writing about food

Food is loaded.
It is political, cultural, sometimes privileged sometimes not. It speaks of personal memories and sentiments, but also upbringing, attitudes, race, and class. We are judged by what we eat and we judge others by what they eat. Having a food blog is also a loaded thing, and I am still trying to figure out how to navigate it. Here are some things I try to consider.

part 1: food moralism “healthy, clean and natural” – racism and “healthy” food – weight stigma – diet culture – on eating better
part 2: identity & culture authenticity & authority – appropriation – food trends – representation & gender norms
part 3: food is at the intersection of everything
part 4: okay let’s write about food now writing about food – plus a bit on food photography

I first started collecting links and rambling thoughts for this page in 2017 and I’ve been occasionally added bits and pieces since then. In early 2022 I finally got to work trying to organize it so I could actually publish something vaguely coherent. This page is still a work in progress and always will be! I’ve tried to center this page around quotes and resources from people who know far more than I do, though I sometimes give a bit of an introduction for sections depending on what comes to mind. I also know that I am not applying everything I put here to my blog itself (for instance, do I toe the line with cultural appropriation?, do my attempts at food photography promote classism by aspiring to the bright and propped style of the food photography I admire on social media?, etc) and that is also an area I need to think hard about and work on. If you would like to share something you think could be added, definitely let me know!

part 1: food moralism

“healthy, clean and natural”

“[We have] associated delicious food with depraved indulgence. Anything that tastes good has got to be bad for your body, soul or both. […] Marketing departments have seen the power of this and promoted “guilt-free” snacks and treats. This promises an escape from self-recrimination but simply reinforces it by suggesting that eating the “wrong” kinds of foods does and should make you feel guilty.”

“Clean eating and dirty burgers: how food became a matter of morals” by Julian Baggini

When we turn our personal food choices into a public performance complete with moralization, we create a construct by which people are then judged and often shamed and stigmatized for their food choices, that ignores both context and personal choice.  This disproportionately affects the poor, people with health issues, and people from cultures and religions that are considered different than the “mainstream” (by which I mean the culture doing the judging.)  It also affects fat people since our current paradigm of size bigotry suggests that fat bodies are public property and our choices are up for public comment. It can also contribute to disordered eating and eating disorders, the understanding being that genetics “loads the gun” by predisposing some to developing eating disorders, and environment- like one in which food choices are constantly put under a social microscope and it can seem that no choice is ever healthy “enough” – pulls the trigger.

“The Food Morality Thing” by Dances with Fat

[A]ll of those beautiful peculiarities of bodily need and preference get erased by food hierarchies dividing junk from everything else—which are, in truth, sorting mechanisms. They’re a way of categorizing people by class, education, race, and size without saying you’re categorizing them by class, education, race, and size. And they are almost entirely maintained by those with the privileges and preferences that place them at the top of the hierarchy itself. In practice, that means the privileged foods cost the most, take the most time to produce, and have the least calories—regardless of those foods’ taste, actual nutritional value, or cultural significance. And those cheap, convenient snacks labeled “junk” foods are often the only food available for immediate purchase in food deserts, which are largely populated by Black and brown communities.

“There Is No Such Thing as “Junk” Food” by Anne Helen Petersen (Bon Appetit)

Food, nutrition, diet, health and virtue are inextricably linked in much of Western culture. When some foods are described as “healthy” “clean” “natural,” a distinction is created that other food must then be “unhealthy” “dirty” or “processed.” In fact the use of these terms such as “natural” or “clean” has been well-argued to have more to do with how society and mainstream media views these foods than actual intrinsic characteristics.

These terms come with a clear moralistic leaning and suggest individual diet choices reflect a person’s health, self restraint. As such, one of the most normalized ways of describing food in western society involves guilt. It strongly implies exactly how we should be feeling for eating certain foods and suggests eating should involve restraint.

Even when so-called “dirty” food is celebrated, this usually does little to subvert the overall narrative of virtuous-vs-non-virtuous food choices, often due to the connection to guilt. Take for instance how the first sentence of this glowing review on a book of “dirty” food reads ““dirty” evokes guilty pleasures and secret shames.”

