Anthropology Newsletter Columns: 2004
January 2004
Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition
Janet Chrzan, Contributing Editor
2003 Report to CNA Membership on Activities and Issues<
CNA sessions at the Chicago AAA meeting were very well-attended; we had two-invited, one sponsored. Each session had a wide range of AAA members in attendance, and many stimulating questions were asked. The Distinguished Speaker for 2003 was Marion Nestle, who provided a stimulating talk on food products, food marketing strategies, and the growing levels of obesity in the United States. Of particular interest was information about the rather Machiavellian methods the food industry uses to entice children into pressuring parents to purchase particular food itemsâ?| which Dr. Nestle calls the 'pester factor'.
In the Board meeting, a number of important new developments in CNA and AAA were discussed. President Barry Brenton reported on the upcoming switch to AnthroSource publishing, which will have real consequences for our economic future. AAA will pay for archiving past issues of Nutritional Anthropology (NA) before 2003; this will be available online to all members of the AAA and by subscription for institutions through AnthroSource. For our 2004 budget and beyond, CNA will be responsible for our share of the operating and administration fees of archived material. What revenue we will receive as a section from AnthroSource is still unknown, and over the next year we may have to discuss raising membership dues. By 2005 CNA will have to decide if we want to continue having a print copy of NA or switch over to online access only; given our small membership we do not have the revenue to do both. Clearly online access to NA will provide a great deal of exposure to the journal outside of our membership, as all AnthroSource publications will be indexed. However, this will require both financial and scholarly support from our members.
The CNA webpage will be updated and will be available through the AAA website. With the shift to AnthroSource, this column can expand and cover more of your news as well as provide links to other sections news and websites. We encourage all of you to work with members in other sections to bring news of interest to the website and column, email Janet Chrzan with items and suggestions (jdamkrog@sas.upenn.edu).
David Himmelgreen has created a portable CNA display board. Please contact him at (dhimmelg@chuma1.cas.usf.edu) to have your news and projects added to the presentation board or to request it for your event.
Nutritional Anthropology
Kristin Borre reported on issues and concerns for Nutritional Anthropology: AnthroSource offers opportunities to become a journal that is widely read and accessed through the portal system, but responsibilities must be accepted and the structure of the current journal will change. If we choose to publish NA through AnthroSource, that contract will require regular content formatting, a formal Editorial Board, regular submission deadlines, peer review guidelines, and dated publications (June and December, for example). These are big changes and we welcome comments and thoughts from all CNA members. Dr. Borre reminded us that unless the members contribute to the journal it will cease to exist ' so send in your articles, research reports, and book reviews! (borrek@mail.ecu.edu)
Name Change
The CNA Executive Board suggests the following name change as a ballot question to be voted on during the Spring 2004 Elections. The proposal has been made to change 'Council on Nutritional Anthropology' (CNA) to 'Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition' (SAFN). Your comments are welcome via the CNA Listserve, the AN column, NA, or a Board member.
CNA Future Development Projects
The Board also discussed several future projects to begin during the next calendar year. An updated syllabi source (SNACIII) will be collated; volunteers for that project are urgently needed. Contact Leslie Sue Lieberman (llieberm@mail.ucf.edu) to participate in that project. The creation and publication of a new Nutritional Anthropology Methods Handbook is also an upcoming project; members are needed to serve as editors, contributors, and readers. The CNA Listserve is active, yet has very few members; it is not moderated and so far has seen very little traffic. We encourage everyone to sign up as listserves of this type have proven very useful for professional information exchange among other food-related academic societies. To join the listerve, send an email to lcramer@counterpart.org. And finally, a Members Survey will be sent out in Spring 2004 to assay members' ideas about services and developments as well as the future of AnthroSource and Nutritional Anthropology.
