The Political Language of Food 9781498505567, 9781498505550

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The Political Language of Food

The Political Language of Food Edited by Samuel Boerboom

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2015 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The political language of food / edited by Samuel Boerboom. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4985-0555-0 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4985-0556-7 (electronic) 1. Food--Terminology--Political aspects. 2. Food--Moral and ethical aspects. 3. Food industry and trade--Terminology--Political aspects. 4. Food industry and trade--Moral and ethical aspects. I. Boerboom, Samuel, editor of compilation. TX349.P66 2015 338.4'7664--dc23 2015005824 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction: How Does Food Language Function Politically? Samuel Boerboom Tracing the “Back to the Land” Trope: Self-Sufficiency, Counterculture, and Community Jessica M. Prody 2 Végétariens Radicaux: John Oswald and the Trope of Sympathy in Revolutionary Paris Justin Killian 3 The Revolution Will Not Be (Food) Reviewed: Politics of Agitation and Control of Occupy Kitchen Amy Pason 4 Exoticizing Poverty in Bizarre Foods America Casey Ryan Kelly 5 Pungent Yet Problematic: The Class-Based Framing of Ramps in the New York Times and the Charleston Gazette Melissa Boehm 6 Constructing Taste and Waste as Habitus: Food and Matters of Access and In/Security Leda Cooks 7 Tying the Knot: How Industry and Animal Advocacy Organizations Market Language as Humane Joseph L. Abisaid 8 Corn Allergy: Public Policy, Private Devastation Kathy Brady 9 Family Farms with Happy Cows: A Narrative Analysis of Horizon Organic Dairy Packaging Labels Jennifer L. Adams 10 Chipotle Mexican Grill’s Meatwashing Propaganda: Corporate-Speak Hiding Suffering of “Commodity” Animals Ellen W. Gorsevski

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11 Corporate Colonization in the Market: Discursive Closures and the Greenwashing of Food Discourse Megan A. Koch and Cristin A. Compton 12 Mistaken Consensus and the Body-as-Machine Analogy Samuel Boerboom Index About the Contributors

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Introduction How Does Food Language Function Politically? Samuel Boerboom

In his landmark essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell eloquently linked rhetorical style with politics and power. Orwell noted, “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. . . . Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” Later in the essay he observed, “When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning.” 1 Orwell’s concern was with the instrumental power of language, how it preserves and serves the orthodoxy of the powerful. The idioms (“the existing dialect”) that provide context for knowing and talking about food—its production, its use and exchange value, its transportation circuits as a commodity, the rituals of its consumption—are, like the language Orwell describes, deeply political and often difficult to make intelligible to diverse audiences. To use Orwell’s formulation: the political language of food is, because it is abstract, sufficiently political and is marked, as all things political inevitably are, by opaque, misleading language. The following collection of essays on the political language of food features two key emphases. The first emphasis addresses why the language used in the production, marketing, selling, and consumption of food is inherently political. Due to the often strategic vagueness and indeterminacy of food language, it is rarely neutral and tends to serve the interests of powerful entities. Following Bakhtin, 2 food language is marked by heteroglossia, by conflicting discourses that challenge meaning. As an example, food communication scholars have been critiquing the notion of “greenwashing” as it pertains to how industries encourage the consumption of consumer goods sutured to positive, yet misleading, environmental messages. Following such scholarship this book aims to deepen and expand the investigation of rhetorically deceptive practices (including, but not limited to, greenwashing) by critically examining the vii

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language of food. Specifically, this book critiques the language attending food discourses and examines how such language—including idioms, tropes, euphemisms, neologisms, etc.—serves to both mislead and obscure relationships between the production, marketing, selling, and consumption of food and the resulting community, health, labor, and environmental impacts. The second emphasis of this book is on textual and rhetorical production of food language. Employing diverse methodologies this book’s contributors examine on a micro-level the textual elements of food-based language itself. Put colloquially: this book, like an investigative reporter on assignment in a food processing plant, examines how the sausage is made. The emphasis on the production of food language—the strategic use of invented terms, metaphors, and euphemisms—makes this book’s subject timely and important. There is not a subfield of Communication Studies for which the subject of food is irrelevant. Indeed the protean subject of food is deeply intra-disciplinary within the communication arts and sciences. That communication scholars of all affiliations and theoretical approaches are taking up food scholarship should tell us two things: first, that as a topic of inquiry, food is not so easily mapped and theorized as might first appear; and two, food’s status within and without the communication disciplines would suggest it already has staggering effects on people—both those who labor to produce food and for those whose role is primarily consumer—communities, the physical environment and on social and class relations. Two recent volumes on food and communication have helped shape the objective of this one. First, Janet Cramer, Carlnita Greene, and Lynn Walter’s volume Food as Communication: Communication as Food (2011) illustrated beautifully how food practices are multitudinously communicative via social identity and gender construction, (inter)cultural performances, the reflection of social and cultural values and through subjective relationships to the natural world. In short, these essays show how food is linked to ritual and culture. The second volume which bears impact on this one is Joshua Frye and Michael Bruner’s The Rhetoric of Food: Discourse, Materiality, and Power (2012), which shows how material practices of food are imbricated with ideological concerns such as globalization, (neo)liberalism, and governmental policy. This book expertly identifies the larger social, cultural, and political contexts in which foodderived discourses take place and maps the interplay between language and power. This book builds on the two mentioned above by extending the discussions in Cramer, Greene, and Walter’s book on ritual and culture to examine how these practices might be influenced by (or provide an explanation for) the political character of food language. Additionally, this book aims to build on Frye and Bruner’s collection of essays on the role of

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context and power in food rhetoric by concentrating on how the form of the political language of food—its constitutive elements—helps to account for its context-specific effect. By focusing on the form and structure of the political language of food, this book attempts to provide a perspective by which one can read existing theories about food communication as well as to provide a model for how to construct new theories and understandings about the myriad ways food impacts understanding. Additionally, each of the contributors to this book aims to develop critical reading strategies for scrutinizing food language. Each of this book’s contributors addresses a larger food-based controversy—from vegetarianism and corporate propaganda, to food-based social movements and obesity research—by examining and critiquing the language of food as the basis for their research methodology. To best understand and develop the language of food, scholars must first look to the textual and rhetorical elements of such language. In so doing this book provides examples of how to conduct critiques on food language itself. At its best food can be symbolic of healthy bodies, healthy workers, healthy communities, and healthy enterprise. Too often the language used to position food in its relation to the above elements is deceptive and self-serving, privileging dominant interests—industry instead of workers, upper-class instead of working class, producer instead of consumer—over the interests of others. This book illustrates in a practical and accessible way why a language-based examination of food best affords readers the opportunities to see connections to larger socio-cultural issues like the ecology of one’s physical environment and the economy of communities, both local and global. The chapters that follow are divided into four different sections. Part I, entitled “The Language of Food-Based Social Movements,” begins with Jessica Prody’s essay on the history of “back to the land” movements. In these movements Prody identifies a common trope of an individual overcoming obstacles, which masks crucial dimensions of community building inherent in the larger movement. This chapter illustrates that exploring the evolution of the back-to-the-land trope also illuminates an evolving relationship between people and food production and consumption. Prody demonstrates how the rhetoric of movement memoirs showed how the initial movement, based on self-sufficiency and a desire to control one’s labor and space shifted to a movement driven by desire to form a counter-culture. Thus, the trope, guiding adherents’ perceptions of their role within the larger movement, proved to privilege certain private dimensions of farming one’s own food, while nearly erasing more communitarian concerns. Justin Killian’s provocative research on an unlikely vegetarian in John Oswald provides the basis for Chapter 2. Killian reveals the paradox present in the rhetoric of Oswald, a militant vegetarian, who promoted both vegetarianism as a kinder lifestyle and brute violence and warfare