This sort of thinking and categorization about food is so ingrained in Western culture it’s hard to escape. I know I’ve fallen into this trap a number of times on the blog – “It’s not too hard to finish [the gougeres] on the first day though; after all, they are literally half, if not more, air and hence easily inhaled. (Or so I excuse myself after eating half the batch.)” I say in a post on gougeres, implying that I should have to confess and repent to assuage my guilt for eating a pile of cheese puffs. I am not religious but wow, Puritanism really did a thing on me there. While this might reflect how I felt, I still shouldn’t subject others to my socially programmed food moralizing.

Perhaps, at minimum, it may be best to avoid the use of these moralizing terms altogether, particularly those involving guilt. I’m not sure about my personal stance on the use of “healthier” as the term is more subjective than we tend to give it credit: it has racial bias in it’s common usage, can be subject to the changing whims of nutritional science (such as reductionism), and very prone to moralistic connotations … but I also know it can be a helpful shorthand descriptor. Perhaps, as often people may have specific dietary concerns, restrictions or preferences, these can be communicated through specific and (slightly) more value-neutral terms such as gluten-free, refined sugar-free, whole grain, etc. Otherwise, maybe we can let food be the food? Try out letting it stand on it’s own.

To end on one of my challenges: making lower sugar and less sweet desserts is one of my goals in this blog due to my personal taste preference for less sweet desserts, as well as diabetes and pre-diabetes concerns in my family. Less sweet is generally a matter of taste, and lower sugar I usually mean in comparison to a typical recipe (the two don’t always go hand in hand.) So far my way of handling this has been the strategy I’ve mentioned above: to describe it in the most neutral terms I can think of – just as “lower sugar” or “less sweet.” However, I don’t know if I manage to explain this as a personal preference without judgement or moralizing … or if the entire project is already flawed as “low sugar” is already pretty much fully sewn into the concept of “restraint” and “less guilt!” hence it may also be moralizing… this area is a work in progress for me!

Further reading

racism and “healthy” food

Individual foods have taken on decades of racist and classist connotations—much of which is naturalized under the rhetoric of health. One of my newsletter readers recently related to me a story of a student asked to fill out a worksheet similar to my childhood one. They classified kale as “healthy.” But collard greens—those, the student marked as “unhealthy.” They’re both varieties of brassica oleracea; they’ve just accumulated different connotations, largely alienated from their actual nutrition.

Now, I know how a policer of the food hierarchy would defend this categorization: collard greens, a staple of soul food, are often prepared with bacon or a ham hock. But listen: Kale is often coated in Caesar dressing, sautéed in generous dollops of olive oil. The real differentiation is rooted in race and class: The food largely associated with bougie white people is “healthy”; the one associated with Black people in the South is “unhealthy.” 

“There Is No Such Thing as “Junk” Food” by Anne Helen Petersen (Bon Appetit)

At the heart of the popular association between Chinese food and adverse reactions to MSG was the assumption that, while MSG was a common food additive, it was more likely to be misused by Chinese cooks. […][T]he idea that Chinese chefs were using “bizarre” quantities of MSG built upon long-held suspicions that Chinese culture and practices were somehow unclean, excessive, or inscrutable. From the late nineteenth century on, rumour and fear-mongering about supposed Chinese drug use, sexual mores, living conditions, and ‘deviant’ practices like serving unsuspecting patrons meat from dogs and cats were frequently invoked to justify everything from limiting Chinese immigration, preventing restaurateurs from employing white women, to limiting Chinese businesses to Chinatowns and other designated areas. While this kind of racial discourse tended to move from the level of official government policy to rumour and popular culture in the post-WWII era, the rapid spread of the Chinese restaurant syndrome – along with similar scares over the safety of barbecued meats in Vancouver’s Chinatown, despite no proven incidence of illness – suggests that such ideas likely continued to inform popular understandings of Chinese culture and practices.

“Revisiting the ‘Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”’ by Ian Mosby

I still see products proudly advertising “NO MSG!” as a sign that the ideas from this part of history are still present.

weight stigma

Studies continue to show that like other marginalized groups, fat people experience discrimination in employment, education, the media, politics, interpersonal relationships, and especially healthcare. Yet, despite the fact that fatphobia in the US has always been intimately connected to other systems of oppression like racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia, those of us engaged in social justice work so often fail to acknowledge that fat is a social justice issue, too […] because unlike other marginalized identities, we think of fat as a “choice,” and, more to the point, we think of fat as a bad choice. This is due in large part to the pervasiveness of several health myths that so often go unquestioned in our culture. Some examples include: (1) we are in the midst of an “obesity” epidemic in the U.S.; (2) people who are “overweight” have higher rates of mortality than people who are “normal weight” or thin; (3) “obesity” causes a host of other diseases and illnesses, many of which are life-threatening; (4) to lose weight, all people need to do is eat less and exercise more; and (5) anyone can lose weight and keep it off if they just try hard enough. To understand how these myths originated and why they remain such deeply held beliefs in our culture requires an understanding of the ways fat has been pathologized and medicalized in the US.