February 2004
COUNCIL ON NUTRITIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Janet Chrzan, Contributing Editor
Food for Thought, Study, and Change
Barrett P. Brenton, CNA President
The field of anthropology has historically integrated the biocultural premise that what, when, and where we eat is an expression of both biology and culture. As a part of everyday life, food is an ideal medium for studying the many facets of human culture, diet, health, and nutrition. One field in particular, nutritional anthropology, continues to promote a holistic perspective on our cross-cultural and evolutionary relationships with food in prehistoric, historical, and contemporary contexts. An anthropological approach to human foodways clearly demands the use of multiple methodological and theoretical applications, ranging from the biological to the symbolic and spanning the traditional sub-fields of anthropology, as well as those of other disciplines. Anthropologists, as advocates and educators, also reveal the socio-cultural, political, and economic underpinnings affecting overall diet and health in the world today. In doing so, we promote food policy and public health on a global scale, and ultimately enhance our understanding of the human experience and our complex relationship with food.
This AN column marks exactly three years since readers were invited to discuss anthropological approaches to and integrations with the emerging multidisciplinary field of food studies. Its growth in academia has continued, even with critics who say that it is another example of campus trivial pursuit and scholarship-lite. Following this call, in 2002 CNA held a discussant session on 'The Future of Food Studies in Anthropology,' and in 2003 sponsored an invited session on 'Conflict and Confluence in Food Studies in Anthropology.' The result of these forums made it clear that CNA's roots and traditions are firmly anchored in scientifically rigorous studies of human diet and nutrition. Yet it was also realized that to more fully engage the spectrum of theoretical and methodological perspectives of individuals AAA-wide, especially in the wake of the increasing girth of Food Studies programs, CNA's name could be transformed to incorporate the word 'Food.'
This issue was brought up at the 2002 CNA general business meeting in New Orleans and a lively discussion ensued concerning the need to both maintain CNA's core purpose while increasing its visibility. At the 2003 meetings in Chicago a motion was made to put a name change to a vote by the membership during the spring 2004 AAA Elections. As reported in the January column the ballot question would change the current name 'Council on Nutritional Anthropology' (CNA) to 'Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition' (SAFN). The question would only change 'Article I. Name.' of the bylaws.
We must remind ourselves that the holistic depth and breath of the section was fully realized in its founding nearly 30 years ago. A name change would only further support our goals and objectives as a group within AAA. It is perhaps most appropriate to end by restating the purpose of our section as it appears in the bylaws (with the modified name change): 'The purpose of this society is to encourage research and exchange of ideas, theories, methods, and scientific information relevant to understanding the socio-cultural, behavioral, and political economic factors related to food and nutrition; to provide a forum for communication and interaction among scientists and others sharing these interests; and to promote practical collaboration among social and nutritional scientists and others at the fields and program level.'
March 2004
COUNCIL ON NUTRITIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Janet Chrzan, Contributing Editor
Food Security
Years ago, while I was working as a flunkie on a nutrition project that someone else had designed, I was amazed at the very high levels of food insecurity among the population we were sampling. The question we used to assess food insecurity asked if the household ever ran out of food; a surprising number of subjects answered yes, yet never indicated via repeated 24-hour recall that they ever missed a meal. What was happening? Were we asking the wrong questions? After a number of in-depth interviews, I determined that the population understood the question as 'does the household ever run out of meat?', since the emic understanding of running out of food was that a family was without meat. And, yes, while approximately 1/3 of the families ran out of the meat purchased at the beginning of the month when foodstamps allowed a big trip to the grocery store, a far smaller percentage was actually out of food at the end of the month. Since then I have learned to ask about food security in a more sophisticated manner, but it remains a difficult issue to understand, especially in a cross-cultural context.
I return to it now because in October 2003 ERS-USDA published a report that documented a small but important rise in food insecurity among Americans in 2002 (http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/fanrr35/), which is not unexpected given the loss of an estimated 3 million jobs during the current Bush administration. Given the widespread coverage of this news item in the media, it is a good time to investigate the meanings, strengths and weaknesses of the current food security assessment models. I welcome and encourage ideas and comments from everyone; please send all materials to my email address listed below. In the meantime, I present a quick overview of methods and resources for assessing food security.
