Food Studies Commons^™

Flourishing Gardens In Peoples Lives, Ramiro Rocha

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Mesa Verde Gardens has been a great asset in the Watsonville and Pajaro area by providing a unique way for people to live healthier lives. The community gardens have given people an opportunity to reach new standards for themselves. The organic produce being grown out of the seven different gardens in the area has accommodated the gardeners with delicious food for the entire season. In order to grow Mesa verde Gardens, an outreach project was conducted to allow people to familiarize with all seven gardens. These events included fundraisers, door to door outreach, and participation in community gatherings like festivals. …

The Effects Of Auditory And Olfactory Cues On Visual Attention Toward Food Images Under Acute Stress, Reza Moltaji

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Psychological stress has been shown to increase preference for high calorie foods containing high levels of sugar and fat. Since excessive intake of high calorie foods may increase potential risk of obesity and other relevant health issues, relieving psychological stress may help in maintaining a balanced diet and good health status. Although a variety of strategies for relieving psychological stress has been suggested, little attention has been paid to regarding whether such strategies can result in balanced diets. Since music therapy and aromatherapy have proven popular approaches to relieving psychological stress, this thesis aimed at determining whether listening to music …

Alternative Production Practices And The Role Of Consumer Choice: Willingness-To-Pay Analyses, Amanda P. Wecker

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Production choice is often viewed as driven by the resources and methods known to the producers. However, recent discussions focus on the other factors leading to production choice such as consumer preference, measured by factors such as willingness to pay (Tait, Saunders, Guenther, and Rutherford, 2016). This study evaluates the role of diet preference and age in driving a consumer’s willingness to pay for food produced with specific method. The data analyzed are from the 2016 U.S. Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) Consumer survey. A total of 1042 individuals were asked whether they were willing to pay 10% more …

Chefs' Perceptions Of Zero Waste Cooking In Restaurants, Josephine Reardon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine chefs’ perceptions and practices relative to current and potentially future efforts to decrease food waste. Through qualitative inquiry, this research aims to identify food waste reduction practices in Northwest Arkansas restaurants; chef’s perceptions of these practices and zero waste cooking; the impact these practices have on successfully implementing sustainability; and the biggest challenges in reducing food waste in restaurants. The results of this study will assist chefs and restaurant owners by providing guidance on practices easily utilized in restaurants currently.

An interview protocol, with five sections, was conducted with ten chefs at …

How Do Farmers Experience Agroecology In Rural Communities Of Northern Ecuador?, Neil Michael Ayala Ayala

Latin American Studies ETDs

Agroecology, a concept in continuous evolution embraces science, practice and sociopolitical aspects. Its meaning is gaining space of debate and global interest as an alternative for building sustainable food systems and resilient communities, not only from the environmental perspective, but from all the dimensions of sustainability. The Andes region is recognized for its agrodiversity and for its history of agricultural activity; nevertheless, the effects of unsustainable agricultural practices inspired in the principles of the so called “Green Revolution” are evident. Conventional agriculture has decreased the capacity of resilience of the agroecosystems and their associated communities. Agroecology is often perceived as …

Fighting Waste And Feeding People: Exploring The Context Of Campus Food Waste And Student Recovery Efforts, Sarah Becker, Max Stout, Maddie Kuklentz, Savona Cerra

Environment and Sustainability Presentations

Wismer on Wheels is dedicated to our mission of not only reducing food waste on campus, but also reducing food insecurity in our wider community. The work of our team of over 35 student volunteers reflects that dedication. This past year we became the official Food Recovery Network chapter for Ursinus, broadened outreach efforts on- and off-campus, and boosted food waste education, all while recovering unprecedented quantities of food. In this presentation, we celebrate the accomplishments of our dedicated volunteers while exploring deeper questions about food waste on the Ursinus campus. Why are we seeing such massive food recovery numbers …

Food Insecurity Among College Students With And Without Medical Disorders At A University In Appalachia, Laura Mcarthur, Melissa D. Gutschall, Kimberly Fasczewski, Anna Jackson

Journal of Appalachian Health

Objective: This study compared severity of food insecurity, characteristics, and behaviors of college students with and without diagnosed medical disorders.

Design: Data were collected using a cross-sectional online questionnaire. Variables measured were food security status, disorders, coping strategies, and perceived barriers to food access. Descriptive and inferential statistics examined associations and compared groups. Statistical significance was p≤0.05.

Setting: Data were collected at Appalachian State University in North Carolina.

Participants: The sample was 247 food insecure students, of whom 60% were females, 50% 3rd- and 4th-year students, and 75% whites.