“Fat is a Social Justice Issue, Too” by Laurie Stoll

They always ask me the same questions, over and over, as though I have never addressed them before, as though they aren’t addressed in the book, as though previous generations of fat activists did not address them literally before I was born. They ask anyway, even if they have already heard the answers, because the answers are not the point. Making me defend my humanity is the point. Making me dance for them is the point. The abuse is the point.

“I’m not going to answer the same question about being fat any more” by Lindsy West

Combating fatphobia is thus so much more than a matter of throwing out your scales and adopting intuitive eating—although that’s a good start, and one I myself have found helpful, though the approach is also not without smart critics. Combating fatphobia requires a radical political reckoning with whom we exist in the world for, as bodies: nobody but ourselves. Our bodies are not objects for colonization or comparison or consumption. They ought not be regarded as something to be ranked aesthetically—or otherwise—in the first place. 

“Introducing Unshrinking” by Kate Mann

For pretty much anyone living in North American society, there is, or has been, a lot unlearn here. There are some things we are explicitly taught: that being higher weight is unhealthy, and that weight can be modifiable through lifestyle measures – particularly diet and exercise. It turns out, neither of those are really the case. Weight loss rarely works. People of all weights can be healthy. These beliefs are used to “legitimize” weight stigma as concern for health, but as so well described by Lindy West, is often only a surface justification for a deeper prejudice running in society that needs to be confronted.

For a case study on how strongly anti-fat bias and associations between weight and health are so deeply embedded in North American academia and society at large … in 2013 a massive systematic review was published on the association of BMI weight classification and mortality. From a total of 2.88 million individuals, it was found that individuals that were classified as overweight had lower overall mortality compared to individuals classified as normal weight. The lead author later wrote a follow-up article on the intense blowback she received. “We also found that overweight was associated with slightly but significantly fewer deaths than normal weight. A quick glance at the literature suggested that our findings about overweight were not particularly unusual. […] I had expected some modest interest in our findings, pursued through normal channels of scientific discussion. I had not expected an aggressive campaign that included insults, errors, misinformation, behind-the-scenes gossip and maneuvers, social media posts and even complaints to my employer – many more instances than I have space to describe here. It seemed that some felt that our work should be judged not on its merits but rather on whether its findings supported the goals and objectives of the interlocutors. I saw first-hand the antagonism that can be provoked by inconvenient scientific findings.” It is fascinating that, despite numerous studies which have corroborated this (citations can be found in the two articles above), it is far from common knowledge – I never knew until reading these!

To quote Lindy West, if we do care about everyone’s health, “fight for better healthcare and mental healthcare, the overhaul of our food production and distribution systems, a higher minimum wage and functional social safety net, and the dismantling of fat stigma so that fat people can feel comfortable leaving their homes and moving their bodies and leading full, vibrant public lives.”

Further reading and listening:

diet culture & alternatives

Alternative approaches to weight loss-focused diet culture have emerged; some of the more influential ones include Health at Every Size (HAES), intuitive eating and mindful eating. HAES is weight-neutral in its approach to health, focusing on balanced eating, physical activity and body acceptance sans a focus on weight. Intuitive/mindful eating emphasizes a focus on the experience of eating and internal hunger/fullness cues as a guide as opposed to restrictive guidelines.

HAES and intuitive/mindful eating have been in many ways paradigm-breaking, and have helped to expose limitations of diet culture, but it’s also important to note that they may also not be completely inclusive approaches for everyone. Lucy Aphramor has written extensively on the limitations of these movements. One of the challenges Aphramor identified with intuitive/mindful eating is assuming a universal experience of intuitive appetite and fullness when in fact it can be affected by many things, such as disability, trauma, and neurodiversity. (Ijeoma Oluo wrote a wonderful piece on how her sensation of hunger was affected by past food insecurity and trauma.) HAES employs the slogan “health is not a moral obligation,” meant to free individuals from judgment on lifestyle and weight. Aphramor points out how the phrase ends up continuing to attribute health to an individuals choices and lifestyle instead of recognizing that health is shaped by “structural oppression, disability and climate injustice, and inter-generational trauma” – for which there is a moral imperative that these to be remedied. (Further critique of HAES is here.) She points out how we shouldn’t focus on the narrow scope of behavioural or individual life choices, especially when that obscures the systems and inequities behind poor health. Instead, our focus should be on actual public health issues like poverty, racism and anti-fat bias.