In the United States, household-level food security is often assessed using the standard ERS-USDA 16-point tool (http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/measurement/) which is designed to measure food availability, access to food and perceptions of availability. As further elaborated by Wolfe and Frongillo, 'The concept of food insecurity as thought about in the United States includes not only the lack of availability, access, and utilization or use of food (e.g., food preparation and intra-household food distribution), but also perceptions (e.g., that food is insufficient, inadequate, unacceptable, uncertain, or unsustainable)' (Wolfe and Frongillo 2001). Embedded within the assessment tool are questions designed to measure risks of hunger, presence or hunger, and absolute hunger for the household's most vulnerable members, its children. This model does not assess coping strategies, nor does it allow for true assessment of food stores; rather, it relies on an experiential perception of current household risk from the standpoint of an adult member. However, it has high validity and is quick and easy to use. A number of other tools exist, such as the Community Food Security Assessment (http://www.foodsecurity.org/CFAguide-whatscookin.pdf) from the Community Food Security Coalition, and the Radimer-Cornell and CCHIP questionnaire-based measures (see Himmelgreen et al., 2000).
Resources to better understand food security in the United States have become more available within the last few years. The USDA offers a number of sources (http://www.ers.usda.gov/), as does the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University (http://www.centeronhunger.org/index.html#). Ryerson University now offers a continuing education degree in food security (http://ce-online.ryerson.ca/ce/default.asp). The Community Food Security Coalition offers grants, education and technical assistance, and focuses on building strong local food system sourcing networks (http://www.foodsecurity.org/index.html). Many organizations link household food security to community food security and advocate stronger local food systems which could potentially provide safer foods for consumers as well as increased livelihood security for small farm owners and workers.
To be continued next month: A look at the paradox of food insecurity coupled with widespread obesity.
David A. Himmelgreen et al., 2000. Food Insecurity among low-income Hispanics in Hartford, Connecticut: Implications for Public Health Policy. Human Organization Vol. 56, No. 3: pps. 334-342.
Wendy S. Wolfe and Edward A. Frongillo, 2001. Building household food-security measurement tools from the ground up. The United Nations University Food and Nutrition Bulletin, vol. 22, no. 1: pps. 5- 13.
April 2004
COUNCIL ON NUTRITIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Janet Chrzan, Contributing Editor
Food Insecurity and Obesity
Last month we examined the concept of food security as applied to research on household food intake in the United States. This month we will discuss the seeming inconsistency of higher rates of obesity among food-insecure households.
The rise in what is described as the 'Obesity Epidemic' in the popular press has been noted among nutritionists and health researchers, and is currently a hot topic in scientific funding, among community activists, and with concerned citizens in general. The public concern is tied to the growing awareness of the nutritional outcomes of the American cheap food policy (see Pollan, 2003; Tillotson: 2003) especially since subsidized grains have resulted in higher per-capita intakes of sugar-supplemented 'super-sized' foods and drinks considered to directly fuel increasing rates of obesity (Brownell, 2004). However, just as America's middle class has seen its waistline expand and its BMI grow, so has a disproportionate number of members of food-insecure households. In fact, the food-insecure have much HIGHER rates of obesity than do the food-secure, an observation which makes no conceptual sense. Why would people who have less food get fatter than people who have plenty?
Recent research is attempting to answer this puzzle. Adams, et al. (2003) found that almost twice as many food-insecure women in California were obese (BMI>30) as were food-secure (31% vs. 16.2%); findings similar to those of Townsend et al. (2001), who report a step-wise positive relationship between differing levels of food insecurity and obesity. Alaimo et al. (2001) report that children in families with low income were significantly more likely to be overweight than children in families with high income and that older food-insufficient girls were more likely to be overweight than food-sufficient girls. Each of these authors recommends further study, in particular longitudinal designs to explore the potential causes of the correlation.
In the meantime, several studies have begun explore the links between food insecurity and overweight. Townsend (ibid) proposes the possibility of a food-stamp enhanced 'binge eating' cycle caused by repeated incidences of low-intake (at the end of the month) followed by intakes of richer, more caloric food at the beginning of the month. Kendell et al. (1996) propose that a higher proportion of poor and food-insecure individuals' diets is made of high-calorie, high-sugar, low nutrient-density foods, and that the food-insecure are far less likely to eat fruits and vegetables.
