 days), is that I got to read this book.  I think it is hugely important and makes a compelling, if depressingly realistic, case for how corporate profit-first ideology has badly damaged American democracy.

I’m a fan of David Gelles, who writes for the Times about corporate malfeasance.  I’ve also been interested in Jack Welch since I read an article in Fortune magazine about how a speech he gave in 2001 was responsible for kicking off the Shareholder Value movement.

This was the push to give stockholders immediate higher returns on investment and made growth in profits the sole corporate goal (a big shift from blue chip stocks like IBM, which promised slow but steady returns over a long time period).

Gelles explains what this did to corporations and what they then did to America.  Companies like Welch’s General Electric, which made toasters and household electrics, fired employees, outsourced labor, cut all possible costs, merged and acquired, manipulated earnings, and forgot about ethics let alone social responsibility.  Boeing, infamously, did the same.   Hence plane crasshes and deaths.

Other results: destruction of the environment, loss of manufacturing, and the evaporation of decent working- and middle class incomes and the transfer of their wealth to stockholders and especially to corporate executives.  Hence their obscene salaries and compensation.

Gelles also describes the widespread acceptance of profits first, the ignoring of its consequences, and the collusion of Wall Street and the government in this destructive system.

Food companies are no exception.  I have long attributed the push to sell ultraprocessed junk food—regardless of its health consequences—as a result of what Jack Welch started.

Interestingly, Gelles cites a food company, Unilever, as an example of a corporation that is trying to put social values back in the picture.

He says others should follow Unilever’s example, and cites the 2019 statements by the World Economic Forum and the Business Roundtable to suggest that maybe business is finally catching on to the need for change.  (See my incredulous post on these statements)

I think he may be too optimistic.  As he admits on page 223, this is what actually happened during the pandemic:

One study showed that companies that signed the Business Roundtable statement were actually more likely to announce layoffs in the first months of the pandemic than companies that didn’t sign the statement, and that the companies that pledged to serve all stakeholders actually distributed more of their profits to shareholders than those who didn’t publicly pledge to look out for the common good.

So much for promises.

As a Lancet Commission said early in 2019, if we want social values to matter in business, government is going to have to start regulating.  For that to happen, we need much greater demand from civil society.

This book makes a strong case for the need to change the way corporations operate.  Let’s get to work.

Meredith Li-Vollmer.  Graphic Public Health.  Penn State University Press, 2022.

Probably because of my cartoon book, Eat, Drink, Vote: An Illustrated Guide to Food Politics, I was asked to do a blurb for this book, which I was happy to do.

In her thoroughly up-to-date, informative, and useful book, Li-Vollmer convincingly argues for the effectiveness of comics in conveying health risks and desired behaviors.  She proves this point with splendid and deeply engaging examples, and provides an instructive how-to for creating your own. This book should be in every public health curriculum; it’s not only informative but also wonderful fun to read.

They only used the sentence in bold face (edited to convert wonderful to wonderfully).

But the rest explains why I think the book is worth reading.   Li-Vollmer works for Seattle’s health department and discovered comics as a way of communicating public health messages.  The book includes lots of examples of the work of comic artists explaining issues related to a host of public health issues.  Although none of the examples focus specifically on food issues, some briefly cover food safety, eating watery foods on hot days, and how climate change affects food production.

I think this is a great way to communicate public health issues.  New York City subway rider that I am, I greatly enjoyed the AIDS story that the New York City Health Department told in posters in the early 1990s.  As the New York Times explained,

Our story so far, as seen in 6,000 New York City subway cars, above the windows and between the advertisements for hemorrhoid, hernia, and foot doctors:

Julio and Marisol run into each other while visiting Raul Rodriguez, who is in the hospital with AIDS. They apologize for the big quarrel several episodes back, when Julio refused to use a condom and walked out. Their romance rekindled, they leave Raul’s room to get some coffee and talk things over.

Suddenly, Rosa bursts in. “I’m scared,” she tells Raul. “I’m . . . I’m . . . I’m H.I.V. positive.”

Darra Goldstein.  The Kingdom of Rye: A Brief History of Russian Food.  University of California Press, 2022.

Russia is in the news these days (to say the least) and here is food historian Darra Goldstein’s deeply nostalgic account of how Russians managed to create delicious meals under the worst of circumstances, from tsarist to Soviet times.  Some excerpts:

To explain the title and the cover:

At the heart of any traditional Russian meal lies black bread, a loaf of dense sourdough rye….so ingrained was rye in the Russian diet that by the late nineteenth century, 30 to 60 percent of the country’s arable land was annually planted in this crop, leading to a veritable “kingdom of rye.”  The peasants expressed reverence for their rye bread by holding the loaf close to the chest and slicing it horizontally toward the heart. Wasting breadcrumbs was considered a sin, and even into the late twentieth century, entire cookbooks were devoted to using leftover black bread (p. 9).

On dacha gardens in Soviet times:

The only sure way to guarantee the availability of staples like potatoes was to grow them yourself.  Most of the population, including a great many city dwellers, cultivated their own garden plots, which allowed them to endure periods of food shortages.  These private plots…created a significant second economy–one the government came increasingly to rely on, since the collective and state farms never managed to meet the nation’s demand for fresh produce (p. 89).

On the samovar:

The origins of the samovar’s design are murky, and it is unclear whether this vessel arrived in Russia from the East or the West.  The model may have been the Mongolian hot pot or the elaborate Dutch urns that had taps rather than spouts…Whatever its origin, the Russians adapted a foreign receptacle into a useful object that became not only very much their own, but one that epitomizes Russianness (p. 119).

The book is indeed brief, but enlightening.  It made me think of Anya Von Bremen’s Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing (Broadway Books, 2013).  Both are deeply appreciative of Russian cuisine (if that’s the right word), and ability of Russian cooks to take whatever was available and turn it into something edible and memorable.