Snack foods get more promotion than staple foods

This picture was taken at the Oakland Athletics game. It is the view of the counter at a concessions stand. It is a picture of the fountain drink machine and candy and crackerjacks. Candy is about $3.25 a pack and soda costs $4.75 for a medium. In the Bodley text book it states on page 174, "In general, staple foods such as fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, and milk, which could form the basis of a nutritionally sound diet yet require minimal processing and have little "added value," are promoted very little. "Impulse" items such as soft drinks, candy, and other snack foods, and new products generally, are heavily dependent on continual promotion." Candy is a souce of added caloric intake. Too much candy eating is an example of over-consumption malnutrition.

The old days

This is a picture of the middle school I attended for three years. I was compelled to take this picture after remembering all the seagulls I always saw swarming the campus' grassy fields. They were especially aggressive during lunchtime, when all of us kids would accidentally [or purposefully] drop food on the ground. It was both scary and entertaining to watch the seagulls swiftly swoop down and snatch the crumbs off the ground in a matter of seconds. It was a tough game of survival of the fittest. In some ways, I feel like living in a commercialized society has produced “seagulls”—-people who are not very self-sufficient, dependent on what is dropped in front of them to survive, having to grab what’s thrown before others take it away.
This picture of a great grassy field is something that is commonly seen throughout the rest of the city of Alameda. Bay Farm Island of Alameda used to be known as “Asparagus Island” because it was composed of farmland with asparagus as the principle crop. However, it is made up of a large golf course, many suburban housing developments, many office buildings, and a small shopping center with one Safeway. The numerous lawns of grass, trees, and bushes on Bay Farm Island reminded me what we talked about in class on those being an idea of a prestige image. They weren’t naturally grown on the island and they require lots of maintenance. What would happen if food was instead grown on those areas? Then we wouldn’t have to rely solely on the one Safeway in Bay Farm to survive…

You might have seen him before...

This is Muhammad. He's been working at this food stand for four out of the 16 years this stand has existed on Mondays to Thursdays, 8am - 6:30pm. I pass by this stand twice a day as I go to and from class from the parking lot. I always saw him sitting outside the stand reading a newspaper, but never actually walked up to buy anything from the stand. There are several coolers in front of the stand, probably containing meat for the hot dogs he likes to make. He also sells a wide array of snack foods, from candy bars to chips to coffee. I feel like though all of these foods sound very tasty and he sells them cheapest out of the three total food stands on the Laney campus, I question how hazardous this could be on one’s health and whether students go there frequently because it is cheap and convenient. As Bodley states in “Anthropology and Contemporary Human Problems”: “The universal shift to urban life with both parents working outside the home, combined with massive commercial advertising, has dramatically increased the worldwide appeal of and market for highly processed and packaged convenience for foods, as well as ‘fast foods’ that are high in fat and sugar and low in nutrients ” (p148). I know that we most likely see the same food in these stands in numerous other places, but I never thought about how just convenience and low pricing could have an impact on one’s diet and health. It also makes me wonder whether some people have no other choice but to buy processed and packaged foods because they are cheaper to buy compared than high quality foods, such as those sold as "organic"...

A Different Perspective

The bunch of bananas that I bought had Del Monte stickers on them. After reading “Why Can’t People Feed Themselves” in the Annual Editions Anthropology book and watching "Life and Debt", I wondered where this banana came from when I bought it. Was I enjoying it at the expense of someone else living in Guatemala or Jamaica? The article in Annual Editions wrote that plantations often held much of the land idle simply to keep peasants from using it, even today! In Guatemala, Del Monte uses only 9000 out of the 57,000 acres they own! This was to “undercut self-provisioning agriculture and thus make rural populations dependent on plantation wages” (p160). Was this banana grown and picked by someone who was forced to work on a plantation because he was not allowed to be self-sufficient on his own land? Is the person who picked this banana suffering from lack of food and proper nutrition while I ate this banana on top of three other meals and a numerous number of snacks that day? This shows me how ignorant I am about where the food I eat comes from. I don’t think my perspective on Del Monte bananas (and perhaps other foods in the future) will ever be quite the same again.

Overpriced

The vending machine at Merritt College held the most expensive bag of M&Ms I have ever seen. I remember back in elementary or middle school, I was able to buy candy bars for around 60 cents, and even maybe 50 cents if they were on sale. I think it bothers me that a place could sell one regular bag of candy at $1.25, but it bothers me even more to think that people might actually pay that much if they are craving some chocolate or if they just don’t care about the price. Bodley's book states: "The nutrition transition, which seems to be an intrinsic feature of the global market economy, is a circular process in which the development of capitalist commercial enterprises causes social changes that over-stimulate the natural human appetite for fats and sweets and provide the commodities and the incomes to meet the almost unrestrained demand" (p148). I think Bodley may have a point when he writes that in this society, people give into their unrestrained demands and have the means to get what they want. If a person wants to eat a particular food, it is most likely a walk down the street or a short drive away. Even if a restaurant is far, people will still make a long drive to eat there if it is worth it to them. It seems like the taste and temptation of foods are more important than how healthy it is. And even if one is trying to watch what he eats, there are now so many different ways of doing so! Who would have thought food would have become so complicated?

Transportation

I sat in my car at the edge of the parking lot facing the 880 freeway for a couple minutes, trying to take a good picture of all the trucks driving by. I don't think any of the trucks in this particular picture were delivering food, but I'm sure a good amount of the trucks that passed by every couple seconds were filled with food from all different places. Transportation of food happens all over the place, but I never really thought about that and the whole process of producing and delivering food until now. This reminds me of Bodley's book which says, “…industrial commercial societies reverse the energy input-output relationship of the food system typical of the tribal world, in which 10 or more kilocalories are produced for each kilocalorie expended” (p168). It was baffling to read about the energy costs of the distribution system in Bodley’s book! I never realized before how much work it must have taken for one item to end up on my dinner table, such as a factory potato (described in the book) that required intensive care—-the maintenance of soil conditions, moisture, and nutrients, controlling weeds, diseases, and insect infestations, the use of numerous chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides, and not to mention transporting, packaging, advertising, distributing, refrigerating, and cooking the potato. It is no wonder foods in supermarkets seem overpriced and no wonder why I am compelled to buy only foods that are on sale. Food has become "fully commercialized" (p163) and pricey. The emphasis on food seems to be hardly ever for basic nourishment anymore.

Looks Can Be Deceiving

My mom bought this chocolate cake from Safeway on July 4th for my sister and a couple other friends' graduation. It was made up of two layers of chocolate cake with something like strawberry jam in the middle, smothered all around in rich, thick, overwhelmingly sweet chocolate frosting. I ate from this cake for a week before I decided I was probably cutting my life short. I eventually threw it out because it was better to get rid of all the temptation than to keep it and maybe be tempted to over-consume again. However, there was some guilt in throwing it out since I knew I had extra food to indulge in while people elsewhere probably didn't even have the luxury of eating dessert, let alone a full meal. Bodley's book states that "The most dramatic assessments of the global food system suggested that by the year 2000 three billion people, half the world's population, were malnourished, either from calorie and protein deficiency or vitamin and mineral deficiency or from over-consumption" (p145). Eating this cake was probably deteriorating my health and contributing to these statistics, not nourishing or benefiting me in any way. However, I feel like it is in a commercialized food system that high sugar and high calorie foods could be processed and successfully sold to people, causing over-consumption. Why are these kinds of cakes so often the main desserts at celebrations anyway? Why can't it be a fruit salad?