The essential question here is, perhaps, a deceptively simple one. Does poverty, in the context of a cheap-food environment, cause obesity through the intake of increased quantities of high-sugar and fat foods subsidized by government tax money, or does food-insecurity caused by poverty create a biological 'boom and bust' dietary cycle that predisposes adiposity? It is obvious to me that nutritional anthropologists are the perfect candidates to explore this thorny research question because of our use of mixed bio-cultural methods. I know that some of you are doing so now; please contact me (jdamkrog@sas.upenn.edu) if you would like to share your findings ' preliminary and published ' in this column. I welcome additional comments regarding this topic - appropriate research designs, suggestions for how anthropologists can address this issue in the public sphere, and how we might contribute to ongoing discussions that seek to define appropriate means to address this issue within public-health discourses.
Adams EJ, Grummer-Strawn L, Chavez G, 2003. Food Insecurity is Associated with Increased Risk of Obesity in California Women. Journal of Nutrition. 133(4):1070-4.
Alaimo K, Olson CM, Frongillo EA, 2001. Low Family Income and Food Insufficiency in Relation to Overweight in US Children: Is There a Paradox? Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med.2001;155:1161-1167
Brownell, KD and Horgen KB, 2004. Food Fight : The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It. Chicago : Contemporary Books.
Kendall A, Olson CM, Frongillo EA Jr, 1996. Relationship of Hunger and Food Insecurity to Food Availability and Consumption. Journal of the American Dietetic Association. 96(10):1019-24.
Pollan, Michael, 2003.The Way We Live Now: The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions of Obesity October 12, 2003, New York Times Sunday Magazine.
Tillotson, James E., 2003. Pandemic Obesity: Agriculture's Cheap Food Policy is a Bad
Bargain. Nutrition Today Sept-Oct 2003 v38 p186.
Townsend MS, Peerson J, Love B, Achterberg C and Murphy, SP, 2001. Food Insecurity Is Positively Related to Overweight in Women. Journal of Nutrition 131: 1738'1745, 2001.
Newly Updated CNA Website!
Barry Brenton has updated and revamped the CNA website; check it out: http://www.aaanet.org/cna/index.htm
May 2004
COUNCIL ON NUTRITIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Janet Chrzan, Contributing Editor
Carole Counihan:
Nutritional Anthropologist of the Month for May 2004
An interview with Carole Counihan (Millersville University):
JC: How did you first get interested in food within anthropology, and why?
CC: My interest in Italy brought me to the study of food in anthropology. After I graduated from Stanford University with a BA in history in 1970, I spent three years living in Florence and traveling widely in Italy. In April of 1972, my Italian boyfriend and I took the first of many motorcycle trips to Sardinia and I was immediately enchanted with this barren and beautiful island and its incredibly warm and generous people. To find out what made them 'tick,' I entered graduate school in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in January of 1974. One day during fieldwork in Italy, while everyone at the table was, as usual, nattering about what we were eating, a bolt of inspiration struck and I said, 'Eureka! My research topic--food!' I found food not only to be always on the tip of Italians' tongues but at the center of their culture, history, economy, family, and gender. Furthermore, at that time both Dr. George Armelagos and Dr. Sylvia Forman were teaching a Food and Culture course at UMass, surely one of the first in the nation. Armelagos published Consuming Passions with Peter Farb in 1980 and legitimized the study of food in anthropology, opening the door for my research.
JC: What were your research goals and why did you choose food as a means to meet them?
CC: My research goals have evolved over time, but food has always been in the center. In my dissertation fieldwork in the town of Bosa during 1978-1979, I wanted to uncover how the massive changes in economy and culture brought about by the Italian post-war 'economic miracle' were affecting Sardinians, long marginalized from the centers of political and economic power, traditionally versed in an agro-pastoral economy. In subsequent research I became increasingly interested in the stories people tell about their culture. I developed a food-centered life history methodology to produce tape-recorded interviews and verbatim transcriptions about foodways'the beliefs and behaviors surrounding the production, distribution and consumption of food. I have been using this methodology since 1982 in diverse communities'with pregnant and post-partum women in Pennsylvania, with Italians in Florence, and since 1996 with Latinas in the San Luis Valley of Colorado in a long-term oral history project with my husband, anthropologist Jim Taggart. I am delighted that twenty-two years after its inception, my Florence research has finally resulted in a book, entitled Around the Tuscan Table: Food, Family and Gender in Twentieth Century Florence (Routledge 2004). This book looks at the changing nature of modern Italy through Florentines' descriptions of their past and present cuisine, meals, child-feeding, and gender roles around food.
