Food Studies Commons^™

Food Choice Reform: Shifting American Culture Toward Sustainable Diets, Colleen Mccarthy

Student Theses 2015-Present

Excessive meat consumption is associated with a wide range of environmental problems. Reducing meat consumption has been recognized as one of the most efficient ways to decrease one’s ecological footprint, yet meat consumption is still on the rise and many are not willing to make changes to their diets to include less meat. This paper discusses the problem of America’s continued and rising overconsumption of meat, with the end goal of developing and concluding which strategies are most effective at shifting American culture toward sustainable diets. Chapter 1 gives an overview of why a reduction in meat consumption is necessary …

Breaking Ground On New Agricultural Models: Industrial Agriculture And The Local Food Movement, Elizabeth Nealon

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper discusses and examines the longstanding issues surrounding industrial food production as it currently exists and the various ways that purpose-driven enterprises and environmentally-conscious consumers in the United States have been able to steer food production in a more sustainable direction. Over the course of the technological revolution, people living in metropolitan areas have become so distanced from farms and the processes of food production that many are ignorant of the realities of the food industry. Chapter 1 addresses these issues by presenting quantitative data that lays out a timeline of the evolution of the food and agriculture industry …

The Promise Of Happy Cows: How American Milk Brands Persuade Consumers Regarding Farm Animal Welfare Conditions And How Consumers Respond To Incidents Of Being Misled, Chelsea Newson

Student Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to examine how American dairy companies employ language and imagery in brand communications (marketing, advertising, and public relations) to persuade consumers regarding farm animal welfare (FAW) conditions on supplier farms, and to examine how consumers respond in instances in which conditions on supplier farms are shown to be counter to what is depicted in brand communications. In other words, it examines how the dairy industry communicates its FAW-related values and promises to consumers and investigates consumer tolerance for being misled regarding FAW conditions. This project is thus intended as an exploration of the intersection …

Food Deserts In Urban Areas, Regina Bellian

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

This paper illustrates the issue of food deserts faced by urban areas in three parts. Part one focuses on defining food deserts and what exactly the term denotes as well as who is affected by their present existence socially, physically, and economically. Part two presents research on some of the current policies and programs in place to address the issue of food deserts and discusses a few of the difficulties in implementing them. These approaches are then further analyzed for effectiveness in varying regions. Part three explores a handful of alternative methods to combat this urban issue in order to …

Feeding The Future Meat Doesn’T Come Cheap, Lukas C. Southard

Capstones

Cultured – or as it is referred to by companies innovating the technology clean – meat is expected to be the next innovation to change the way the world gets its animal protein. Meat from animal cells grown in a lab seems like science fiction but it is around the corner from hitting your supermarket shelves. The technology has been developed but how these companies intend on scaling up their production to meet retail demands remains a mystery. So far companies have relied on seed and early stage investment from venture capital companies and private sources to fund research. Predictions …

Food Preferences Among Children At Arcadia Elementary School, Laurel Lee

Community Based Research

My research, conducted from September through November of 2017, showed that the children preferred more processed foods and starches instead of healthier options such as fruits and vegetables, even when healthy options were available. According to the parents/caregivers surveyed, their children prefer to eat processed American meals. Parents/caregivers desired for their children to eat a variety of different foods including fruit, vegetables, proteins, and traditional Hispanic food. This study acknowledges that healthy meal options are available at schools, but there needs to be more research on how to best encourage students to take advantage of these nutritious choices in order …

The Feasibility Of Healthy Corner Stores In Saint Louis, Chancelor Thomas

Theses

We analyze the success of healthy corner store initiatives within the Saint Louis area. We use ARCGIS to map and geospatial analysis understand areas of demand within Saint Louis and food deserts to determine the level of competition between successful healthy corner stores and potential alternatives. We determine that based on the concentration of alternatives that healthy corner stores in Saint Louis are insufficient and other alternative policies should be used to address food insecurity include stricter standards for EBT retailers.