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against humankind as a revolutionary tool. Developing the trope of sympathy, Killian reveals the ironic play of signification behind that rhetorical device, suggesting that some in eighteenth century France touted meat-free diets as a way to overturn class inequality while still remaining committed to human bloodshed as a means of overturning the same inequality. Ultimately the trope proved successful at theorizing particular model of democratic movement linked to, or animated by, meat-free dietary practices. In the 3rd chapter Amy Pason links news and social media perception of the Occupy Movement to its food practices. In her chapter Pason explains how the shared language of food provided a framework legitimizing the movement for people identifying with eating “activist food.” Pason notes that by reducing the Occupy phenomenon to the quality—whether haute cuisine or scavenged food—of what activists were eating depoliticized and obscured the message of resisting corporate food systems. Part II of the book, “Food Language and Social Class” features chapters interrogating how language both complicates and reinforces social divisions. In Chapter 4 Casey Ryan Kelly critiques the show Bizarre Foods America for offering audiences the vicarious experience of rediscovering exotic and risky cuisine typically enjoyed by marginalized communities. Kelly shows that televisual celebrations of pluralism, while perhaps wellintentioned, are nonetheless exploitive and serve to not only depoliticize the colonial legacies of regionally-specific American cuisine, but serve also to reinforce the oppression of those communities by viewers seeking the exotic poverty experience via cuisine. In Chapter 5 Melissa Boehm performs a content analysis of two different newspapers’ coverage of Appalachian ramps, a type of onion or wild leek. Ramps have become exotically popular among some elite diners and celebrity chefs. Boehm’s research investigates the difference in ways an urban, cosmopolitan newspaper like the New York Times frames ramps compared to the ways a regionally-based newspaper in the Charleston Gazette, located in the middle of economically-depressed locales where ramps grow wild does. Boehm uncovers clear class markers in the way the New York Times describes Appalachian people and their rituals for harvesting ramps. In Chapter 6 Leda Cooks looks at the ways taste and waste in the United States are connected in matters of lifestyle in the formations of identities. Exploring the class-based symbolic construction of taste and waste, Cooks illustrates how the two terms are culturally deployed and reflective of cultural capital. Noting that taste cannot be defined apart from the bodies that perform it, Cooks explores how the two concepts of taste and waste, seeming opposites, nonetheless can be employed in discourse that others economically disadvantaged persons. The third section of the book titled “The Language of Food Labeling” seeks to address the mystifying elements of label discourse that make gloss over animal suffering or foster deliberate vagueness in the name of

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transparency. To the former point, Joseph Abisaid in chapter 7 explores the construction of the term “humane” as it relates to compassionate consideration of animal welfare in the raising of non-human animals for human consumption. Showing that labels boasting consideration for animal welfare are deliberately misleading and ethically problematic, Abisaid asks whether it is more beneficial for advocates to focus on the supply side of the food system or the demand side. In chapter 8 Kathy Brady broaches a topic that is sorely under-represented in food research: corn allergies. Corn allergics suffer unduly from food labels that legally contribute little useful information regarding the staggering presence of corn and corn by-products in food and food packaging. As Brady argues because corn is not one of the “Big Eight” allergens that by federal law must be declared on packaging, it has the frightening effect of stripping labeling language of any or all usefulness for the increasing number of individuals identifying as corn allergic. Jennifer Adams in Chapter 9 details how organic food labels frequently draw upon narratives of nuclear families running sustainable farms according to mythic traditional values. Adams notes how the text and images appearing on food packaging are carefully constructed rhetorical artifacts that reinforce a vision that the food contained inside meets ethical criteria. Stories of “happy cows” and happy farming families fit into the deceptive rhetorical practice of greenwashing, which other contributors to this book also address. The final section of the book is titled “Critiques of Corporate/Bureaucratic Language.” In Chapter 10 Ellen Gorsevski introduces the term “meatwashing” to describe how companies obscure the sourcing of, or proportion of, conventionally grown meats within their supply chain. Gorsevski notes that all a restaurant chain needs to do is source one gram more of meat from a so-called natural meat supplier than their competitors and they can claim to sell more natural meats than anyone. Using the example of Chipotle, who maintains a well-marketed brand of providing naturally-sourced meats, Gorsevski explores how a restaurant chain can exploit their brand halo while sourcing more and more meats that directly counter their brand identity. In Chapter 11 Megan Koch and Cristin Compton employ interviews and autoethnography to explore the extent to which greenwashing discourses come to influence employees of a natural market. The authors explore how retail spaces promote an atmosphere that cultivates capital—in both direct marketing and in employee training—from the positively valued social discourse of “green.” Finally, in Chapter 12 I address the body-as-machine analogy that has been the basis for the explanation given by public health bureaucracies as to why consumers gain weight and develop heart disease. This chapter explores how public health researchers and marketers employ analogical reasoning in response to, or in order to exploit, epistemic uncertainty regarding the sophistication and functionality of the human metabolic system. Ex-

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ploring the research of investigative journalist Gary Taubes, I note that citizens cannot be expected to regulate their health outcomes based on explicitly political dietary recommendations driven by industryendorsed, inaccurate analogies of how our metabolism works. NOTES 1. George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” (1946) https:// www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm. 2. M.M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981).