JC: Did you face any barriers in studying food in anthropology, and what were they?
CC: That's hard to say. I'm sure my work was dismissed at times because some people did not take seriously a focus on food and culture. It did take me four jobs and several years before I finally landed tenure at Millersville University. After I ended one visiting position with no academic job in sight, a colleague suggested that could always go and work for the Hanover Bean Companyâ?|! I think the biggest barriers I faced are common to many scholars: balancing family and job, and finding the time to fulfill a heavy teaching load'four courses per semester in my case'and at the same time to find time to do scholarship. I have been lucky in being able to link my courses with my research and publications. For example, articles I used in my Food and Culture course became the basis of my first book, a volume co-edited with Penny Van Esterik entitled Food and Culture: A Reader (Routledge 1997), and later of a second reader: Food in the USA (Routledge 2002).
JC: Where do you see anthropological studies of food heading, in the future?
CC: I hope that anthropologists will continue to address links between culture, globalization, inequality, and hunger. Anthropology's traditional focus on big questions through a local focus will be critical in studying the effects of the corporate global food system on food access and quality in diverse communities. Because of the centrality of food to human physical well-being and cultural expression, anthropologists must continue to investigate global access to food as a human right.
October 2004
COUNCIL ON NUTRITIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Janet Chrzan, Contributing Editor
Food Insecurity and Obesity Continued
This op ed, written by Ellen Messer and J. Larry Brown, was originally conceptualized as a rejoinder to a conservative think-tank vs. FRAC (Food Research and Action Center) debate on the merits of food-stamp, school lunch, and school breakfast programs, which had been covered in a NY Times article. Updated studies on the paradoxical relationship between hunger and obesity can be found at http://www.frac.org/html/hunger_in_the_us/hunger_index.html
Too Bad, But You Don't Look Hungry
'Too bad, but you don't look hungry,' sums up one set of attacks on federal food programs by the spokesmen of conservative Washington policy groups. They imagine that legitimate hunger comes only in the form of skin-and bones kids, or working folks with no flab. They'd like to see programs like food stamps and subsidized school lunches reach strictly those who look food-deprived and clean their plates. Alas, these criticisms not only are mean-spirited but poorly informed about nutrition in American life.
Hunger and obesity sometimes go together in America. Although the poor generally are no more obese than the rest of us, impoverished people who intermittently have to fill up on hand-outs and other low-cost foods tend to gain weight. Nutrition professionals characterize such disadvantaged households and individuals as 'food insecure,' to contrast their status with the more severe nutritional deficiencies in developing countries. But the effect of an inadequate and unreliable food supply due to poverty often is similar in both the U.S. and Third World.
Mounting scientific evidence shows that hunger impedes children's abilities to learn and parents' capacities to cope. Not only they, but we as a society, pay a high price for their inadequate nutrition.
Critics of federal food programs also are confused about American values. Most Americans believe that no one in a food-rich should go hungry. Access to food is one of the entitlements of a free society with a large food surplus. This principle has been in place since the 1960s, when our legislators and the country as a whole finally grappled with the sickening problems of hunger in the midst of plenty.
Contrary to critics' assertions, federal food and nutrition programs are not welfare programs but a means to help households achieve nutritional health and self-reliance, without the indignity of resorting to soup kitchens. Food stamps, for example, help sustain impoverished families living in areas where jobs pay wages insufficient to cover the costs of minimally decent housing, health care, and diets. School breakfast and lunch programs are the way we make sure that kids coming from stressed homes have enough to eat. Sure, some of this food goes to waste. And for reasons of taste and culture, some kids eat it only begrudgingly. But the point is that as a society we support the principle that every kid has a right to three meals a day.
Federal food programs are an important way we recognize that every child is a national promise. Whether they look obese or skinny, we promise not to let kids from impoverished backgrounds go hungry. Would Americans want to limit school meals because some kids don't look hungry enough? Should a hungry family be denied food stamps if a parent doesn't look thin?
