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Fat Studies: A Panel Discussion

The CDC has identified obesity as a serious public health problem for both children and adults in the U.S. The causes of obesity are myriad and complex. And the more we learn about the science of how our bodies burn fuel, convert excess fuel to fat, and what that fat can contribute to health problems, the more we challenge old ideas. Calories in = energy used is no longer a simple formula.

The more we learn about the connection between obesity and health, the more we understand that it is not food alone that contributes to the problem. The concept of an “obesity epidemics,” prevalent in public debates, is quite complex not only from a public health point of view, but also in terms of cultural and social issues. How did this discourse develop and how does it influence policy decisions at the local and national level? What is the impact of popular and visual culture? What are the implications from a psychological point of view? What initiatives can be effective in helping individuals to establish a healthy and constructive relation to food and their body image?

Moderated by Fabio Parasecoli, Coordinator of Food Studies, will explore new approaches to these issues.

Panelists include:

 – Lisa Rubin, associate professor of Psychology at the New School for Social Research

 – Leah Sweet assistant professor of Art History at Parsons The New School for Design

 – Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, assistant professor of History and Co-founder, Healthclass2.0

 – Christine C. Caruso, assistant professor at Touro College of Pharmacy.

Sponsored by the Food Studies Program at the New School for Public Engagement in collaboration with in collaboration with SoFAB Institute as a part of the Culinaria Query and Lecture Series

 

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Columns

Fat Studies: Bodies, Culture, Health

by Fabio Parasecoli

from Huffington Post

Why, as a society, do we care so much about the way we look? Why are we often uncomfortable with our reflection in the mirror? Too frequently, what we see does not match what the world around us promotes as acceptable or preferable. It is not only a question of clothing, hairstyles, or accessories. Our body itself frequently bothers us to the point where we end up perceiving it as some external burden imposed on our real self, that inner self that does not succeed in shining through the obtrusive flesh. We try our best to feel in control of our outer image. Enjoying total mastery over the body and its appearance is a powerful fantasy that can influence the way we manage ourselves on a daily basis, with health as our primary goal and often with looks as a secondary but not so irrelevant objective.

The image-obsessed media intensifies the relevance of these concerns, with a barrage of shows, news, books, magazines, and, more recently, even podcasts occupying our waking hours. But who decides what body images are appropriate, successful, and positive? How does mainstream culture adopt these images? Or rather, does mainstream culture actually create them? Why do they have such a strong clutch on our emotional wellbeing?

These elements are frequently not of our making. Popular culture has turned into a powerful repository of pictures, opinions, and customs that influence how we look at ourselves, the way we eat, and the whole economic and social system ensuring that we get the food we need on a daily basis. In fact, visual images at times filter our biological requirements (hunger) and psychological needs (desire). Desires, fantasies, and fears coagulate around us and in our bodies, deeply influencing us as individuals and communities. Moreover, images are never innocent or neutral: They always come entangled in a network of ideas and practices that are provided by our family, by the environment, by the culture in which we are born. The image of our body is never just that: In the eyes of the surrounding beholders, and as a consequence in ours, it is the representation of a man or of a woman, of a cute or of a not-so-cute person, of a strong or a weak individual.

In the U.S. cultural context, being overweight is often interpreted as a sign of lack of will and determination and as the external manifestations of emotional shortcomings. This element has had a profound influence on the way public debates about health and obesity — a contested concept in itself — have been framed, on how research on these issues has been conducted, and often on the policy measures adopted to deal with them. The very use of the expression “obesity epidemics” has been questioned. As I discussed in an earlier post, some critics now point to factors that for political, economic and cultural reasons are often underestimated or outright ignored, such as environmental toxins, pharmaceuticals, and overproduction in contemporary food systems. However, the mainstream discourse overall stigmatizes large bodies as the consequence of misguided personal choices, while interpreting them automatically as unhealthy and undesirable.

These are some the themes that will be examined in a public panel at The New School on Fat Studies, a new field that, in the words of scholars Sondra Solovay and Esther Rothblum, “questions the very questions that surround fatness and fat people.” How are notions of shame and disgust constructed and maintained? What power relations hide behind the very idea that people are expected to diet, even when they are healthy? What dynamics of exclusions are generated? Are there institutions, groups, or industries that gain from this state of affairs?