Results: Medical disorders were reported by 67.2% of food insecure students, …

Passing Down The Rolling Pin: Lefse, Memory, And A Norwegian-American Identity, Rebecca Garbe

Scandinavian Studies Student Award

This paper explores the intersections between memory and food-making and how they inform a Norwegian-American cultural identity. Based on fieldwork done in June and July of 2019 in Fosston, Minnesota, I use lefse, a Norwegian potato-based flatbread, as a focal point, for analysis. I argue that lefse-making in Fosston acts as a medium through which residents engage with a collective memory of an immigrant heritage. This traditional food-making, I assert, relies on knowledge passed down through and across family lines allowing food-makers and eaters to experience an embodied connection to their cultural past. Investigating my own Norwegian heritage, I draw …

Healthy Foods In Schools: Communicating With Children, Carolina Rodriguez-Ospina

College of Arts and Letters Posters

“Eat well to grow up healthy” is the most memorable message that families transmitted to their children, but what happens with these words of wisdom when the kids have to face the world of school cafeterias? Do they have enough choices to follow these recommendations? Do they want to look for healthy food? These are some questions that can be answered through analyzing meals in school and the narrative related to it. Moreover, some strategies have been created to persuade kids to eat healthily. In the reviewed literature, a lot of sources and procedures are studied to improve choices that …

No.07: Demand: The Forgotten Side Of Informal Economy Policy, Graeme Young

Hungry Cities Partnership

■ Policymakers who seek to support informal economic activity too often rely on supply-side solutions that fail to address the central needs of the urban poor.

■ Efforts should instead focus on the alleviation of poverty to ensure that potential customers have the economic means to buy sufficient food to meet their needs.

■ Governments must prioritize the promotion of adequate formal employment opportunities to ensure that the urban poor have livelihood options beyond informality.

Food Frights: Covid-19 And The Specter Of Hunger, Maggie Dickinson

Publications and Research

Worries over widespread food shortages in the first few weeks of the COVID-19 lockdowns in the United States eclipsed the real hunger crisis on the horizon—one intimately tied to already existing inequalities. In the midst of the pandemic, the specter of hunger is haunting the same people it always has—the poor, the undocumented, low wage workers, the un- and under employed. It is not our supply systems that are breaking down and causing hunger, but our systems for ensuring people can access the food that exists which have been broken for a long time.

Quarantining And Dining, Madeline Flagg

Honors Projects

Quarantining and Dining captures and reflects the many ways in which comfort is provided through food. The project content was collected through food culture research, interviews, and observation and then mediated through Instagram. The Instagram feed has a designed aesthetic architecture and branding system that makes it distinct and identifiable. The Instagram account name can be found @Quarantininganddining. Although the project is rooted in Midwestern food culture, the perspectives provided are from across the United States, as well as from numerous occupations in order to express a diverse range of perspectives. The Instagram account encourages interaction and an exchange of …

Los Comedores Populares Argentinos En Tiempos Del Covid-19: El Rol De Los Comedores Durante La Pandemia: El Sistema Alimentario Y La Acción Del Gobierno Argentino, Katrina Frei-Herrmann

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Durante la pandemia mundial de COVID-19 a principios del 2020, muchos países enfrentaron enormes desafíos desde el punto de vista económico y de salud pública. Argentina tomó las medidas rápidas y drásticas para combatir la propagación del virus, que incluyó un largo período de cuarentena con controles muy estrictos. Esto llevó a un alto costo económico en el cual muchos trabajadores perdieron sus empleos y fuentes de ingresos. Como resultado, un creciente número de personas debieron depender de ayuda de instituciones sociales para sobrevivir o atender sus necesidades básicas como el alimento. Los comedores populares – que han existido desde …

Sin Acceso A Alimentos Seguros, Saludables Y Económicos: El Modelo Agroindustrial Dominante Y Sus Efectos En Los Consumidores En Salta, Argentina / Without Access To Safe, Healthy, And Affordable Food: The Dominant Agroindustrial Model And Its Effects On Consumers In Salta, Argentina, Sara Paulsen

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper analyzes the effects of the hegemonic food system on low income consumers in Salta, Argentina. Results from previous literature indicate a relationship between the dominant agroindustrial model in Argentina and the concentration of power in the food production system. This paper seeks to contextualize the reports of malnutrition in Salta, a province in northwest Argentina, within larger social, cultural, and nutritional trends. To answer the question of how the hegemonic food system affects access to safe, healthy, and affordable food in Salta, I analyzed reports of various health outcomes (including malnutrition, cancer, birth defects, and obesity) and contextualized …

Alimentando A México: Los Movimientos Indígenas Y Agrícolas Contra Las Políticas Neoliberales, Sofia Buchler

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Para analizar la complejidad de la agricultura en México en este momento, es necesario analizar las políticas neoliberales de México. El Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte (TLCAN) marca un punto de inflexión para la privatización de las tierras agrícolas y los cambios de la dieta mexicana. Las políticas de los últimos cuarenta años han destruido la dieta de la milpa en México y la tradición del policultivo. Los cambios en la agricultura han destruido el suelo, y forzado a los pequeños agricultores a abandonar sus tierras y buscar trabajos diferentes. Hay una gran historia de resistencia indígena …