My Palate Hung With Starlight: A Gastrocritical Reading Of Seamus Heaney’S Poetry, Anke Klitzing

Articles

Nobel-prize winning poet Seamus Heaney is celebrated for his rich verses recalling his home in the Northern Irish countryside of County Derry. Yet while the imaginative links to nature in his poetry have already been critically explored, little attention has been paid so far to his rendering of local food and foodways. From ploughing, digging potatoes and butter-churning to picking blackberries, Heaney sketches not only the everyday activities of mid-20th century rural Ireland, but also the social dynamics of community and identity and the socio-cultural symbiosis embedded in those practices. Larger questions of love, life and death also infiltrate the …

Reaching Zero Waste: Determining The Student Perspective On Campus Food Waste., Cassie Anne Parkins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Food waste is an ongoing problem in the complex global food system. College campuses are in a unique position to address food waste through reducing it in their own food systems and by encouraging students to develop behaviors to reduce and divert waste from landfills. In this thesis project I seek to understand how students consider food waste and their attitudes and ideas about reducing it. To this end, I observed student behaviors and waste in University of Louisville’s all-you-care-to-eat dining hall and weighed plate waste there. I conducted informational interviews with University and Aramark employees, along with semi-structured interviews …

Through The Words Of Those Who Have Experienced It: Reading The Whitney Plantation Along Neoslave Narratives, Sarah Payne

Study the South

Recent representations of slavery, however well intentioned, have provoked discussions about who should represent black pain and oppression and what purpose such representations serve. Also evoking such questions are contemporary plantation tours, most of which are white-centered, “moonlight and magnolia” recreations. There have been efforts to represent slavery more accurately at plantations such as Oak Alley, and most notably, the Whitney Plantation, which opened in 2014 in Wallace, Louisiana.

This essay asks how our understanding of the Whitney Plantation, as a representation of slavery, a public history project, and an example of dark tourism, might be affected by reading the …

Healthy Older Adults’ Motivation And Knowledge Related To Food And Meals, Kai Victor Hansen

The Qualitative Report

The population over 60 years old is growing rapidly in Norway and in many other countries, and researchers often focus on elderly people and various diseases. This article examines the healthy elderly who are active in their daily lives to understand their motivation and knowledge about food and meals. The method used was CurroCus® group interviews, or fast focus groups. Nine CurroCus® groups were conducted, lasting for 37 to 56 minutes (average = 45 minutes). Altogether, 76 persons participated, ranging in age from 60 to 87 years; participants were predominantly female (>80%). The article discusses two areas: motivation and …

Beyond Europeanization: The Politics Of Scale And Positionality In Lithuania’S Alternative Food Networks, Renata Blumberg, Diana Mincyte

Publications and Research

This article brings geographical insights to understanding the Europeanization of agri-food politics in new European Union member states. Most literature on agri-food policy and law in the European Union has conceptualized policy making and implementation as an institutional process involving multiple levels of governance. In this perspective, Europeanization is understood as a process through which stakeholders formulate, negotiate, and implement legal principles and procedures across various institutions at different levels of governance. By employing the conceptual tools developed in geographical research, we contribute a spatial and historical dimension to these studies. Our analysis shows how the politics of scale and …

The United Nations Declaration On The Rights Of Peasants And Other People Working In Rural Areas, Marc Edelman, Priscilla Claeys

Publications and Research

In December 2018, the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. UNDROP is the product of 17 years of struggle by La Via Campesina, other transnational agrarian movements and allies that included NGOs, states, UN mandate holders, and academics. It recognises the dignity of rural populations, their contributions to global food production, and their ‘special relationship’ to land, water and nature, as well as their vulnerabilities to eviction, hazardous working conditions and political repression. It reiterates rights protected in other instruments and sets new standards for individual and collective rights …

Growing Local: The Role Of Urban Gardening In Fostering Food Security, Sustainability, And Community, Franklin Wagner, Lindsey Payne

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

The downtown center of Lafayette, Indiana is situated in a food desert where access to healthy, nutritious food can be limited. Urban gardens are an effective way to increase access to healthy alternatives while also providing a number of benefits to the surrounding area, including opportunities for community growth, education, and physical activity. In summer 2016, researchers from Purdue University collaborated with Lafayette’s GrowLocal Urban Gardens Network (GrowLocal) to perform a baseline analysis of the current community gardening initiatives, and explore the possibilities for expansion, development, and future community involvement through urban gardening.

Both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods …

Innovative Collaboration To Further Community Self-Determination, Matthew Currie, Amaha Sellassie

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The built urban environment is the product of more than a century of policy decisions that have both intentionally discriminated and have had the effect of discriminating, against African Americas, immigrants, the work class, low income individuals and other undesirables. While more than fifty years have passed since the passage of civil rights legislation in the United States, individuals in today’s cities are living out our discriminatory legacy.