Whether we realize it or not, we learn discipline about food intakes by participating in a cultural system that gives our bodies meaning and makes them acceptable. They become part of practices and social arrangements that range from public health to nutrition, from visual culture to psychotherapy. Much more than can be covered in a panel discussion, but it is a start…

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Non-Fiction

Chicken Stalk

by Christina Szalinski

The scent of bubbling chicken stock permeates my small old home. I inhale the memories of childhood holidays; my father simmering the leftover turkey carcass the morning after a day of feasting; a heartwarming broth of bones, onions, carrots and vegetable scraps. But I have a different reverence for the chicken simmering in my pot, because I sliced off its head.

I have attempted to make my home a rural patch of Pittsburgh. However, urban farming has proved to be more difficult than my Urban Farm subscription makes it seem. My shady city yard barely manages to produce scrawny herbs and a few stubs of kale. The city dashed my hopes for a few little egg layers by making them illegal on my lot just as I was drawing plans for a coop.

I fantasize about my future backyard: a garden brimming with vegetables, rows of fruit-bearing trees and shrubs, chickens pecking and scratching at the ground, perhaps a goat whose udders are heavy with milk. The earth’s bounty will be visible, audible, and smellable. Abundant fresh food will be a few feet away.

However, a backyard is not requisite for every aspect of hobby-farmer training. During my stint in the city there is plenty to learn; seasonal cooking, cheese making, canning, fermenting, rendering, composting, charcuterie, and most recently, butchering.

The sun streams in through my kitchen window, avoiding my garden, and I stand at the sink looking down at my work. I pick every edible morsel of the chicken’s boiled body so nothing is wasted. I think about the last moments of his free-roaming life and how he came to be in my kitchen.

Whenever possible, I interrogate a hobby-farming coworker, Andy. I search him for bits of experienced hobby-farmer wisdom. What chicken varieties are your best layers? Why do you prefer oxen to draft horses for plowing? Do you have chickens available for meat? Andy eventually invites me to his hobby-farm to help him process chickens.

I drive an hour north of the city to Andy’s home on a wet weekend morning, astonished at the length of his daily commute. His driveway is lined by a fence enclosing geese on the left and goats on the right. Behind the goats is a studio-sized chicken coop. Striped, black, red, white, and iridescent chickens strut freely all over the property, softly murmuring between quick attacks on insects and seeds.

I usually see Andy in blue scrubs, but here he is dressed in a stained white shirt and splotchy denim overalls tucked into rubber boots. Farmer Andy introduces me to his wife then shows me around his ten-acre farm. I breathe in fresh country air laced with scents of mud and fresh cut grass. I study the detailed and practical construction of his large coop. A large rectangle box protrudes from the side of the coop. I lift the hinged roof and a black hen, busy laying an egg, twists her head to peer at me with one round eye.

Andy takes me into a pasture with two giant red oxen. I pretend not to be fearful of the potentially disemboweling long horns while I rub the sleek coat of an ox. I watch the ox curl its smooth tongue into its nostril as it stomps and shakes away flies. We leave the pasture, walk past the untamed sunflower field, and meet the unlucky birds quarantined in an animal carrier.

Deftly, Andy reaches into the cage and grabs a young rooster by the legs, hanging it upside down. He ties orange synthetic bailing twine above its scaly yellow feet and strings it to a white and blue spiral-striped swingset frame. The upside-down bird is remarkably calm and still, its hanging wings resemble a wide W.

Andy holds the chicken’s head with one hand and quickly slices through its neck with a sharp knife. The headless fowl suddenly becomes animated, flapping wildly, spraying blood from the writhing stump all over the grass. Andy repeats the process with two more birds. With one rooster remaining I ask, “Do you mind if I do it?”

Creases form in Andy’s forehead as his eyebrows rise. He expected help with plucking and cleaning the birds, not with butchering. Having never killed a land animal before, I am nervous that I might cause the rooster more pain than necessary. But for the sake of my future farm, I believe this is something I need to learn.

Andy hands me the weapon. The tranquil rooster sees an inverted, lanky, virgin-butcher approaching it with a dagger. I put my left hand around the rooster’s thin neck. His dark red feathers are downy and soft. The bird remains completely motionless despite my contact. The misty rain feels cool on my face and hands.

