Effect of mollusc eating on human bone strontium levels

Empirical aspects of the movement of strontium through the food chain suggest that the level of bone strontium can be used as an indicator of the percentage of meat in human diet. In general, skeletal remains from agricultural peoples are expected to have high bone strontium levels relative to hunter-gatherers from the same geographical region because plants contain relatively higher amounts of strontium when compared with animal products. The results of the study described in this paper, however, indicate that the inclusion of molluscs as a component of the diet may produce the opposite of the expected strontium values. Burials from an Archaic (c. 2500 BC) hunting-gathering population excavated from Lu^o25, an archaeological site in northern Alabama, USA, exhibit a mean bone strontium level ( atomic absorption; neutron activation) that is higher than the mean level from an agricultural Mississippian (c. AD 1400) population ( atomic absorption; neutron activation) that was buried at the same site. The samples were analysed by two techniques (atomic absorption spectrometry and neutron activation analysis) and the results compared favourably; therefore, the results can be accepted as valid rather than being due to technique error. We propose that the ingestion of molluscs, whose meat is known to contain large amounts of strontium, has produced this reversal from expected results.     

The theatricality of eating in the life of St. Francis of Assisi

I examine the role of food, eating, and meals in the life of St. Francis of Assisi. I observe that his experience significantly differs from that of the female fasting saints. I show that his concern lies with the justifiability of eating, and that food is associated with dramatic lessons that instruct or chastise others. I argue that, like Christ, Francis uses food and eating to teach, to share a message, or to accept outsiders.     

Exploring children's foodscapes

In this article, we discuss children's becoming as food consumers in the intersection of various foodscapes. We draw from a project, Children as co-researchers of foodscapes, where we have been working with children as co-researchers, using basically ethnographic methods, and as co-designers in a collaborative design effort. This article focuses on the findings from a theoretically inspired perspective, using the concept of foodscapes. These are food-related structures of different kinds, which evolve as the child explores them and where children as food consumers are generated. In this article, we highlight the scapes of taste, routines, people, things, commerce, child (as opposed to adult) and health and give brief accounts of the way the children related to them. Finally, we turn to the benefits of working with foodscapes for a better understanding of children's becoming as food consumers in the intersection of various foodscapes. This article is based on data gathered by the children, but also on our fieldwork notes and observations following the children in their foodscapes.     

The body eating its food politics: reflections on relationalities and embodied ways of knowing

This Viewpoint article builds on feminist geography research methods, scholarship of embodiment, and more-than-human geographies to challenge us to think about how relationalities are reconfigured through attention to the human eater’s body. Drawing on an example from ethnographic research, the author problematizes how an embodied act of eating other non-human bodies raises concerns for how we negotiate the complicated sets of ethical relations that we each confront on a daily basis. In particular, this example is used to describe the ethical dilemmas researchers encounter when the intellect conflicts or collides with the corporeal. Rather than reinstate the mind–body dualism that feminists have long argued against, this article grapples with the complicated and complex negotiations embodied knowledge contributes to academic knowledge production. Embodied knowledge is not straightforward, yet should be acknowledged in our academic scholarship and debated about its potential for epistemological and ontological openings in our areas of research.     

Choosing Health? Exploring Children's Eating Practices at Home and at School

Abstract:  This paper considers the influences on children's eating habits in both school and home spaces in the UK. Since 2002 the UK government has been committed to halting the increase in child obesity rates, and has sanctioned particular parental and school based practices as more "healthy" than others. This study examines this through critically questioning, in particular, the classed discourses written into health education advice and advocates a new way of thinking about health education messages. Based on qualitative research with children from one secondary school and with eight families in the North of England the paper reveals that while parents and children make decisions about their lives with reference to dominant discourses about ideal "healthy" family eating practices, their ability to realise these practices is limited in numerous ways. Moreover, the influences on children's eating habits in both home and school spaces are intricately interrelated and children's practices are clearly influenced by the spaces they inhabit. Their decisions involve balancing health education knowledge with a range of other knowledges that are bound up in the socio-spatial relations of their everyday lives. A holistic approach to understanding children's eating habits therefore requires a critical understanding of class background, parental influences and contemporary parenting practices as well as the microgeographical relations found in the school dining room.     