ONE Tracing the “Back to the Land” Trope Self-Sufficiency, Counterculture, and Community Jessica M. Prody

Going “back-to-the-land” may be the most American of social movements. Founding father Thomas Jefferson saw an agrarian ethic as central to a working democracy, arguing that farmers were the “most valuable citizens.” 1 He contended that feeding, housing, and clothing oneself taught self-sufficiency and produced investment in one’s place that encouraged patriotism and democratic participation. The prominence of Jeffersonian agrarian ethics has ebbed and flowed throughout U.S. history, gaining significance in eras in which individuals returned to the land to find virtues urban and suburban society lacked. What individuals sought from the land has changed throughout time, but no other movement has emerged and reemerged as often as the back-to-the-land movement. In spite of its frequent presence, the movement and its various waves have received little direct attention from scholars. Brown’s historical tracing of going back-to-the-land is one of the few academic studies of the movement’s evolution. 2 Studies that do examine the back-to-the-land movement typically do so in larger contexts, writing about back-to-thelanders in the context of 1960s and 1970s hippies’ communes 3 or as part of broader agricultural transformations. 4 The back-to-the-land movement is worthy of more extensive rhetorical study. Back-to-the-landers have produced a multitude of memoirs, letters, newsletters, periodicals, and how-to-guides that reflect the historical eras of their time and have shaped social thought regarding food, community, the economy, agricul1

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ture, and the environment. Within this movement everyday acts become political statements, and individuals construct lives outside the bounds of traditional social institutions. Part of the reason this movement has not been given much attention is because it is not traditionally political. Back-to-the-landers cannot be tied to a singular position on the political spectrum; 5 nor do they spend their time petitioning or protesting existing political structures. 6 Going backto-the-land means stepping out of traditional society, sidestepping the political forces so many other movements protest against or attempt to use to their advantage. Each era of back-to-the-landers has been made up of individuals participating in the movement for a variety of political and personal reasons. In lieu of shared political positions or movement structure, back-to-the-landers have been united by practices—most central to these practices, arguably, is being able to feed oneself and family from what one can produce working the land. Food is the most basic concern of back-to-the-landers. Thus, exploring the evolution of the back-to-theland trope can also illuminate an evolving relationship between people and food production and consumption. I examine three major back-to-the-land movements that occurred since the turn of the twentieth century. The first back-to-the-land movement I explore began in the early twentieth century and peaked just before World War I. The second took place in the 1960s and 1970s. The third iteration of the movement began at the turn of the twenty-first century and continues presently. This essay explores what is contained in the rhetorical trope “back-to-land” during these three eras, focusing on what remains consistent in its use and how its meaning has evolved. Relying on the approach of Wrage who advocated exploring the social history of ideas in rhetoric, I analyze the evolution of going back-to-theland through three texts: Ten Acres Enough, Living the Good Life, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. In each of its eras, the back-to-the-land movement was comprised of individuals seeking to escape particular social stressors and driven by broad political objectives. I argue the iterations of going back-to-the-land were products of their time, and while some themes have carried through the eras of the movement (such as self-sufficiency and the virtues taught by labor), the underlying social anxiety, tone, politics, and scope of movement practices are distinct. The meaning of going back-to-the-land has not been consistent. It has evolved from a trope that signaled a desire for self-reliance and control over one’s place, to one that denoted a counter-culture, to one that signified the reclaiming of local food culture and the building of community. This essay explores how broad cultural shifts contributed to these rhetorical shifts. I begin with a brief discussion of methodology before turning to my analysis.

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TRACING “BACK-TO-THE-LAND” AS A SOCIAL IDEA In his 1947 essay, “Public Address: A Study in Social and Intellectual History,” Wrage encouraged scholars of public address to break from the mold of studying the great orator, to instead study the text and the role of rhetoric in the evolution of social thought. Wrage encouraged students of public address to “contribute in substantial ways to the history of ideas.” 7 For Wrage, studying rhetoric involved the study of “transmission.” He was concerned with exploring “[t]he reach of an idea, its viability within a setting of time and place, and its modifications [. . .] expressed in a vast quantity of documentary sources.” 8 Because, Wrage argued, rhetoric is created with the explicit intention of appealing to particular audiences, and audiences are made up of society’s members, rhetoric is uniquely positioned to give a sense of the social mindset of audiences and their eras. Wrage encouraged scholars to examine rhetoric alongside history and alongside the evolution of social thought, seeking in a text the social patterns of ideas that the text taps into, how it uses those ideas, how it alters them, and/or how it speaks against them. Rosteck’s rereading of Wrage argued that Wrage offered a way to “read together text and history.” 9 Wrage’s complex definition of “ideas” allowed a critic to read culture as text. The culture one reads by examining a text is multiple. One can learn about the culture in which the text is produced, the culture in a particular historical moment in which the text has resonance, and/or the culture that develops in part because of the text’s influence. Rosteck explained, “Central to the vision Wrage outlines is a much more complex and rich functional notion of ‘idea’—not as transcendent idealist concept—but as something materialized in the transmission of discourse and shaped and framed in this transmission.” 10 Ideas, it would appear, are culture “realized—materialized—in practice.” 11 From this perspective, analyzing rhetoric allows one to “read” how ideas circulate within a culture and across history—how rhetoric shapes cultural thought, how social evolution shapes social ideas, how rhetorical themes emerge and reemerge at different points in history, and how new ideas get attached to existing tropes. This study engages Wrage’s approach as reread by Rosteck, assuming that texts written and heavily circulated during particular historical eras can tell us something about the social thought in particular moments in time and throughout history. The questions I ask include: (1) how have the ideas of going back-to-the-land changed; (2) what has remained consistent; and (3) what in the rhetoric has been lost and rediscovered? I identify what going back-to-the-land meant in each of the movement’s historical eras, but I also study the evolution of the ideas of back-to-thelanders. The three memoirs in this analysis are examined as rhetorical texts that are representations of social thought in particular eras of the movement. Memoirs are the most prominent genre of back-to-the-land

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writing. They were, and continue to be, the primary way through which back-to-the-landers justified their actions to those who had not gone back-to-the-land, detailed their new lives, lauded the virtues of their lifestyle, and presented themselves as models for others to follow. Tracing the movement through memoirs allows me to analyze the evolution of the back-to-the-land trope and understand how the trope has been shaped by culture and shaped social thought. The texts I have chosen to analyze are: Ten Acres Enough by Edmund Morris, Living the Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. They are representative of backto-the-land rhetoric in particular eras, as demonstrated by republications, circulation and citations in other back-to-the-land sources. In addition, historians have identified them as influential texts. Brown identified Ten Acres Enough as the “prototype” of early back-to-the-land books. Originally published in 1864, “it had gone through twenty-five editions by the 1880s and was reprinted thereafter in 1890, 1905, 1912, 1916, and 1928,” and had additional reprints in 1996, 2004, and 2008. 12 Brown also identified Living the Good Life as having similar longevity and influence to that of Ten Acres Enough. Of the Nearings, Brown explained, “Helen and Scott Nearing were the darlings of the back-to-the-land press.” 13 Living the Good Life was first published in 1954 and then again in the 1970s. Agnew explained the book “reigned as the bible of the back-to-the-land movement” 14 in the 1960s and 1970s. Ten Acres Enough and Living the Good Life have been kept alive by contemporary back-to-the-landers who have looked to these texts, and the authors that wrote them, for guidance and encouragement. Ten Acres Enough was cited by the Nearings, had sections reprinted in Mother Earth News, and is still reviewed by contemporary readers on amazon.com. 15 Living the Good Life also continues to resonate with contemporary readers, who write reviews on amazon.com lauding its advice as “timeless” and full of “good lessons we would do well to heed today.” Although Kingsolver’s 2007 text has yet to achieve the iconic status the earlier back-to-the-land texts have, Brown cited the best selling text as a notable example of the new back-to-the-land memoirs making their way to book shelves today. 16 As one of the early texts of this new wave of the movement, with its folksy, how-to style, and with Kingsolver’s mass appeal as a popular contemporary fiction and non-fiction author, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle has the potential to achieve the status the Morris’s and Nearings’ texts have in the past. Collectively, analyzing these texts provides snapshots into particular eras of the back-to-the-land movement and the specific rhetoric of those times, but this analysis also allows for a more complete picture of back to the land rhetoric to emerge, as one can see how ideas moved through the eras, remaining present, ebbing and flowing, or developing anew as back-to-the-landers shaped their movement and their rhetoric in response to particular social contexts.

