Tag Archives: food culture

University Food Culture (2)

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Reading about the relationships between food categories and social categories I wonder about lunch habits of myself and of this university. Is our Dutch university lunchtime habit a meal? Lunch is, like breakfast and dinner, an indication for a specific type of meal. As Mary Douglas (1972) explains; meals and drinks are social events and they put a frame on the gathering, meals usually restricts alternative occupations. Meals also have an internal structure such as the need for contrasts, like something hot and something cold, or between bland and spicy. If there is only sweet food for example, this is usually not experienced as a meal.

Food taken outside the category of a meal is usually called by its name; have a sandwich or a glass of milk. This signals the line between food as a social category (meal) and food taken for private nourishment (the food item). I am eating my sandwiches with cheese right now, because I will do sports during lunchtime. I usually feel like wanting something warm – soup –  when I go down to the canteen with my colleagues to eat my home brought sandwiches. To have our monthly chairgroup meeting during lunch feels somehow strange.

The meal category is in fact a social category. The type of meal – its internal structure and its external boundaries – says something about work relationships on a continuum of distance versus intimacy. The manifold ways to eat at work, or the lack of one clear pattern with pressure to adhere to signals the individuality of work culture and/or Dutch culture. Eating sandwiches and drinking a glass of milk for lunch hardly contains enough structuring contrasts for it to be called a meal. We even often skip lunch all together. This doesn’t really bother us, only our foreign colleagues.

Touching food and social relations through art

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“Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner” Byron wrote. Food, both solid and liquid, is making the difference between life and death. For all the interest in and appreciation of ‘landscape’ and ‘nature’ we are most intimately connected to nature through the integration of nature in ourselves; our daily intake of food. However, there can be quite a disparity between care for nature and with what care we fill the supermarket basket. The availability of an abundance of food is such a taken for granted fact of life that we know less and less what food actually is.

“The extent to which we take everyday objects for granted is the precise extent to which they govern and inform our lives” Margaret Visser says.

The couch, the fridge, the supermarket and the fork are making us to who we are and simultaneously prevent us from being different. It is artists, among others, who can address that which has become invisible by its omnipresence.

An interesting art project is currently taking place in Smalle Ee, a tiny little place in the northern province of Friesland. Last week I visited Matthew Mazzotta, an artist from the US who is living in the P.A.I.R installation of the Peergroup for two months. Here, he is building his tea house where he will make tea from locally collected plants and from energy which he generates from methane of locally collected manure. Through this he uncovers knowledge about local food foraging and edible plants.

His project is a social intervention. In every aspect of his project he purposely relies on local knowledge and help of the local community. Since the beginning of March many people have become involved in one way or another. Curiosity to that weird thing he is building, helping out such as the ‘rietdekker’ did and -above all – people come to share. Not least through meals. With a few exceptions he had dinner with local people each night. Dinner is, after all, a matter of life and death. See what he is doing through this link, partly in Frisian and partly in English.

University Food Culture

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source: crystalinks.com

Last week I ordered Italian at the new and growing campus lunch food market. What started with some Chinese dishes from a scooter has evolved into a small food market with multiple Chinese and also an Italian warm meal provider and long queue’s at the clock of twelve. The new market is popular, especially among Chinese students but more generally among foreign students. Apparently, a latent market is being tapped into, or how would the business economics department analyse this case.

But I guess it is also a matter of both institutional choices and food culture. The dominance of the Dutch lunch culture revolving around (home brought) sandwiches and milk lacks a true appreciation for the full warm lunch meal. Although university catering is trying to provide a ‘warm option’ to the large amount of foreign students and employees, somehow it stays an additional service rather than a serious business. The rather expensive warm dishes often with ‘exotic’ recipes somehow lack a cultural code which is present in the simplicity of the affordable lunch meals in the new food market.

Gastronomie en eetindustrie

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Deze periode wordt voor het eerst het vak Food Culture and Customs gegeven. Het vak is ontwikkeld voor studenten Food Technology en in het bijzonder voor studenten die binnen deze opleiding gekozen hebben voor de nieuwe specialisatie Gastronomy. De 24 studenten die het vak volgen, komen echter ook van andere studierichtingen zoals Nutrition and Health.

De Master Gastronomy gaat over de voedseltechnologische kant van koken wat tot uitdrukking komt in vakken als ‘Moleculair Gastronomy’; koken op basis van kennis van de chemische transformatie van ingrediënten. Chemisch koken dus, op basis van bijvoorbeeld de verschillende componenten waaruit wijn bestaat, met als doel om verrassend nieuwe of meer verfijnde smaken te creëren.Het vak Food Culture and Customs, bekijkt eten en eetcultuur niet vanuit een technologische maar vanuit een sociologische invalshoek. Het gaat in het vak dus niet om de produkten an sich maar om de betekenis van voedsel in ons dagelijks leven, de sociale, culturele en religieuze functies van ons eten, de ethische aspecten verbonden aan voedsel. Maar ook over voedsel in relatie tot levensstijl en sociale klasse; gastronomie heeft tenslotte ook alles te maken met sociale positie en prestige.

Foto: Bart de Gouw

Gastronomie, in het gastcollege van Onno Kleyn gedefinieerd als ‘food as art’ wordt vaak in contrast gezet met de industrialisatie en massaproduktie van voedsel. Er zijn echter ook bedrijven die proberen het één en het ander te combineren. Hoe? Dat was de vraag voor de studenten tijdens een excursie afgelopen dinsdag naar Marfo in Lelystad. Marfo produceert klant en klare bevroren maaltijden voor o.a. vliegtuigmaatschappijen, bejaardentehuizen en het leger. Marfo combineert de culinaire kennis en gastronomische expertise onder leiding van topchef Pascal Jalhay met hoogwaardige productietechnologie. De studenten bestudeerden de vertaling van gastronomie voor de verschillende ‘markten’, elk groepje een andere markt. Hoe vindt de vertaling plaats, wanneer is nog sprake van gastronomie, voor welke markten lukt dit het beste? Zij presenteren hun resultaten morgen tijdens de les aan Harold Oldenbeuving, adjunct directeur Operations.