Recipegpt: Generative Pre-Training Based Cooking Recipe Generation And Evaluation System, Helena Huey Chong Lee, Ke Shu, Palakorn Achananuparp, Philips Kokoh Prasetyo, Yue Liu, Ee-Peng Lim, Lav R. Varshney

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Interests in the automatic generation of cooking recipes have been growing steadily over the past few years thanks to a large amount of online cooking recipes. We present RecipeGPT, a novel online recipe generation and evaluation system. The system provides two modes of text generations: (1) instruction generation from given recipe title and ingredients; and (2) ingredient generation from recipe title and cooking instructions. Its back-end text generation module comprises a generative pre-trained language model GPT-2 fine-tuned on a large cooking recipe dataset. Moreover, the recipe evaluation module allows the users to conveniently inspect the quality of the generated recipe …

Mindfulness And Food Selfies: A Naturalistic Investigation Of Healthy Eating, Alishea Hight, Mariah Isbell

Georgia College Student Research Events

Mindfulness is increasingly linked to effective self-regulation including regulation of health behaviors. Eating is an important behavior for health, and mindfulness has been linked to healthier eating choices in self-report, cross-sectional studies, and in laboratory eating paradigms (e.g., Jordan et al., 2014). In contrast, impulsivity is linked to poor self-regulation such as purchasing behavior (Baumeister, 2002), and impulsivity scores have been shown to be related to weight (Price, Lee, & Higgs, 2013). Along these lines, we sought to examine the links between trait mindfulness and impulsivity and eating behaviors. However, instead of examining eating behaviors through global self-report or forced …

Sitcom Tv Food Messages: Who Makes And What Are We Eating?, Elizabeth Gagnon

Scholars Week

I dive into the family sitcom Fuller House and observe how it represents people who cook and what we eat. As a modern-day family sitcom, representation is current to our standards within today’s diets and kitchen routines. With both men and women cooking in the kitchen, healthy food choices are displayed everywhere, depicting nutritional awareness. I consider the food being served and discuss whether they may fit into gender tropes, such as a male protagonist taking pride in his special burgers. I focus on what food is represented, whether from shopping, ordering through an app, or in the kitchen, when …

Donating Safe And Wholesome Food, Brian Nummer, Paula Scott

All Current Publications

Americans dispose of millions of pounds of tons of food, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 11.8 percent of American households, or about 15 million, had difficulty providing enough food for all their family members (Coleman-Jensen et al., 2018). Much of the food disposed into landfills is wholesome and edible. This fact sheet outlines how a potential food donor can get started and get food into the hands of the needy.

From Brooklyn To “Brooklyn” The Cultural Transformations Of Leisure, Pleasure, And Taste, Emily Holloway

Publications and Research

To tell the story of Brooklyn’s complex history in hospitality and cuisine is to tell a story about the tensions of high and low culture, of the mobility of capital and residents, and of the tremendous influence yielded by macroeconomic change. A sleepy bedroom community for the eighteenth and much of the early nineteenth centuries, Brooklyn’s waterfront (both historically and today) is deeply tied to its nineteenth and twentieth-century industrial heritage. The ad hoc economies that supported factory and dock workers, included boardinghouses, saloons, brothels, food carts, and amusement parks and drew a stark contrast to those of factory and …

2020 Iggad Conference Program, Charles Joyner Institute For Gullah And African Diaspora Studies

IGGAD Conference Programs

Program of the 2020 IGGAD Conference: Without Borders: Tracing the Cultural, Archival, and Political African Diaspora.

No.08: Improving The Profitability Of Wet Market Food Vendors In China, Xinxian Qi, Taiyang Zhong, Zhenzhong Si, Xianjin Huang

Hungry Cities Partnership

■ The characteristics of individual vendors and their business operations have a more significant impact on business profits than more general socioeconomic factors. Policy interventions need to prioritize the former.

■ The profits of wet market vendors vary spatially in Nanjing, China. The average profit level in central urban districts is higher than in peri-urban districts.

■ Almost all determinants have more significant impacts on vendor profitability in peri-urban than urban areas. Measures should therefore be taken to improve the profitability of wet market vendors in peri-urban areas.

No.09: Enhancing Food Security Through Urban Agriculture In Kingston, Jamaica, Elizabeth Thomas-Hope, Robert Kinlocke, Therese Ferguson

Hungry Cities Partnership

■ Much focus has been accorded rural agriculture, both in the literature and in practice. Yet urban agriculture is both a viable and necessary area of focus as it pertains to food security in Jamaica.