In Dayton, Ohio, a new movement has risen from the community to disrupt the legacy of de jure and de facto discrimination by the collaborative efforts of the impactive individuals, neighborhood leaders, …

Campus-Based Agriculture: The Future Of Food At Gettysburg College, Bryn K. Werley

Student Publications

This research investigates various methods for producing food on the campus of Gettysburg College in order to improve food sustainability. The transportation of food contributes to the increased use of fossil fuels, which in turn leads to global warming and climate change. By producing a larger portion of its food on-campus, Gettysburg College could reduce the amount of food transported to the school, thereby lessening the College’s environmental impact. Urban farming techniques, hydroponics, aquaponics, and greenhouse-based agriculture are explored as viable methods for achieving this goal. Examples of the use of these techniques on college campuses are drawn from Allegheny …

Swagriculture: A Qualitative Examination Of Women’S Participation In Samoa’S Agriculture Industry As Farmers And Growers, Charlotte Crandall

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study is an examination of how women participate in agriculture in Samoa as farmers and growers, what hardships women encounter and how they overcome these, and the organizations that influence people’s experiences. Censuses have historically undercounted the number of women in agriculture in developing countries, largely due to rigid international definitions of what counts as labor, which overlook cultural nuances, and this study aims to fill this gap in research. Data was collected through nine Talanoa-inspired interviews with women involved with farming or growing in Samoa, and overarching themes were analyzed. The themes have been grouped by the specific …

Having A Disability Increases The Likelihood Of Food Insecurity Despite Federal Programs To Prevent This Hardship, Colleen Heflin, Claire Altman, Laura Rodriguez

Population Health Research Brief Series

In 2016, more than 41 million people living in the United States were food insecure. Food insecurity is more pronounced among individuals with disabilities. Work-limiting disability is associated with food insecurity in multiple ways. This research brief shows how such high rates of food insecurity among the disabled population stems from ineffective national policies the many ways in which disabilities increase risk of food insecurity.

Influence Of Gut Microbiome On Obesity In Western-Style Dietary Practices Versus Other Diets: A Systematic Review, Keely A. Niemeyer, Doris I. Buezo, Loren Landeros, Karina Corral

OSRI Journal of Student Research and Innovation

BACKGROUND: The human gut is home to a microbiome that has a complex relationship to human health. Like the human genome project, microbiome is catching the attention of researchers who seek new methods to combat obesity and negative health outcomes associated with it.

OBJECTIVES: This systematic review aims to distinguish the impact of a Western diet on gut health verses a plant-based diet.

DATA SOURCES: EBSCOHost library databases inclusive of CINAHL plus, ScienceDirect, and PubMed using keywords to better understand the correlation of dietary practices and microbiome balance.

STUDY ELIGIBILITY: Criteria that include diet, current research, and scholarly peer reviewed …

Eating The World, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Humans' appetite for meat is destroying Earth. Mindsets and diets need to change

Eco-News September 2019, Office Of Sustainability, University Of Southern Maine

Eco-News

In this issue:

• Green Cleaning Pilot
• Food Waste Recovery
• Community Garden
• Sustainability Tip

Better Together: Improving Food Security And Nutrition By Linking Market And Food Systems, Martha Cruz Zuinga, Monty L. Lynn, Elly Kaganzi Mwesigwa, Dan Norell, Vidhya Sriram, Emmanuel Tumusiime

Management Sciences

Market-based approaches to food security often increase agricultural productivity and income yet sometimes fail to enhance nutrition. When food security programming combines market and food systems with a specific focus on women and girls, economic and nutrition outcomes benefit. We identify distinctive and shared elements from market and food systems and highlight how they enhance nutrition outcomes when they are combined. We describe food security programming by CARE and World Vision in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, demonstrating nutrition gains in food insecure households.