Further reading and listening:

on eating better

The typical arguments, based on anecdotal evidence, were familiar: Poor people can afford to eat healthy if they know how to cook from scratch. Senior citizens are the most vulnerable Canadians when it comes to hunger. Community gardens and kitchens reduce the need for food banks. But what Tarasuk’s research came down to is this: Food security is not a food problem. It’s a money problem. […] “It’s not about a soda tax, or access to food, or better nutrition labelling. Community kitchens don’t solve it. Gardens don’t solve it. There’s arguments for all that stuff. But it’s not going to move the needle on food insecurity,” says Tarasuk. “We just want basic income. That’s it.”

“The Poor Need a Guaranteed Income, Not Our Charity” by Colleen Kimmet

Further reading:

Pollan’s personal journey, and his advice, are aimed at a specific stratum of the American public—one that is steadily eroding—to conceal a sadder problem, which is that the American food system is so deeply flawed that only great upheaval could fix it. No one wants to eat terrible food, or to feed it to their children. It’s that terrible food is so often the cheapest, easiest or fastest food to obtain. Pollan’s exhortations aren’t falling on deaf ears, but I think they are falling on ears who know, already, what they can or can’t do to address the problem.

“Michael Pollan has no answers” by Sonia Saraiya

I worry that Michael Pollan reinforces this highly privileged and apolitical idea and reinforces the belief that some people—in this case thin people—clearly must have seen the light that the rest are blind to. Pollan is a damn good writer and a smart man, which makes The Omnivore’s Dilemma a compelling read. But I can’t stomach where it leads. In a funny way, it makes me crave some corn-based Cheetos.

“Can’t Stomach It: How Michael Pollan et al. Made me want to eat Cheetos” by Julie Guthman

At women’s magazines, we called this dieting; because a man proposed it, it was framed as saving the planet.

“Well, Actually: The Thin White Men Who Rebranded Dieting as “Wellness”” by Virginia Sole-Smith

Some interesting criticism of mainstream “healthy/ethical/good” food writers. Sorry Michael Pollan, you’re an easy target…

 When recipe developers call a recipe “easy” or “affordable,” who is it easy and affordable for? Their target audience seems to be middle class or higher, with ample grocery stores and appliances, while recipes for those who live in a food apartheid are not as mainstream or easy to find. The evidence: Reddit is on the front page of Google search results for “recipes if you live in a food desert.”

“Do accessible recipes exist?” by Anisha Chandra

And with all this in mind, it’s also interesting to think about what makes an accessible recipe – which can mean a lot of things, depending on the perspective:

part 2: identity & culture

authority & authenticity

If BIPOC food writers decide to share our heritage in our work, the outcome is typically molded by external assumptions. We are seldom the gatekeepers, the creative directors, the publishers with the power to assign, shape, and promote the piece. By these others, our food is systematically relegated to a mercurial trend. Or else, our personal narratives are required to justify the food’s value. What’s more, those reminiscences are obliged to embody preconceived notions of our cultures—a performance of ethnicity. There is less interest for us to exist outside broad stereotypes. Our food is sold on conjured emotion rather than granting these dishes the same deferential study we allow “classical” cuisines of Europe, no matter if our traditions stretch back further.

Until very recently, a non-Indian colleague would be lauded as open-minded for embracing even a sliver of Indian cuisine, their endorsement framing the dish as accessible instead of strange. Or, as happens more and more, a non-Indian writer might pluck and repackage elements from the culture and spin them as wellness miracles made palatably exotic and easy to digest. In both cases, the writer stays arm’s-length from the topic, unless they choose otherwise.