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Ten Acres Enough Morris originally published Ten Acres Enough in 1864, after leaving the city of Philadelphia to farm ten acres of New Jersey farmland in 1856. Morris’s move was a pragmatic choice, rather than a romantic one. The move was a decision he and his wife came to after weathering the financial panic of 1837. Land, they concluded, was a more stable investment than business, and farming a more recession proof occupation than publishing. 17 The “boom-bust cycle of industrial capitalism” was the primary stimulus for individuals of this era to leave the city for rural life, as they sought economic stability from the land. 18 As Brown noted, individuals went back to the land for a variety of purposes and with a variety of politics, 19 but Morris’s rhetoric is that which gets carried out of this era and into those that follow it. This is not to say that other rhetoric of the time was not influential, certainly the utopian rhetoric of the anarchist and socialist communes has found voice in more contemporary fringes of back-to-the-land rhetoric, 20 but Morris’s self-reliance, and message of living more securely in an insecure world is the rhetoric of the early back-tothe-land movement that found broad appeal throughout its historical circulation. Finding Security by Going Back-to-the-Land Morris went back-to-the-land to achieve security and stability, particularly economic security. 21 His writing mirrors the themes found in backto-the-land rhetoric of the era. Brown explained, “The common ground that supported all these variations on the back-to-the-land agenda was a ‘producerist’ vision linking self-sufficient households, autonomous work, and personal independence.” 22 Early back-to-the-landers believed “[s]elfsufficient households on the land could fulfill the dream of an independent competence, in a time when it seemed increasingly that nothing else could.” 23 Morris’s rhetoric is reflective of the Protestant work ethic that marked the Industrial era. 24 Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism details the relationship between the development of capitalism and influence of the Protestant ethic into the secular world of labor and capital. 25 In Morris’s rhetoric this linkage is modeled. Unlike later backto-the-landers, Morris’s life was not about subsistence; he set out to use labor to create a successful business that fed his family and made a reasonable profit. Morris believed in God’s Providence and that rural living allowed man to achieve the life God had determined for him. He wrote, “It takes mankind a great while to learn the ways of Providence, and to understand that things are better contrived for him than he can contrive them for himself.” 26 Rural living was the way in which God intended people to live, and returning to it allowed one to find his determined life path.

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Rural life allowed for the demonstration of one’s virtue. It encouraged a life of contentedness and happiness, “indulging in no feverish longings for what we have not, but satisfied and thankful for what we have.” 27 By going back-to-the-land Morris and his family focused on what they needed, not on the consumerism of urban living that focused on what they wanted. Morris believed a virtuous farmer would always be successful. Farming failures were the fault of farmers who lacked restraint to stay out of debt “or wasted his means in riotous living, or had in some way utterly neglected his business.” 28 A farmer could avoid these vices more easily than one working in an urban setting, because one was not working for a salary. Brown explained, “Back-to-the-land advocates frequently argued that insecurity was intrinsic to the very nature of modern occupations. Everyone who worked for wages, they asserted, was fundamentally insecure.” 29 As a printer, Morris had to rely on customers to pay their debts, and often had to borrow money to keep the business going. Doing so put his economic security in question and made him susceptible to the fluctuations of the larger economy. By paying cash, eating what one produced, selling the excess, and making smart decisions about what to grow for market (in his case berries and peaches), Morris was able to escape the wage system that had threatened to put him in debt and left him constantly concerned with having enough inflow of money to cover expenses. His return to the land was a reclaiming of a particular type of masculinity only possible with land ownership and agricultural work. This early back-to-the-land approach was not a reclaiming of domesticity, as we will see in the more contemporary movement; rather it was a reclaiming of masculinity, a masculinity marked by control (of self and land), selfsufficiency, and hard-work. Farming was a profession, not a hobby. 30 The farm was his domain, and going back-to-the-land was an opportunity to reclaim the self-sufficient masculinity the dependent labor of industrial capitalism had stripped from him. In Glenn’s words, Morris was reclaiming the identity of “worker citizen,” which was built on the notion that groups who had the “intellectual and emotional ability” to participate in free labor “were similar to notions of which groups had the rational capacity required for citizenship.” 31 Historically, white men were the group thought most capable of playing these roles, but as industrial capitalism put more and more men in the position of working for others, masculine notions of citizenship were threatened. One way of looking at Morris’s return to the land is to view it as an attempt to reclaim the ideal identity of citizen expected in a liberal system of citizenship.

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Reclaiming Space Ten Acres Enough is representative of a genre of writing with which back-to-the-landers at the turn of the twentieth century were familiar. Titles detailing the number of acres a writer worked, as well as the structure that explained what each of those acres was used for was common in early back-to-the-land writing. The structure of Morris’s text gave a sense of the cultural anxieties that led people back-to-the-land and how these individuals viewed the relationship between rural and urban living. Structurally, Ten Acres Enough was broken into twenty-five chapters, and began with five chapters that detailed why Morris decided to leave the city for rural life and how he decided which farm to buy. Following these five chapters were seven chapters that each focused on an element of the farm, such as the orchard, the berry patch, the garden, or the livestock. These chapters introduce the spatial structure of the farm to readers, while also allowing Morris to provide useful advice on making decisions about what to plant, how to manage produce, how much manure to apply, and what livestock to purchase. Space was emphasized in the early back-to-the-land rhetoric in a way that is not present in contemporary discourse. The focus on space in Ten Acres Enough represents an anxiety over space that was evident in the historical moment in which it was written. Jacob explained why Americans leave urban spaces and look to the land for stability and comfort. He wrote: For three out of the nearly four centuries of European settlement of this continent, the United States was an agrarian nation. This agrarian consciousness was so thoroughly rooted in American culture that when, in the early part of this century, it became clear that the country was transforming itself from a rural society to an urban one, Americans experienced something like a collective identity crisis. 32