Certainly we now see more overweight people of all ages and economic classes, giving legitimate concern to the problem of obesity in American society. But widespread food insecurity and hunger also exist, and one health 'epidemic' does not cancel out another. Even overweight people are human beings who can be subject to low wages, unemployment ' even hunger. Hunger does not cease to be a human concern, and a person does not cease to be a member of the American community, if a waistline expands due to a hard life. Surely the programs that have helped our nation reduce the severity of hunger should not be cut short because poor people don't look hungry enough.
Dr. Ellen Messer, former Director of the Brown University World Hunger Program, is Visiting Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at The George Washington University and at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science& Policy, Tufts University. Dr. J. Larry Brown, Distinguished Scientist at Brandeis University, directs the National Center on Hunger and Poverty. Messer's article, "The Human Right to Food: Old and New Roles for Anthropologists" is available in Human Rights, Power and Difference: The Scholar as an Activist, edited by C. Nagengast (Society for Applied Anthropology, 2004)
November 2004
Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition
Janet Chrzan, Contributing Editor
Message from SAFN President Barrett Brenton (St. Johns)
The CNA to SAFN Transformation: Restating a 30 Year Tradition
This year we celebrate 30 years as an organization. Given that context it is with great pleasure that I announce that during the spring 2004 elections CNA members approved a ballot question to change our section's name from the Council on Nutritional Anthropology (CNA) to the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN). This change in no way alters the holistic depth, breath and goals of the section that were fully realized in its founding three decades ago. The transformed name does however state our inclusive approach more clearly to the wider community of anthropologists, academics and advocates who share our common interests. I know that after all these years it will take a while to get accustomed to the new acronym, however if you're reading this column or have looked for our webpage on the AAA site you've already noticed the change.
SAFN at AAA 2004 in San Francisco
Before I highlight in brief the wonderful assortment of SAFN-sponsored sessions and events at this year's meetings in San Francisco, I'd first like to congratulate everyone involved in these sessions for a job well done. This year was extremely competitive, with some 30% of the sessions submitted AAA-wide having to be rejected. To the best of my knowledge all of our sessions were accepted. Our two invited and three sponsored sessions and events listed by day and time will include: Culture, Dietary Change, and Food Security in Populations in Transition (Wednesday, 11/17/04, 4:00-5:45 PM); Applied Behavioral Ecology of Young Child Feeding (Thursday, 11/18/04, 4:00-5:45 PM); Food Tourism ' Identity, Social Change and Dietary Colonialism in the Process of 'Doing Research' (Friday, 11/19/04, 10:15 AM-12:00 PM); SAFN General Business Meeting, Wilson Award Presentation, SAFN Distinguished Lecture by Solomon H. Katz, and reception (Friday, 11/19/04: 6:15 -8:30 PM), co-sponsored with the Culture & Agriculture section; Restaurants (Saturday, 11/20/04, 8:00-11:45 AM); and The Biocultural Evolution of Cuisine (Saturday,11/20/04, 1:45-3:30 PM), co-sponsored with the Biological Anthropology Section. I think it is important to point out that these sessions and events continue to reflect an enormous diversity of approaches to the study of food and nutrition, a hallmark of our section. I encourage everyone to attend as many sessions as they can and to help celebrate our 30 years as an organization. Please check our webpage at the AAA website for periodic updates and last minute changes concerning this year's meetings.
SAFN Distinguished Lecture by Solomon H. Katz
It is my honor to announce that the SAFN 2004 Distinguished Lecture will be delivered by Solomon H. Katz (UPENN). The fact that he needs very little in the way of an introduction to most of us is a testament to his decades of research on food and nutrition issues and his involvement with this organization. His monumental work as editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Food and Culture (Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003) was recently highlighted in an interview with Janet Chrzan in the May 2004 issue of AN, 45(5):27. Dr. Katz will be speaking to us about nutriculture and the future of an anthropology of food and nutrition. A reception in his honor will follow the lecture. At this time I want to extend my sincere thanks to the Culture & Agriculture section for co-sponsoring this year's distinguished lecture.