The Color of My Skin Is Sometimes Confused With the Scope of My Talent” by Tara O’Brady

[T]he experiences of the immigrant’s Americanized children [are] particularly head scratching. We’re appreciated for our usefulness in giving our foodie friends a window into the off-menu life of our cuisines, but the interest usually stops there. When I tell white Americans about the Maggi-and-margarine sandwiches and cold-cut rice bowls that I used to eat, they tend to wrinkle their noses and wonder aloud why I would reject my grandmother’s incredible, authentic Vietnamese food for such bastardizations. What I don’t tell them is, “It’s because I wanted to be like you.”

“Craving the Other” by Soleil Ho

Further reading:

appropriation – who makes and benefits from what?

It’s not that you can’t cook another culture’s food. It’s the lack of examination of the complex power structure that surrounds that appropriation that’s unsettling. There’s a pervasive lack of respect and deep cultural exploration that often goes hand in hand with cultural appropriation. There’s also an even more pervasive lack of activism in the food world against racial and ethnic discrimination. Let’s not pretend this is just about cooking food. It’s about money, power, agency and advancement. It’s about the blatant usage of intellectual and emotional labor sourced from developing nations in order to create capitalist profit in highly-industrialized nations.

“We’re Having the Wrong Conversation About Food and Cultural Appropriation” by Dakota Kim

But policing the globalization and portrayal of the Global South’s food traditions doesn’t seem like the most effective way to correct cultural appropriation. Some people are canceled, others enter the scene. Some people learn, others remain oblivious. We raise awareness about one thing, bringing some people to stop saying “chai tea latte” or using curry powder, while others move on to “new” trends rooted in long-established traditions. Powerful institutions continue to exploit cheap labor in the Global South, yet this doesn’t come up in dominant conversations as often as something a celebrity wore in a photo shoot or music video. […]

Maybe we need something more radical, or at the very least, something a step further than vague complaints and observations. Calling out people online is one route, but this may feed into cancel culture and yield nothing more than a performative (and in some cases, sincere) apology video. Drawing attention to issues while moving beyond complaints, such as providing historical details and acknowledging the culture of origin, is another idea. And holding people in power accountable, like people who have control over how much workers are paid or how a good is priced, is another idea. And when we are talking, which is what most of us have the capacity to do in our social circles, taking the conversation a little further than outrage.

““Moving beyond outrage about cultural appropriation” by Anisha Chandra

You’ll probably recognize the term cultural appropriation, which perhaps had its heyday in the 2010s? First, I think it’s important to point out that exact definitions of cultural appropriation vary. Some use a more neutral (and very broad) definition “the usage of elements of one culture by another culture.” More often it is defined with more negative connotations such as “taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission” or more narrowly as inherently exploitative actions for the gain of material benefits: “commercialising a culture that is not your own and then mistreating and mishandling it without duly acknowledging, platforming or monetising the culture you’re extracting from.” These latter two definitions, which would encompass only a subset of activities covered by the first neutral definition, are thus often juxtaposed against “cultural appreciation.”

Semantics aside of categorizing whether something is appropriative or not, perhaps the most productive focus is on the impacts – considering who benefits, and who does not, and who has a choice in the matter. Two classic examples are gaining material benefit at another’s expense (knock-off “Indigenous” souvenirs taking livelihoods away from Indigenous artisans and artists) or disrespectful use of culturally significant symbols/traditions (Dia de los Muertos, a day to honour deceased loved ones, used as a Halloween costume), both at the expense of groups that historically and currently face discrimination and marginalization in North America.

I don’t exactly know what I think about cultural appropriation in the context of food! Likely the situations that deserve the most scrutiny are situations where there are clear material benefits – food industry and established media, though this doesn’t preclude social media from the discussion either. And even if cases are not clearly exploitative, it’s worth considering how they may be disrespectful and impact others.

It’s interesting to see what conversations different people are having on the topic, and how these conversations have evolved over the years. Many writers have shown there is certainly room for nuance in these discussions if we give it time. And of course there is a lot of space between only-cooking-food-from-your-roots (which can be a bit reductive and more complicated than it seems – see previous section!) to the i-have-freedom-to-do-whatever-i-want-you-snowflakes-!!! reactionary response to any well-meaning criticism.

Another important question: what exactly comes next after this conversation?

Further reading on appropriation:

[I] no longer believ[e] that recipe developers must stay in their lane. But maybe don’t post a recipe that uses almost a tablespoon of curry powder to make a “curry” that is “better-than-takeout”? I don’t know, just a thought. 