I position the knife at his neck, take a deep breath, and silently thank him for his life. With full force I slide the knife into his flesh, meeting resistance at the spine. My heart pounds, not wanting him to suffer. I grit my teeth and push the knife though the dense cartilage of his vertebrae. Severing the spine feels like cutting through wet rope.

I let the head fall to the ground and step back from the spewing blood. I expect to feel sadness and grief for having taken an animal’s life. Instead I feel grateful; grateful for the rooster providing food, grateful for Andy giving him a good life, grateful for the opportunity to experience the sacrifice of eating meat.

Once the rooster’s flailing subsides, Andy takes him down and dunks the body in a tub of boiling water on an outdoor propane burner. The drenched bird shrinks instantly as the puffy feathers become heavy and wet. Big raindrops smack my head and shoulders. Andy suggests we complete the process in the kitchen.

We set the birds on the granite island. I glance around the recently built home. There is hardly any furniture or objects, the walls are naked and neutral, and there are no appliances on the countertops. The few objects I notice are intended for the baby on the way. Evidently, Andy and his wife take more interest in their outdoor activities.

I grab a handful of wet feathers and pull. Dark red quills poke out between my fingers. I repeat the motion until the fowl is nearly stripped. Then I tweeze the last stubborn feathers with my thumb and index finger. The bare bird looks nothing like its relatives at the grocery store. It’s lean and covered with dark fuzz from the downy feather shards that won’t wash off.

Andy shows me how to delicately cut around the anus and loosen the entrails. The greenish ribbons of intestine fall from the cavity. The guts reek, not surprisingly, like chicken shit. Andy’s hand disappears in the carcass and comes out with tiny organs. With Andy’s guidance it’s my turn to eviscerate a chicken.

The warmth of the carcass is startling, having always handled meat straight from the refrigerator. The firm folds of intestines come out easily. My fingertips probe to detach the dense and slippery kidneys. I penetrate the thin diaphragm to remove the spongy lungs and almond sized heart. The esophagus, slick and membranous, separates from the body with the force required to unplug a toaster. I rinse the hollow carcass, put it in a bag, and drive home.

Back in the city I roast the rooster and baste him with Amish butter, rosemary, and garlic. I purée the cooked heart, liver and gizzard with cream, shallots and sherry and enjoy the bold and pungent flavor of the pâté on a baguette. I eat my meal slowly, letting each bite linger in my mouth, appreciating the full flavor his life provided. The meat is moist and rich from his diet of sunflower seeds and insects. The leftovers of the chicken become fragrant stock with onions and carrots from farmer friends, Jane and Jeff, and herbs from my garden. I have never felt more connected to my dinner.

 

Christina Szalinski is a science writer for the American Society for Cell Biology and recently earned her Ph.D. in cell biology. She also writes about eating local on her blog, Locavore for Life.  

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Non-Fiction

Savor

by Alex J. Tunney

Past the microwave, past the stove, past the window, past the tall thin bookcase where my mother had her recipe books, and underneath the sky blue countertop were the cabinets where my family kept all the snacks. It was a small collection of chocolate chip cookies, potato chips and crackers. My mother had no problem with me enjoying these snacks; she had bought them for my brother and I, after all. It was me sneaking back for seconds and spoiling my dinner that she was concerned about.

Slowly and stealthily, I would stalk across the tile floor in my socks. Approaching the cabinet on a clear day, the afternoon sunlight beaming through the window would bathe the faux-wood doors as if to bless my consumption. Opening them would cause them to creak slightly, but it was attempting to unwrap the packaging that ended up making the most sound. I hated the tinselly crinkling sound that came with unsealing the bags— or sliding a tray of cookies out of them—both for its unpleasantness and that it might alert my mother to what I was doing.

I remember the red, blue and green bags of potato chips, each color-coded to match up with their flavor, and how these bags boasted such bursts of flavor in each bite. I remember the different types of cookies: some chewy, some crunchy, some lasting longer in milk than others. Each bag of potato chips would disappear in a week. So would the box of crackers. I was more methodical with the cookies, but no less indulgent. I would have three, sometimes four, occasionally five or, every once in a while, six cookies at a time.