Commmunity, Ecology, And Modernity: Faunal Analysis Of Skútustaðir In Mývatnssveit, Northern Iceland, Megan Hicks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the archaeofaunal remains from Skútustaðir, a middle to high-status farm in Mývatnssveit, Northern Iceland, to understand the experience of rural communities and their ecologies during Iceland’s transition from regulated colonial exchange to a capitalist economy during the 17^th through 19^th centuries. Archaeofaunal analysis is used to reconstruct changes in the ways that people herded, hunted, and fished, providing insights into how they managed their local environments for subsistence and novel contexts of exchange. In addition to archaeofaunal analysis, primary textual sources are explored to assess how the Skútustaðir household and its rural community mobilized long-term …

Negative Impacts Of The Beef Industry: Lab-Grown Meat, Stephanie Grass

WRIT: Journal of First-Year Writing

The beef industry is harmful to the environment and human health and alternative solutions must be implemented in order to mitigate the effects of climate change. Water and grain are used in agriculture in abundance despite the negative environmental effects it causes. Cattle are the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in the sector, also contributing to climate change. Antibiotics are used in large quantities without regard to potential future consequences. One potential solution for this problem is lab-grown beef, which demands very little from the consumer and would take pressure off the environmental issues the beef industry creates. Lab-grown …

Food Deserts Debunked And Decentered: From Deficit To Relational Mapping For Food Justice In Worcester, Ma, Brenna Robeson

Sustainability and Social Justice

The mapping of food deserts has become a standardized component of food and health policy work concerned with expanding food access. These maps often follow a similar format of spatially identifying where grocery stores are absent in communities, thus suggesting a straightforward problem diagnosis and intervention blueprint. This paper questions the over-emphasis among many food and health policy practitioners on these technically engineered policy stories, specifically for their obstruction of histories of white supremacy and capitalism within the US food system and urban landscapes. A mixed-methods approach is applied to a case study of Worcester, MA which appropriates GIS to …

No.05: Food Security And The Changing Landscape Of Food Retailing In Nanjing, China, Zhenzhong Si, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

■ The expansion of supermarkets and online food markets are changing the complexion of food retailing in Nanjing. At the same time, traditional forms of retail display considerable resilience.

■ Nanjing has low levels of food insecurity overall as measured by the HFIAS and HDDS. The one in five households who are food insecure are primarily low-income and female-centred.

■ Concerns over food safety are a major characteristic of all consumers in Nanjing irrespective of income and food security status.

■ Policy implications include ensuring food access for households with higher levels of food insecurity, promoting trustworthy food sources in …

No.04: Enabling Informal Food Vending In Urban South Africa, Godfrey Tawodzera, Jonathan Crush

Hungry Cities Partnership

■ Food vending is an important component of the South African economy, where it provides employment, income, livelihoods and contributes to the food security of poorer households.

■ Policies towards the informal food sector in most South African cities are restrictive and often punitive, and undermine the critical contributions of informal food vending.

■ To maximize their impacts, informal food vendors need an enabling policy environment with less red tape, better infrastructure, greater financial and other supports, and public recognition of their positive role in the urban food system.

Impact Of Sanitizers On Salmonella Enterica Contamination And Microbial Populations Of Poultry Processing Reuse Water, Andrew Micciche

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As human populations increase in numbers, access to clean, fresh water is becoming increasingly difficult to balance between agricultural and municipal demands. Water scarcity is a limiting factor of food production in many countries, whether they are emerging or established economies. In conventional poultry processing systems, access to water is particularly critical for the maintenance and disinfection of processing areas, as well as in processing operations such as scalding, chilling, and carcass washing. The need for sustainable alternatives to single-use water supplies is becoming increasingly more urgent, and as a result, the implementation of water reuse in poultry processing plants …

What's Cookin'?: An Analysis Of Food As A Method Of Control In The Penal System, Zoe Livengood

Master's Theses

According to Garland (2001), the U.S. correctional system is a reflection of the culture of control that exists in American society. One way the correctional system exerts control is through food. This concept partnered with Foucault’s ideas about the evolution of punishment and the criminal justice system as an institution creates the theoretical foundation for food as a method of control in the correctional system.

Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, this study examined food as a method of control in three southern Mississippi jails in order to understand how food is a contested space for control between jail staff and …

Which Credence Production Attributes Do Consumers Prefer? The Case Of Milk, Emmanouil Petrakis

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The interest of consumers for non-traditional food production attributes like antibiotics free and animal welfare have made consumer preferences more complex. These new attributes, usually non-identifiable by inspection or experience of the product are called credence attributes. The objectives of this study are to analyze consumer preferences for milk production attributes by eliciting the relative importance of these attributes for consumers, and to identify possible sources of heterogeneity related to consumer characteristics and actual purchase data. The research method used to elicit consumer preferences is Paired Comparison Method. Consumers from California and Texas were administered the online survey questionnaire in …