For Jacob, Americans returned to the land in times of turmoil, particularly economic turmoil, because American identity and its ethics are rooted in a particular agricultural lifestyle and Protestant work ethic that emphasized self-sufficiency, hard-work, and independence. In addition, the urbanization of the United States, which stemmed from the Industrial Revolution, had drawn many people from the openspaces of rural living to the closed-quarters of urban dwelling. At the turn of the twentieth century, awareness of the consequences of closequarter, urban living was increasing. Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives used photojournalism to illustrate the reality of urban tenement living to upper and middle-class urban dwellers. 33 At this same time Jane Addams began a public crusade in Chicago to clean trash, debris, and vermin from the streets, to increase the potential for personal cleanliness of the lower class and lessen the spread of disease. 34 For many, especially

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those of lower economic means, living in a city meant living in dirty, unhealthy conditions, with little control or ownership over one’s space. Even for those in the middle-class who might have a more enjoyable city life, economic turmoil of the era made the possibility of living in such conditions one financial loss away. Merchant argued that during this era of industrialization, the city was constructed as a wilderness, “dedicated to growth and the production of wealth at any cost to its inhabitants.” 35 Rural, agricultural living—in which one controlled the land one owned, used that land to feed, house, and clothe oneself, and lived a significant distance from one’s closest neighbors—was also viewed as a welcome alternative to the tumultuous urban life many had been living. By moving to a rural farm, Morris reclaimed the sense of space that was threatened by the shared places of urban living. De Certeau wrote, “Space is a practiced place.” 36 In other words a particular place derives meaning from the activities that happen there and the stories we tell about them. Morris’s structuring of much of his book around his land illustrated the intimate knowledge of the place needed to verbally map it and to be able to discuss what was needed to manage it. The labor he puts into its management, and his ability to tell the story of the place, turns his land into his space, making it his own. This ability to construct a place into space was something many lacked in urban living, where responsibility for managing and making meaning of a place was taken away from individuals, many whom, with industrial jobs, would not have had the time to manage the space anyway. Carlson wrote about the rise of an “ideology of technological progress” and drive toward consumerism that arose in response to the growth of cities and technological development of the Industrial Revolution. 37 Morris represented a counter-response to this. In going back to the land, Morris enacted an alternative ideology of self-sufficiency. He did not turn his back on the technological progress that drove the Industrial Revolution, but he used only the technology that met his needs. Self-sufficiency was more important than progress, and the land made living this ideology possible. Even as Morris used the early portion of the book to tell the narrative of transforming a place into his space, he does not completely divorce the space he created from the urban space he escaped. Chapter 13 marks the second half of the book, which focused on comparing rural and city life, detailed Morris’s profits, and discussed how to make a successful attempt at farming. This half of the text explained the relationship early back-to-the-landers saw between rural and urban living. Morris encouraged other back-to-the-landers to settle in “close proximity to the great cities.” 38 He settled on a farm within a few miles of Philadelphia, with easy access to the railroad, so he would be able to transport and sell his produce in the markets of New York and Philadelphia. 39 Early back-tothe-landers, did not always see the dichotomy of rural life as good and urban life as bad; rather, the two locations had a reciprocal relationship in

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which, urban markets allowed back-to-the-landers to make a livelihood, and rural farming fed urban dwellers. When discussing how land achieved its value, Morris explained, “The truth is, that it is the population that gives value to the land,—population either on or around it,—to convert it into lots covered with buildings, or to consume whatever it may produce.” 40 Morris recognized that his version of rural living was only possible as long as others lived an urban lifestyle, and urban living was only possible as long as people like Morris were willing to farm. By recognizing this symbiotic relationship, Morris’s rhetoric suggested that early back-to-the-landers wanted to leave urban living, but not society in its totality. Going back-to-the-land in this early era involved individuals returning to a lifestyle that encouraged practices of self-sufficiency and moderation that could not be undertaken in urban settings. Morris did not write of reforming society or reclaiming a lost national character. He provided his family with economic stability in a time of economic turmoil and created a life in which the virtues he valued could be practiced and transmitted to his family. He created a life of labor and well-earned leisure, one of moderation and security, and one that was clearly filled with considerable joy. This early back-to-the-land approach peaked right before World War I, and declined as the war put many men to work and brought economic prosperity to the U.S. economy. A second back-to-the-land movement emerged during the Great Depression. I have not chosen to analyze an additional Depression Era text. Brown distinguished the Depression Era as a new wave of the back-to-the-land movement, and its institutionalization as part of the New Deal does set it apart, 41 but its rhetoric so closely mirrors that of the rhetoric of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century back-to-the-landers that rhetorically separating the two is not necessary. Brown wrote, “The new back-to-the-land prescription, too, was in its essentials identical to the old one: security could come only from self-sufficiency.” 42 For this reason, I do not treat that wave of the movement as separate from the earlier one that had relied on Morris’s text, and move instead to the back-to-the-land rhetoric of the 1960s and 1970s. Living the Good Life Agnew’s account of 1960s and 1970s back-to-the-landers included a description from Margaret Doyle of why the movement thrived in this era. Doyle explained: America had vast idealistic promise but was rotten to the core, largely because everyone was given over to the rat race and materialistic pursuits. What we wanted to do was eventually carve out niches, which were convivial for people, an alternative lifestyle that we were con-

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Helen and Scott Nearing became the model many of these idealistic young back-to-the-landers turned to as they sought an alternative society in rural living. A believer in “centralized global socialism,” 44 pacifism, vegetarianism, and collectivism, 45 S. Nearing held political beliefs that would be marked as nothing less than radical during the era, but the Nearings’ followers “did not usually perceive Helen and Scott Nearing in these ideological terms […] often they seemed to be viewed simply as older and more experienced versions of their fans.” 46 The Nearings moved to the Green Mountains of Vermont from New York City in 1932, during the Great Depression. When they left the city, they believed they left “a society gripped by depression and unemployment, falling prey to fascism, and on the verge of another world-wide military free-for-all; and entered a pre-industrial rural community.” 47 They were not the twenty and thirty-somethings that dominated the 1960s and 1970s back-to-the-landers who would turn the Nearings into their idols. They were approaching their fifties when they undertook rural life and did not throw themselves fully into rural living immediately; rather they began as “summer folk,” but after commuting 216 miles back-and-forth from New York for a couple of years, they decided to become “all-year-rounders.” 48 The Nearings’ attention to diet introduced an emphasis on food politics that had not been present in the early back-to-the-land movement. They were vegetarians, and rejected refined flour and processed sugar. They also avoided alcohol, tobacco, and recreational drugs. The Nearings lived a life of simplicity and self-denial, which modeled “Victorian habits of order, discipline, and self-control.” 49 The Nearing legacy has been questioned. Authors have discovered that their lifestyle was made possible in part by trust funds, speaking fees, and salaries paid by affiliated organizations. 50 In other words, their life-style was not solely sustained by sustenance farming; but at the height of their popularity, the Nearings provided a model of living after which many people tried to model their own homesteading attempts. Their rhetoric, then, provides an understanding of what going back-to-the-land meant in the 1960s and 1970s. Creating Counter-Culture by Going Back-to-the-Land The Nearings explained that their choice to go back-to-the-land was made with a desire to educate others that another form of society was possible. They wrote: We might have followed the example of many of our compatriots, moved to Paris, Mexico, or Paraguay, and allowed the United States to go its chosen way to destruction. We could not accept this alternative