I’d usually eat my afternoon snacks while I was watching TV. I enjoyed both activities pretty much the same way: listlessly. A mild tide of flavor would hit my tongue and I’d be lulled into a faint sense of pleasure by the blather of the television as it mixed with the sounds of chewing reverberating in my head. When I was eating, even out of routine and eating something I only partially enjoyed, I felt I existed. I felt that I was there.

The only thing I hated about all the snacks were the crumbs and dust that would stick to my fingers after I was done. I could feel each individual speck resting on my fingertips. The little sensations bothered me. I would immediately wash my hands and wonder what was for dinner later. It was like I had never eaten anything at all.

Of course, it wasn’t just snacks that I indulged on. There were the Saturday morning breakfasts with cheddar cheese omelets with a side of ham or sausage and buttered toast.  There were the dinners of various pastas packed full of meat and cheese. There were the huge holiday meals with sides to sample and deserts to devour. My eyes always overestimated the abilities of my stomach. It all tasted too good not to have right there and then.

 

First, I was on a scale. Then I was on the examination table in my doctor’s office listening to him. The wax paper underneath me crinkled when I shifted around.  He was explaining things to my mother and I. I don’t remember exactly what he said but I’m pretty sure the words cholesterol, above-average and diet were definitely used. There were definitely one or two charts.

Soon, the red labels on the milk cartons were replaced with the purple and blue labels of 2% and skim milk. The freezer slowly filled with Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice and other microwave meals. The chips were baked, the crackers now had vegetables in them and the cookies all but disappeared. The bags and boxes were littered with big starbursts shouting Fat Free! or Zero Cholesterol! The food didn’t taste all that different, but to my prepubescent self, it felt like a punishment.

I realized that food had a weight and it had a price. In the following years, I began to eat less because I saw the hidden numbers in food. These numbers represented the amount of space I took up in the world. They were everywhere: on boxes, on scales, on clothes and on cash registers.

During a summer spent at college, I was determined to spend as little money outside of what the school had given me as I could. Each point a dollar, I limited myself to two small meals a day, mostly sandwiches, salads and yogurts, and I only treated myself to treats like Chinese food, burgers and pizza on weekends when the college was closed. I exercised more times a day than I ate. I began to shed those numbers believing that I was turning myself into who I was underneath those extra pounds. And I was. Yet, when I returned home briefly at the end of that summer, one friend said I looked gaunt.  My mother said I looked like a ghost. Perhaps I had gone just a few numbers too far and had begun to lose myself.

It’s been years since the sneaking, some time since sitting in the doctor’s office and a while since shedding those numbers. I hesitate to say I have it all under control; a better way to describe it is that I have maintained a stasis. Occasionally, I still fall into my old habits.

Sometimes I put too much dressing on my salads. Occasionally, it’s an accident such as when the dressing spills out of the poorly shaped container. Most of the time it’s me trying to mask the taste of all the lettuce. I empty the red or white dressing over the green below like a bizarre downpour over a forest canopy.

Sometimes, I read while eating. It’s hard for me to focus solely on a meal in front of me. My mind will wander and the food alone is not enough to keep my interest. I often find my attention drifting towards a well-crafted piece of writing at the expense of appreciating a well-made meal. If I could chew words, sentences or paragraphs, it would be fine, but I can’t and I miss the diction and the tone of the food itself.

I have continued to develop my relationship with food: how to feel the texture of ingredients against my teeth and resting upon my tongue, to understand the flavors with my taste buds, how to appreciate sweets and how to appreciate spices. I have learned things about my body. I have learned things about other bodies.

I still count calories instead of cookies but now there is no more sneaking— no more shame in appreciating it all, no shame in the occasional indulgence. I am searching, in cabinets, refrigerators, city streets and restaurant menus in pursuit of something new or at least something slightly different from yesterday. When I find it, I savor what is there.

I have also learned to lick my fingers more often.

Alex J. Tunney recently received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Non-Fiction) from The New School. He lives and writes on Long Island.

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Video Archive

Food Studies at The New School with Fabio Parasecoli

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1tcx08ia48&feature=relmfu]

How do your personal food choices influence larger social and political issues? Listen as Fabio Parasecoli, coordinator of Food Studies at The New School, discusses the rise of food studies over the past decade, and its emergence as a truly urban discipline.

THE NEW SCHOOL | http://www.newschool.edu
http://www.newschool.edu/foodstudies

For more information, contact the Food Studies program at foodstudies@newschool.edu

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