““Moving beyond outrage about cultural appropriation” by Anisha Chandra

And here are some takes specifically on cultural appropriation in food social media spaces:

food trends – and their impacts

[F]oods once eaten by the poor have been co-opted & fetishized by the rich, sometimes to the point that they’re no longer accessible to the people who once relied on them. The lobster on a silver platter, the caviar in a lustrous spoon: These foods only became extravagances once taken out of context & presented as novelties for people who neither lived where they were harvested nor had any role in procuring them, beyond waging war, like the czar, or handing over a fistful of cash; who didn’t have to depend on proximity to furnish their feasts; who could pay the price to have anything shipped from anywhere, in any season, & make the world (mad phrase) their oyster. 

Ligaya Mishin

Sarahlynn Pablo Yeah, it’s like a validation, you know? Like, no. We don’t need outside validation. You should understand that knowledge to cook an oxtail or knowledge to be able to use things like balut or sisig or pig’s head, that is real cultural value. And so I think when people say things like, Well, Filipino is just cheap food, then I kind of counter with like, No, it’s not, because you have to have real knowledge to be able to make these things. Is it easy to make a rib-eye? Yeah, it’s totally easy. Everybody knows how to do it. But, do you know how to make an oxtail? That’s a completely different story.

Soleil Ho This narrative that I think y’all are speaking to right now, actually, within food writing and the food media, where Filipino cuisine is constantly cast as this underdog, as this thing that’s about to hit it big or that’s been unappreciated, right? I think I first read about that sort of sentiment in Food & Wine magazine around the time of that typhoon. And I was like, this is weird, this thing that is happening. But it almost seems like an extension of colonialism, that narrative.

Sarahlynn Pablo and Soleil Ho in “The State of Filipino Cuisine” episode of the Racist Sandwich Podcast

Different foods are assigned different values – for instance, which foods are considered gourmet, or what cuisine is currently “in” or cosmopolitan to eat, as depicted in food media or other media sources. Often an entire “ethnic” cuisine may be deemed in, though that may extend only to a certain subset of popularized dishes. The impacts of food trends can range from uncomfortable feelings to economic benefits to increased prices and reduced access to foods for those who traditionally ate them.

Further reading:

representation & gender norms

As a reader who is well-educated but not white, I have trouble finding spaces to truly represent diverse ways of living in terms of femininity and domesticity. Instead, I find they seem to create a rather constricting “traditional” ideal of what home or family mean. These [examples of popular food bloggers] represent the majority of female food bloggers in that they are in heterosexual marriages, have meaningful white-collar jobs, and are the primary provider for their children.  They juggle their multiple roles as mother, wife, and working woman but still have the privilege to wander through farmer’s markets, eat organic food, and go on family vacations.

“To Bake a Hummingbird Cake: Female Food Blogging and Whiteness” by Alana Dao

As the above quote points out, many prominent food bloggers tend to be more affluent white women. I don’t think it is bad for people to be themselves, of course! But it reflects underlying disparate privilege afforded to different groups. While the lack of gatekeeping compared to traditional food media, such as newspaper columns or magazines, likely makes food blogging more accessible to anyone with an interest, it still requires access to material and cultural privilege in terms of time, internet access, disposable income for ingredients, sometimes photography equipment and props, and production of aspirational blogging content. The more successful and professional the food blog, the more so. As food blogs become an established form of food media, this means that there can still be a bit of a dominant lens through which we see food.

I’m not suggesting we should stop people from blogging when it is a personal endeavour, of course. And I do think food blogs have also been a vehicle for people of underrepresented groups who might be shut out from traditional media to gain more equitable access to an audience. But perhaps we should be cognizant of what makes popular blogs popular (some thoughts in the food photography section, perhaps) and how to support diversity in blogging so the popular blogging community is reflective of society at large.