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because our sense of responsibility as teachers, and as members of the human race, compelled us to do what we could (1) to help our fellow citizens understand the complex and rapidly maturing situation; (2) to assist in building up a psychological and political resistance to the plutocratic military oligarchy that was sweeping into power in North America; (3) to share in salvaging what was still usable from the wreckage of the decaying social order in North America and western Europe; (4) to have a part in formulating the principles and practices of an alternative social system, while meanwhile (5) demonstrating one possibility of living sanely in a troubled world. 51

The Nearings, unlike Morris, set out to create a counter-culture. In contrast to the symbiotic rural/urban relationship Morris identifies, the Nearings built a life that removed them from society’s dominant structures (particularly economic and political structures). They were determined to remove themselves as much as possible from the “price-profit economy.” 52 In response to an unequal wage system they set out to create a type of cooperative living in which all contributed and all benefitted, and to provide all the food they needed from their own garden, eating freshly from it twelve months out of the year. 53 Although the Nearings carried forward Morris’s concern with the wage system and industrial capitalism, many other political projects were wrapped up in the Nearings’ version of going back-to-the-land. Environmental damages, abuses of political power, and excess materialism were symptoms of a broad loss of social virtue. Going back-to-theland and living an austere life was an attempt to reclaim virtue and provide a new social model for others to follow. The historical context of the Nearings is complicated, because it requires looking at what may have motivated them to return to the land in the 1930s and why their rhetoric resonated so strongly with those in the 1960s and 1970s. The Nearings went back to the land following the Great Depression, after the financial crisis left them unable to survive professionally. In addition, the Nearings lived through the first Red Scare, during the World War I era, when anarchists and left-wing political activists engaged in labor protests and battled the entrenched political and economic system. The Nearings’ politics would have been targeted, and they would have been witness to many individuals facing trials for sharing their beliefs. It is no wonder the Nearings sought to build a way of life in which their ideology could exist without persecution. This decision may have been reinforced by the second Red Scare in the 1940s and 1950s, in which socialists, communists, and anarchists were placed on blacklists and tried for treason. Also, during these decades, the Nearings’ environmental consciousness would have been reinforced, as ecological thought began to develop into a discipline. Publications such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1963 and Kenneth E. Boulding’s “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth” in 1966 raised questions

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about the human ecological position and responsibility for maintaining a livable planet. At the same time, civil rights arguments over the social roles of people of color and women were challenging entrenched social structures of power, protests against the Vietnam War were on the rise, and urban centers that had been the center of political organizing were becoming overwhelmed with people. 54 For those who engaged in political battles during the 1960s without major victories, “Politics seemed like a dead end, and for the disillusioned the rural communities suddenly loomed as an inviting alternative.” 55 In the midst of this environmental and social awakening, individuals were driven back-to-the-land to create a way of life that aligned with their environmental and social justice principles. These individuals saw the Nearings as trailblazers, perhaps even prophets, who found this way of life long before others saw it as a possibility. Many of their followers made pilgrimages to the Nearing’s homestead (by this time they had moved to Maine) or flocked to the Nearings’ speaking engagements to learn how to begin homesteading. The Nearings’ counter-cultural message resonated with those searching for an alternative to a society that seemed corrupted by materialism, environmentally destructive, and bent on military action. The Nearings had three stated goals for going back-to-the-land. The first was affirmation that living their version of the good life was possible. For them, the good life included “simplicity, freedom from anxiety or tension, and opportunity to be useful and to live harmoniously.” The second goal was to live “under conditions that would preserve and enlarge joy in workmanship, would give a sense of achievement, thereby promoting integrity and self-respect.” Whereas Morris sought security and stability, the Nearings were seeking purpose. Going back-to-the-land was an attempt to find a meaningful life, where they were able to determine what their contributions would be and what would be valued. Their third aim also reflected this drive toward freedom, as they worked to achieve “leisure during a considerable portion of each day, month or year.” 56 The Nearings found freedom in structuring their days, a structure in contrast to that imposed upon them by the demands of urban capitalism. The Nearings began their project with rules (the farm’s Constitution) and a plan, and worked to prove to themselves another social model was possible. Militant Lists The most striking structural element of the Nearings’ writing was its lists. The lists began with an identification of their three aims for going back to the land I mentioned above. This initial list provided an early sign of the regimented nature of the rest of the text. The text also included twelve points of their ten-year plan, which contained rules to ensure very limited participation in the cash-based economy, rules that prohibited

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animals on the farm, and rules about building on the land. The Nearings explained, “These twelve points were the essentials of our ten-year plan,—the items in our card catalogue. They made up the Constitution of our household organization. We also drew up by-laws of the household procedure, the first of which called for order.” 57 Order is exactly the idea that emerged from the very structured nature of their writing. Whether dividing the types of work that happened on the farm (household, homestead, cash crop labor), 58 discussing the “seven procedures that maximize the stability and security of livelihood,” 59 or detailing why their way of living was justified, 60 the overall structure to their writing and their living was about very explicit order. The Nearings’ reliance on lists throughout their writing mirrors the regimented style of their living. Each day they “earned four hours of leisure by [their] four hours of labor.” 61 They also placed significant constraints on the life pleasures they were allowed to enjoy. The self-control demonstrated by the Nearings in the account of their lives, suggested the Nearings thrived on self-deprivation, forbidding themselves from buying “candy, pastries, meats, soft drinks, alcohol, tea, coffee, or tobacco” and lighting their home with kerosene and candles. 62 The Nearings admitted that most readers would find this way of living difficult, perhaps even see it as “deliberate self-punishment,” 63 but ironically, this rigidity provided the Nearings a sense of freedom from the rigid expectations on one’s time and labor found in capitalism’s wage system. The Nearings’ writing contained a militant tone that lacked the joy and humor that pervaded Ten Acres Enough. This militancy was perhaps due in part to the responsibility the Nearings placed on themselves to model a society capable of replacing the one they believed was heading toward destruction. The Nearings’ militancy produced a model of going back-to-the-land that created community only with others able to follow the austere life the Nearings encouraged. They discussed difficulty in forming relationships with neighbors: We desired to get on with our neighbors, but we were not willing to conform to their patterns of living and they would not adopt ours. So we agreed to differ and made allowances for each other’s idiosyncrasies. They abode by their traditions and we planned and lived our lives un-Vermontishly. 64