■ An education and communication strategy is required to ensure that attitudes towards nutrition and poor food choices are changed (within the range of affordability) in efforts to achieve food security.

■ Given the threats posed by climate change, the development of urban agriculture should incorporate not only previously designated sites through zoning for small-scale livestock and produce rearing; it also should incorporate backyard farming/gardening, …

No.06: Gender Inequality And Food Security Policy Responses, Mary Caesar

Hungry Cities Partnership

■ Gender inequality and the legacy of racial discrimination operate alongside poverty and economic inequality to shape the household food security experience in low-income areas in South African cities.

■ In Cape Town, male-headed households are more likely to be food secure than female-headed households, although both experience high levels of severe food insecurity.

■ National food security policy and local government do not recognize the systemic nature of gender inequality and food insecurity; a gap that needs to be addressed.

Analysis Of The Impact Of Central Bank Of Nigeria's Agricultural Intervention Funds On The Economy, E. T. Adamgbe, M. C. Belonwu, E. R. Ochu, I. I. Okafor

Economic and Financial Review

This paper set out to investigate the impact of Central Bank of Nigeria's interventions on the agricultural sector within an economy-wide framework of general equilibrium modelling. The paper adopted a dynamic (recursive), two-sector general equilibrium model of the Nigerian economy with some modifications on the standard model developed by the Centre for Econometric and Applied Research (CEAR) and incorporated the contributions of the CBN's agricultural based interventions as increases in the stock of agricultural capital to have a more robust size of interventions into the agricultural sector. The SAM used for the CGE model analysis was derived from the updated …

Rethinking The Monstrous: Gender, Otherness, And Space In The Cinematic Storytelling Of Arrival And The Shape Of Water, Edward Chamberlain

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Through comparing the Hollywood films Arrival and The Shape of Water, this article explicates the films’ similar portrayals of gender, social collaboration, and monstrosity. Although the mainstream media in the United States has linked the idea of the monstrous to larger global forces, the two films suggest that “the monster” exists much closer to home. Hence, this article makes the case that monstrosity occurs in a variety of formulations such as the actions of national authorities like governmental officials that oppress and endanger a myriad of American citizens as well as newcomers. Further, this article makes the case that …

Google-Truthing To Assess Hot Spots Of Food Retail Change: A Repeat Cross-Sectional Street View Of Food Environments In The Bronx, New York, Nevin Cohen, Michael Chrobok, Olivia Caruso

Publications and Research

Google Street View (GSV) images can be used to “ground-truth” current and historical food retail data from approximately 2007 - when GSV was launched in a few US cities - to the present, facilitating analyses of food environments over time. A review of GSV images of all food retailers listed in a government database of licensed establishments in the Bronx, New York enabled records to be verified, businesses classified, and retail change quantified. The data revealed several trends likely to affect food access and health: increasing overall numbers of food retailers; the growth of dollar stores; and numerous openings, closings, …

Size Matters: The Values Behind Basque Food, Font And Semiotics, Kerri Lesh

BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal

Text production indexes a set of values as semiotics are utilized to market gastronomic products. These values are referenced through the language used, various font styles and sizes, and the food being promoted. The Basque Country has become a “Culinary nation,” world-renowned for its unique culture and gastronomy. This paper looks at how semiotics are used to create value in marketing locally-made wine and cider. A ubiquitously seen Basque font is used for both cider and wine to reference traditional components of Basque culture, while font size on Rioja Alavesa wine labels stresses the distinction between neighboring regions. The use …

Can Food Sovereignty Practice Intersect With Bolivia’S Process Of Decolonizing Its Plurinational State? The Politics Of Decolonizing Food Systems, Karen Crespo Triveño

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This undergraduate thesis seeks to identify the intersectionalities between decolonization policy and food sovereignty practice within the Bolivian plurinational state. It intends to seek whether or not food sovereignty exists within the execution of Decolonization under the readjustment of Bolivia's plurinational constitution. This research also seeks to acknowledge how this discourse plays out within domestic and international markets, land disputes between Andean highland farmers and Amazonian lowland farmers, and the potential reasonings for those tensions.

Taco Tuesday Anyone? Understanding Student Demand And Knowledge Of Local Seafood., Jamie A. Picardy, Kyle Foley, Eden Martin, Tiia Kandflick

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

The Gulf of Maine fishing industry continues to be a major economic driver throughout the region, integrating culture, history, and development across working waterfronts spanning thousands of miles from Cape Cod Massachusetts in the south to Nova Scotia Canada in the north. Local seafood harvesting and consumption attract visitors from around the world to enjoy the abundance of lobster, clams, mussels and oysters from the Gulf of Maine. What tourists and residents alike may not understand is the opportunity of other species that are plentiful, economical and delicious. Coupled with the local food movement, underutilized seafood presents additional potential especially …