What I have also been finding interesting, given how women-dominant the blogosphere is, are some analyses regarding how popular food blogs can reflects gender norms from broader society. Or how the expectations placed on women show up again in food blogging – for instance, bloggers demonstrating enjoyment and indulgence in food, may need to accompany this with demonstrations of “self-restraint” and maintaining a “balanced” diet. Unfortunately, what this can also do is reinforce dominant notions of femininity and domesticity back to readers:

Having the capacity to afford a variety of foods, as well as the time to create impressive meals with multiple homemade components, are taken-for-granted aspects of food blogs that normalize a middle-class relationship to foodwork.[…] These food ideals are appealing to many readers, but they inadvertently cast a wide net of failed femininity that includes working-class women who may be uncomfortable around “fancy” food, time-strapped moms who use processed ingredients, wives who do not make every meal “special” for their families, and weight-conscious women who feel unable to successfully balance restriction with indulgence. Put differently, the food femininities exhibited on popular food blogs may work to implicitly shame women who lack the resources to perform foodwork at this level; if cake mix is deplored, then the woman who finds herself with a box in her cupboard may doubt her capacity to care through food.

The persistence of structural gender inequality is rarely, if ever, acknowledged in these blog pages. Male partners and children seem to sit idle while wives and mothers cook delicious meals; any references to these imbalances are obscured, laughed off, or justified on account of the inherent pleasure associated with cooking […] If the joy of cooking provides its own rewards to women, it may seem unreasonable to argue about who is carrying out the labor of daily meals. When foodwork is framed as pleasurable, leisurely, and a matter of choice, any tension surrounding gender inequalities is rendered invisible. In this way, traditional gender roles that situate women as disproportionately responsible for a family’s social reproduction remain unchallenged and further entrenched within a postfeminist context where change is not seen as urgent or even necessary. Repositioning foodwork as a response to one’s preferences and tastes hides the gendered nature of this work.

“The Online Domestic Goddess: An Analysis of Food Blog Femininities” by Alexandra Rodney et al.

I realize now, with my more feminist sensibilities, that there is not anything wrong with enjoying feminine activities. The problem is that in the food blogosphere, unrealistic standards and reinforced patriarchal gender norms are left unchallenged.

“Navigating the Food Blogosphere: Finding a Place for Feminism in a Highly Feminized Blogosphere” by Jenna Hanson

Further reading:

part 3: food is at the intersection of everything

food is at the intersection of everything

“Sean, we, the descendants of these Africans are dying. We are dying of stress and chronic health ailments rooted in diet and quality of food and access. We are in need of economic opportunity and food is such an important gateway for that. We are dying of police bullets and terrorist bullet and many don’t really give a fuck. We are joining our Ancestors faster than we should and as our Rome burns other people’s Rome rises. This is why I’m hot. This is why I cook. This is why I insist on my right of return as the descendant of Charleston’s enslaved and of the rice growers that gave the Lowcountry a story to sell. The South shall rise again, but will we? We need economic development, food justice—and most of all we refuse to be put at the periphery of our narrative when we should remain at its center. I know that you know this is what I’m fighting for sure as BJ and many others have for years.”

“Dear Shawn, We Need to Talk” by Michael Twitty

The above categorizations were pretty terrible attempts at breaking things down into separate topics, but I suspect it’s a lost cause trying to isolate one issue from another. The perception that lifestyle and choice is responsible for health informs moralizing about food, diet culture and weight stigma, all of which are also influenced by gender roles/race/ability/etc. All ties back to marginalization and oppression due to poverty, racism and classism. The concerns about appropriation are much like the concerns of white authority on “ethnic” cuisine, all of which blends into the valuation of different cuisines. These all happen on a backdrop of colonization, exploitative agriculture system, white supremacy and white-washed history, and a growing wealth divide along class and racial lines. These are in discussions of food, and food is everywhere in discussions on these. Some other topics that might be of interest are below.

Colonization

Food sovereignty

White veganism

Za’atar in the Israel-Palestine conflict

part 4: okay let’s write about food now

finally: what about writing about food?

The pupusas here are soft and thick, their curves comfortingly inexact, patted into shape by hand. Patches of bronze testify to crisping on the comal. Break off a corner and the cheese inside oozes and stretches, refusing to let go.⁣

Ligaya Mishin

I think good food writing, the writing which really captures my imagination, doesn’t feel overwrought, vague or cliched. I am not a good food writer, but here is some of what I aspire to.

Ligaya Mishan is one of my favourites – I chanced upon her instagram account one day. She writes simply, but evocatively. Things are not just “are,” but they happen. She gives her food verbs and life; I think the quote at the beginning of this section exemplifies how the pupusas she describes are active participants, not just sitting there, passively waiting to be described. Below, food can be transformative, (notice how much we are put into the scene):

With every bite, you start to speak a complicated language of salt and smoke; lancing sourness; sweet never without its partner, bitter. You breathe garlic.⁣

Ligaya Mishin

I love adjectives, perhaps more than I should. Creative adjectives in food, ones which move beyond cliche, star below, along with an easy conversational style and a way of bringing out the meaningful experience of making and eating a simple(?) semifreddo without being overly contrived.