A Plea from Your President
SAFN is at a critical juncture in its history in terms of our membership and journal, Nutritional Anthropology. Well publicized changes in all AAA publications through AnthroSource have had an incredible impact on our budget and ability to continue with our peer-reviewed journal. Please do come to the general business meeting on Friday evening November 19th to discuss the future directions of SAFN. We are continuing to develop some great projects related to nutritional anthropology methods, curriculum, outreach and funding, and need feedback concerning what members want from the organization. I look forward to seeing everyone in San Francisco, but if you are not going to attend please feel free to contact me (brentonb@stjohns.edu) if you would like me to convey your ideas to the membership.
December 2004
Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition
Janet Chrzan, Contributing Editor
Andrea Wiley: Nutritional Anthropologist of the Month for December 2004
Andrea Wiley is an associate professor of anthropology at James Madison University.
I was first attracted to the study of food as an undergraduate in an introductory biological anthropology class taught by Sarah Quandt at University of Pennsylvania. Although I was raised by a nutritionist mother and had always been interested in cooking, it wasn't until it was put into an anthropological context that it became an intellectual (as well as gustatory) passion. A subsequent class on food in anthropology taught by Sol Katz further intrigued me. Sol's work on food and biocultural evolution, especially his work on the adaptive significance of food processing, along with Sidney Mintz's on sugar, were the most significant influences on my own food-related scholarship. My paper for Sol's class was on the relationship between clay consumption in pregnancy and dairying practices and used the HRAF database, which was then on file cards tucked away in dusty cabinets in a small interior room in the university museum. Ultimately this paper was published (Wiley and Katz, Current Anthropology 1998), almost 15 years later, but it reflects a longstanding interest in milk, reproduction, and population variation in diet.
My research took a different turn in graduate school in medical anthropology at UC Berkeley/San Francisco, as I focused on maternal-infant health as an aspect of population adaptation to the high altitude conditions of the remote western Himalaya. But even in this research I was concerned with how diet and workloads during pregnancy affected birth outcome. Diet in Ladakh was particularly intriguing as it was undergoing rapid transition (children refused to eat the traditional tsampa, made from barley flour), profoundly affected by seasonal production and transportation, and characterized by marked dietary monotony for much of the year. I remember my not terribly well-concealed horror at yet another dinner of winter-stored potatoes or turnips or boiled barley, and my mouth fairly watered at the sight of the first tiniest spring green leaf in an otherwise all-too-bland and familiar soup. But food remained in the background for the most part in this project, useful as a set of nutritional conditions that ultimately impacted reproductive health.
After the completion of the Himalayan project, which culminated in publication of my book (An Ecology of High Altitude Infancy: A Biocultural Perspective, Cambridge 2004) I returned to my initial interest in food, and milk in particular. I began working on the relationship between anthropological understandings of population variation in lactase persistence in relation to food and nutrition policies that privilege milk consumption in the United States. I have recently published a paper on this topic in American Anthropologist 106(3), and it is the first of a series of milk-related papers. I am particularly concerned with the relationship between milk and child growth, maturation, and long-term disease outcomes. Milk is a unique food in that it is designed to be consumed during only one life stage; hence its continued consumption has the potential to alter life history characteristics. To this end I am making use of the extensive anthropometric and milk consumption data in the 1999-2000 NHANES and working with a group of students doing local ethnographic work on knowledge and attitudes about milk. I intend to expand this project to India, which produces the most milk of any country, and where there are interesting parallels to the U.S. in terms of the cultural privileging of milk along with biological diversity in lactase persistence.
I am thrilled with our new name, the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN), as it represents a broadening of interest within the field and reflects the florescence of Food Studies as a broader interdisciplinary endeavor. One thing that I always appreciated about CNA was how inclusive and welcoming it is to anthropologists from all subdisciplines, and how it has nurtured biocultural work. Indeed, food is so inherently biocultural that it functions as a natural bridge between the subdisciplines. Despite this, it has always dismayed me how little interest anthropologists seem to have in food. While food is referenced in many types of anthropological work, it most frequently serves to illustrate other theoretical or topical foci. Hopefully with the new configuration of SAFN food will be highlighted as an interesting and valuable topic in its own right.
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