Fast food/organic food: Reflexive tastes and the making of 'yuppie chow'

Organic food consumption is one of several new trends in eating read as active opposition to industrialized food provision. While fast food consumption is characterized by compulsive gluttony, manifest in fat bodies, alternative consumption practices are seen to be driven by conscious reflexivity, such that consumers monitor, reflect upon and adapt their personal conduct in light of its perceived consequences. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. One is to examine the evolution of organic food from what Belasco called the 'counter-cuisine' to what organic growers call 'yuppie chow', to show how organic salad mix was the carrier of major changes in the organic system of provision, thereby calling into question the notion that organic food is necessarily an antidote to industrialized food. The other is to problematize the facile dichotomies between fast and slow, reflexive and compulsive, fat and thin, and, hence, good and bad eaters, to show where there is slippage and instability in these categories, in addition to a troubling politics of class and gender. To these ends, I showcase the changing provision of a particular organic commodity (salad mix, or mesclun) in California.     

The Disappearing Body

Although Chile was the first country in Latin America to report cases of anorexia nervosa in 1982, the issue had already gained notoriety during the 1970s, the decade when North American policies and the United States capitalist economy began to infiltrate Chilean society. The category of eating disorders, which may be manifested in a variety of diseases (such as anorexia, bulimia, and compulsory overeating), has only recently become the focus of Chilean literature and, in turn, literary criticism, which has primarily focused on the metaphorical interpretations of these illnesses. One novel that treats the multifaceted manifestations of eating disorders, not merely the metaphorical representations, is Marcela Serrano's Antigua vida mía (1995). The societal demands of unhealthy body images have been the concern of feminist criticism such as Susan Bordo's Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (1993). In Marcela Serrano's novel the treatment of eating disorders reflects the evolving expectations on women in contemporary Chilean culture. Through the application of Bordo's analysis of the cultural pressures and significances of body expectations, this article delves into the various manifestations of unhealthy eating practices in Serrano's Antigua vida mía and reveals the self-destructive and self-isolating consequences of an often-occulted illness while also recognizing that by treating body image and illness, the author engages in a cultural discourse regarding the expectations and repercussions of cultural demands.     

Spaces of capability: Consumption geographies at an inner‐city university

Inner‐city universities are noteworthy in relation to food provisioning and consumption because of their locations and spatial characteristics. Among 18,500 university students surveyed by Universities Australia in 2017, one in seven reports being unable to eat in regular patterns. This finding suggests that it is important to explore how eating spaces at inner‐city universities intersect with students' eating practices. Ethnographic work conducted over three semesters in Melbourne at RMIT University's city campus revealed that around 100 microwaves installed there were used by students to prepare food in ways that may support regular eating. The research included observations, focus groups, and digital ethnography. Analysis of the findings suggests that the university's eating spaces and their material arrangements are related to students' on‐campus and off‐campus practices. Using both Walker's interpretation of Sen's capability approach—the social practice capability framework—and Schatzki's site ontology, I propose that this relationship produces spaces of capability, encouraging and enabling varied activities such as using leftovers, bulk cooking, and buying discretionary foods less impulsively. The study and its use of the idea of spaces of capability may foster new insights about the ongoing challenge to ensure student wellbeing and to consider the relationship of student wellbeing to broader issues such as sustainable consumption and environmental justice.     

Children, ‘healthy’ food,school and family: the ‘[n]ot really’ outcome of school food messages

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on a multi-method study with 50 families in Victoria, Australia. Primary school children were asked about food knowledge from school and whether they felt motivated to bring knowledge home. Generally, children and parents felt school food messages are unclear, contradictory and not relevant to them and this reduced the likelihood of messages coming home from school. We identify a critical difference in how families thought about healthy eating and food practices at home and the framework of school messages. Families focused on children’s eating in a pragmatic way, infused with nurturance as well as concern. We argue their practices can be viewed as a form of relational consumption (Lindsay and Maher 2013. Consuming Families: Buying, Making, Producing Family Life in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Routledge.) where food is part of the everyday exchange of love and care. A disjunction exists between familial relational approaches and the regulatory framework of school food messages that impacts how messages move between these spaces. Attention to relational aspects of food consumption at school might allow for a more valuable exchange between family and schools that supports family endeavours to feed children well.