The fruits that work best are broad and brilliant: tart cherries, yes, but also fleshy nectarines, inky blackberries and late-August plums. Herbs are nice in an ice cream, where you can infuse them within the hot custard base, but think of a semifreddo as a simpler, less fussy cousin to all that. The messiness of ripe fruit, the decadence of something toothsome and cold, combined into a single pan and delivered in one slice as an antidote to whatever ails. It has been a long, hard year. Two of them, actually. Dessert can be easy. Sometimes, it should be.⁣

Hannah Selinger for the Washington Post

And while we’re talking about the actual process of making food – Nigel Slater writes with a cozy and accessible sensibility on cooking. I swear I have never wanted to make a roast chicken, ever, until this article. Now I want to roast a chicken. I even want to make gravy?!

Once the bird and its potatoes are out of the tin, we are left with a deeply savoury, shallow pool of chicken juices and a sticky, almost caramel-like goo of toasted sugars and aromatics. This is a concentrated essence that we can trickle over the meat as it is, or dilute with stock, wine or water to pour over the carved meat on the plate. Sometimes I stir in a glass of white vermouth or a dry and nutty sherry. Tarragon is the only soft-leaved herb I use in the gravy. About 20 large leaves is enough. This is also the only time I would add cream to the pan. Roasting juices, tarragon and cream being very much the Father, Son and Holy Ghost to a chicken.

Nigel Slater for the Guardian

And sometimes, beyond just the food itself, the context is what deserves focus. Sribala Subramanian wrote this lovely piece on Kashmiri pink tea for Atlas Obscura. This is the sort of food writing I find the most impactful – this got me onto an hour long search into the situation in Kashmir, something which I am extremely ignorant of. Food may be universal, but the people, places, history and geopolitical situations behind it are unique. Here is an instance where I felt food was used as a gentle gateway to that.

Salty with a hint of bitterness, pink tea mirrors the current mood in Kashmir. A geopolitical turf war between India, Pakistan, and China has torn the region apart, making it one of the most militarized zones in the world. Following a terrorist attack last year, the Kashmir Valley lost its status as an autonomous region within India and was cut off from the outside world. Life in the valley ground to a halt. Kashmiris will readily admit that in times of uncertainty, they savor quotidian pleasures like tea breaks. Pink tea helps chase away the blues.

[…] More than just a daily beverage, pink tea is a state of mind. 15 years ago, the novelist Salman Rushdie wrote an allegorical tale about love and betrayal in Kashmir. In Shalimar the Clown, Rushdie describes his ancestral land as “a tasty green sweetmeat caught in a giant’s teeth,” whose inhabitants were weary of never-ending war. All they want is azadi. Freedom, in other words, to worship as they please and to “drink salty tea.”

Sribala Subramanian in Atlas Obscura

And if you’re wondering about the other part of food blogging – the sort of tangentially-ish (or not at all!) related anecdotes which precede each recipe. I say go for it! It’s your blog. And read this post:

And for the more literary-inclined:

and briefly, on food photography

[W]hen I think about race and class and gender with food photography, the focus is, to me, that it’s the absence of what is there. So, when I think of what I see online or what people hire me for, it’s usually Western food; it’s usually European. And so, when you do finally see something that’s Indian or Asian of some sort, there are things that are added in order to emphasize its culture. Whereas that doesn’t exist for Italian food or French food or anything like that. […]

My issue with minimalism is that it suggests a kind of privilege: The people who can choose to be minimalist usually aren’t in the position where they’re choosing minimalism because they have to. And so, getting back to food photography and food representation, minimalism in that extent, when you’re showing this great dish of pasta in minimalism, you’re choosing to show only that thing. Whereas people of other socio-economic backgrounds, they’re “minimalist” because they can’t afford more; this is all they have

So, I think food photography can be very classist in that way. A lot of things that are represented seem like they’re coming from middle to upper class homes. There are gluten-free ingredients, vegan things that are probably expensive and not accessible to other people.

Celeste Noche in “What’s so Political about Food Photography?” an episode of the Racist Sandwich Podcast

Listen to the full episode: