Meals Matter: A Radical Economics Through Gastronomy

  • Michael Symons
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS: 2020. 376PP. $35.00

Michael Symons calls for the restoration of economics through gastronomic liberalism. By navigating political, philosophical and economic theory, his latest book offers a critical reflection of the economization of life.

Human beings are described as ‘stomach-structured lives’ who pursue individual desires and, yet, dine convivially. Exponents of liberal thinking are evoked, such as Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, who understood that self-interested individuals are inclined to assemble to ensure sustenance. Symons shows the appropriation and corruption of liberal ideas by business corporations and mainstream economists who, through rationality based on profit maximization, turned ‘healthy appetite into holy greed’. The narrative ends with a proposal to restore economics through gastronomy, with shared meals — and all that meals involve — at the heart, thereby acknowledging humans’ mutual reliance and the complexity of decision-making.

Meals Matter is compelling, original and sophisticated. The book would appeal to a scientific and lay audience seeking a deeper understanding of how society got to a point of extreme commodification of food, alienation from its sociocultural value, and the neglect of meals. As well as prompting readers to rethink the current system, it might inspire them to engage in shared gastronomic pleasure and community-based development as a path to a better world.

On an Empty Stomach: Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief

  • Tom Scott-Smith
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS: 2020. 288PP. $35

Tom Scott-Smith examines how humanitarian strategies for managing hunger have changed over the past two hundred years. With a focus on western institutions, Scott-Smith reviews a history of hunger relief initiatives, such as Victorian soup kitchens, and notes the impact of the Second World War on the emergence of modern nutrition science, the development of long-lasting, easy-to-transport and nutritionally balanced emergency food, as well as current feeding with technical foods. Hunger relief efforts have shifted in their nature over time, shaped by commerce, capitalism, bureaucracy, scientific and technological advance. Humanitarian practices have also been influenced by social and political conditions of the age. The author observed a large feeding operation in South Sudan in 2012, where the standardized procedure that humanitarian agencies used, focused narrowly on nutrition and body, ignored local cultural considerations of how hunger should be managed. Social, political and cultural conditions may well be, it is argued here, among the most important considerations for how the empty stomach is understood — and fed.

This book would appeal to readers and researchers of global food policy, humanitarian studies, medical anthropology and, also, to the general public.

The Food Supply Chain and History of Beans

  • Linda Pelaccio
Podcast from A Taste of the Past, Heritage Radio Network (https://a-taste-of-the-past.simplecast.com/episodes/the-food-supply-chain-and-history-of-beans-q4wo_2bD)

The COVID-19 pandemic is changing our food lives drastically and our regard for certain foods, which are now deemed essentials and worth stockpiling. This episode of A Taste of the Past explores why supermarkets’ shelves are empty and looks at the history behind a long-standing staple — beans.

Presenter Linda Pelaccio notes, rather excitedly, that dried beans have become surprisingly popular with consumers during the pandemic. Thus, with guest Natalie Rachel Morris, author of the book Beans: A Global History, we learn about the history of beans, from ancient Mesopotamian agriculture to today’s cover crops. Legumes have been a staple for as long as people have been cooking and are intimately linked with culture — whether it is the Romans reason for using lentils to package the Vatican obelisk, the controversy of lentil-based recipes in the earliest cookbook Apicius, or the importance of groundnut stew in African-American culture.

Morris’s lively stories provide some light-hearted relief about food in these unusual and testing times. Perhaps now is a great time to soak those dried beans and cook up something new? Image credit: Stepan Popov / Alamy Stock Photo.