The Nearings did not set out to convert. They were individuals committed to a political project of modeling a counter-culture, a culture they believed was needed for society to move forward. Their prophetic voice provided instructions for others already committed to, or at least drawn to, the austere way of life the Nearings believed would save the world. Their prophetic ethos, in the words of Darsey, established the Nearings as “ethical presences” in the lives of back-to-the-landers, who returned to the Nearings writings time and again, allowing the Nearings and their

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rigid lists of rules and principles “continuing influence” in shaping the movement. 65 That the Nearings’ text, written originally in 1954, resonated so deeply with the 1960s and 1970s movement suggests that (1) the 1960s and 1970s back-to-the-landers were motivated by a much broader political project than the drive for security and economic stability that was emphasized so deeply in Morris’s work, and (2) back-to-the-landers of this second iteration sought order in a chaotic world, a world lacking progress on social justice issues and facing economic and environmental crises. While few could achieve the austerity the Nearings modeled, many found inspiration in their way of life. The pattern emerging between the two eras of the movement examined here is that going back-to-the-land happened when members of society feel a loss of control. Tending the land, growing one’s food, scheduling one’s day, and building one’s home allowed participants to reclaim a sense of control over their lives, and, in the eyes of the Nearings, a sense of self-respect not possible in a world in which one’s life is controlled by political and economic demands. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Barbara Kingsolver has become one of the voices of the contemporary back-to-the-land movement. When Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was published in 2007, she was one of a number of authors at this time who encouraged readers to reconsider what they were eating and consider altering life practices to produce their own food or at least know those who were feeding them. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle detailed a year of her family’s experiment of eating an almost solely local diet, after moving from New Mexico to Virginia. Kingsolver’s book ranked in the top ten of the New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list, 66 and was ranked by Time magazine’s Lev Grossman as one of 2007’s top ten nonfiction books. 67 Kingsolver’s text is representative of current back-to-the-land discourse in approach, structure, and tone. The contemporary movement differs considerably from that which was seen in the 1960s and 1970s, and from the self-reliance demonstrated in Ten Acres Enough. This is in part due to the fact that contemporary authors focus on food and food politics, rather than complete dependence on the land for all they need. Brown explained: It is not quite the same movement this time around. Just as previous generations changed the message to suit their conditions, the writers and activists of the new century have forged a distinctive approach to the old concern. For one thing, the words “food” and “politics” no longer sound strange in the same sentence. In fact, food has provided the focus of a new critique of industrial urban and suburban society. 68

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Food is the avenue through which contemporary back-to-the-landers discuss energy usage, waste, pollution, labor issues, and the economy. The authors make broad social critiques, as we saw in the Nearings’ work, by discussing society’s relationship with food, but unlike the 1960s and 1970s, contemporary movement members are not creating a counter-culture; rather, they suggest that by altering how we consume food and what food we consume, there is potential to alter society to make it more sustainable and more fulfilling. As Brown noted, “There is a new twist here. The focus on local eating has made self-sufficiency as much a community goal as an individual one.” 69 For contemporary back-to-the-landers, including Kingsolver, self-sufficiency is no longer the primary goal; the goal is building a community capable of making better choices, ones healthier for people and the planet. Reclaiming Culture by Going Back-to-the-Land Kingsolver explained the family’s decision to move to Virginia with the simple explanation that they “wanted to live in a place that could feed [them].” 70 Food, for the family, was political. It was wrapped up in environmental, economic, health, and social justice issues. By critiquing government subsidies of giant agribusiness that grows more corn and soybeans than fruits and vegetables, 71 detailing the amount of oil used to support the current food system, 72 pointing to poor water management required by the current system, 73 advocating fair trade policies, 74 and detailing the loss of human connection that stems from a lack of food culture, Kingsolver was overtly political in a way neither Morris nor the Nearings were. As Kingsolver noted, “cooking is good citizenship.” 75 The family’s decision to commit to a local food culture made the most personal of acts (feeding one’s self) political. Blauvelt’s reading of de Certeau explained how “routine practices, or the ‘arts of doing,’” such as cooking, contained “an element of creative resistance” available to “ordinary people.” 76 Kingsolver’s turn to food production, consumption, and preparation as forms of political action illustrated how everyday acts allowed individuals creative ways to reclaim their spaces and resist dominant cultural ideologies. In Kingsolver’s case these ideologies were those that emphasized the individual over community, productivity over relationships, and materialism over thoughtful consumption. Kingsolver did not remove herself from society to create a counter-culture like the Nearings, but going back-to-the-land did provide her an alternative to these ideologies of dominant culture. Kingsolver’s undertaking began as a simple project, an attempt to prove she could live this way and lower her personal impact on the world just by altering how she and her family ate. But Kingsolver realized the family was also engaged in something larger, a resistance to cultural practices that discouraged community. Eating locally meant

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something beyond having a smaller environmental impact. It meant participating in community. She wrote: But “locally grown” is a denomination whose meaning is incorruptible. Sparing the transportation fuel, packaging, and unhealthy additives is a compelling part of the story, but the plot goes well beyond that. Local food is a handshake deal in a community gathering place. It involves farmers with first names, who show up week after week. It means an open-door policy on the fields, where neighborhood buyers are welcome to come have a look, and pick their food from the vine. Local is farmers growing trust. 77

In an era of what McKibben calls “hyperindividualism,” 78 the primary reason for going back to the land was to find a community in which one belonged and could make a difference. Hyperindividualism denotes that people are driven by personal interest to the degree that concern for community and others becomes practically obsolete. Individuals ignore how their actions impact others and how we are dependent on others for our existence. Going back-to-theland in this era challenges hyperindividualism, but it does so in a way that is accessible to those living in a hyperindividualized world. To enter this community, one takes individual actions. One made choices about how to feed one’s self and family. In doing so, one gradually becomes part of a community. Going back-to-the-land is about belonging somewhere and creating communities in which one can have meaning. Food culture, Kingsolver explained, “arises out of a place, a soil, a climate, a history, a temperament, a collective sense of belonging.” 79 This food culture and the belonging that comes with it is the greatest benefit of going back-to-the-land in the contemporary era. When one goes back-to-the-land, one commits to following three steps. Kingsolver outlined them as follows: Step one, probably, is to live on the land that feeds them, or at least on the same continent, ideally the same region. Step two is to be able to countenance the ideas of “food” and “dirt” in the same sentence, and three is to start poking into one’s supply chain to learn where things are coming from. 80

Establishing a food culture allows one to feel connected enough to explore the politics of what they eat. Although not explicitly stated in Kingsolver’s writing, there is an implicit message that the communities built by local food economies will be better equipped to address the environmental and economic issues facing contemporary society. This claim is not just made by contemporary back-to-the-landers with the reasoning that if society collapses, at least people would have learned to feed themselves (though perhaps that is as good a logic as any to encourage some local food practices). The claim is made with the understanding that if people can come together to talk about their food—a universal need—

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perhaps they can also come together to discuss other pressing concerns plaguing their community. 81 Reacquainting with Natural Time and Tradition The structure of Kingsolver’s text is similar to that used by many contemporary back-to-the-land authors, in which the writer documents a year in one’s life of living locally. In an article for the New York Sun, Kate Taylor discussed the appeal of this approach. She wrote, “Editors and agents say the appeal of these books is their authors’ humility and everymanness. The parameters of their projects—individual and temporally limited—suit an age that distrusts both ideological fervor and collective action.” 82 Writing in this structure also allows authors, such as Kingsolver, to guide their readers in learning with them, as they document the research needed, surprises encountered, mistakes overcome, and successes achieved of their year of living off the land. Kingsolver began her book with a chapter discussing how and why they made the decision to leave desert and begin a life on land they owned in Virginia. Including this deliberation in her text (something which also appears in the early back-to-the-land discourse) allowed readers to begin the process with her, and consider what their own reasoning might be to undertake such a project. She then moved the readers forward, discussing what her family did to prepare the land to feed them. Then, beginning in March with the arrival of asparagus, the reader followed along on the family’s adventure. The remainder of the text went in chronological order, tracing out the arrival of new foods and the completion of farm practices from season to season. This shift to time as an organizing structure contrasts Morris’s use of space and the Nearings’ use of lists. Whereas Morris’s spatial structure represented a desire for a space that he could control, Kingsolver’s structure suggested a desire to return to a natural sense of time. Kingsolver’s structure demonstrated an attempt to break from a typical cultural attitude toward time, in which any second “saved” is valuable. She wrote: All that hurry can blur the truth that life is a zero-sum equation. Every minute I save will get used on something else, possibly no more sublime than staring at the newel post trying to remember what I just ran upstairs for. On the other hand, attending to the task in front of me— even a quotidian chore—might make it into part of a good day, rather than just a rock in the road to someplace else. 83

The structuring of the text around seasonal time, reflected this stated desire to throw off the “religion of time-saving” for a form of time keeping that was more fluid, determined less by the clock and more by what needs to be accomplished for livelihood and happiness.

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Striving for this happiness and what the Nearings called “the good life” was further reflected in the structuring of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The writing was collaborative, modeling the collectiveness the contemporary back-to-the-land trope has acquired. Kingsolver was the primary author of the text, but her husband, Steven Hopp contributed text boxes that explained the political and economic aspects of their actions. In addition, Kingsolver’s oldest daughter, Camille Kingsolver, concluded each chapter with a reflection and compilation of recipes used during that time of the year. Writing in this collaborative fashion visually demonstrated that the family’s year of eating locally was a collective effort. Each writer offered his or her own perspective on the experience, and their merging voices demonstrated a way of life centered on building community and family. The back-to-the-land trope of the contemporary era is marked by deliberative and collaborative practices not at the forefront of earlier traditions. The family was in this together. Food was a way to connect to others around them and build community. Kingsolver hosted canning parties and had conversations with farmers at the farmers’ markets. She used the year as an opportunity to teach her youngest daughter business sense, making her in charge of raising the chickens and selling their eggs. The family created a routine that brought them closer together and helped them belong to a place and its people. Kingsolver likened their experience to “something like a religion,” with tradition, vows, and an oath of loyalty. 84 Their approach was not a militant religion, as one might classify the Nearings, but it was also more rigid than Morris’s early back-tothe-land rhetoric. Kingsolver bridged the joy and pleasure Morris’s text exuded with the fervent belief of the Nearings. Being loyal to the food of one’s place was a strict requirement to participating in Kingsolver’s backto-the-land movement. This loyalty produced joy in food, the place that provided nourishment, and the relationships created by eating in that way. Like religion, the practices detailed in Kingsolver’s text, especially their collaborative nature, provided participants with a sense of belonging and a set of virtues to guide one’s practices. The seasons and the staggered arrivals of the produce called forth the rituals believers in this life undertook. Tomatoes don’t ripen on a person’s time schedule, and turkeys breed when they want to, so one must be willing to meet the demands the land gives them when the land gives it. Hours of labor spent weeding, canning, freezing, and drying are required to continue practicing traditions year round. Charland’s work on constitutive rhetoric points to the importance individuals participating in practices, which reaffirm one’s identity in a community. 85 For contemporary back-to-thelanders, canning, freezing, cheese making, and butchering become rituals in which one enacts of one’s beliefs and reinforces one’s belonging to one’s place and to others who hold the same beliefs.

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The practices connected the family to the past and to the present. Food was a way of remembering people. Meals became an opportunity to, in Kingsolver’s words, “welcome them back,” to take moments to appreciate the knowledge and traditions they gave us. She wrote of Steven’s grandmother: I suppose she’d have loved to see us on a summer Saturday making mozzarella together: daughter, grandson, great-granddaughters, and me, all of us laughing, stretching the golden rope as far as we could pull it. Three more generations answering hunger with the oldest art we know, and carrying on. 86

There was nostalgia in Kingsolver’s writing, as she restored the lessons of the past. Interestingly, she does not trace back to those back-to-the-landers who have written before her. For Kingsolver, this was a personal search to live better, eat better, connect more with others, and build a life that allowed traditions to move forward. Going back-to-the-land was a political project, undertaken in part to help combat the economic, health, and environmental disasters Kingsolver identified. It was an attempt, like Morris’s project, to find security in an insecure world, but it lacked the rigidity that marked the 1960s and 1970s back-to-the-land trope. Kingsolver’s back-to-the-land approach did not require everyone to move to a homestead. She explained that some of these practices could be implemented in urban and suburban settings. 87 Her approach provided room for partial commitment. Going back-to-theland was about contributing and participating in the local food economy, not making a full commitment to a particular way of living. Even in the family’s commitment, there was room for non-local eating. Kingsolver explained, “We’re converts in progress, not preachers.” 88 Lacking the Nearings’ militancy, Kingsolver advocated strongly for tradition and ritual, without prescribing a singular correct mode of behavior. Rather, she wrote in a way that encouraged others to rediscover the joy in their food, by becoming more knowledgeable about where it was grown, who grew it, how it was processed, its history, and how to use it. Though not completely inclusive, 89 her approach created space in the movement for those who wanted to explore the joy of going-back-to-theland without making a complete commitment to homesteading. Certainly, the earlier manifestations of the movement included individuals who committed to only some of the back-to-the-land practices that homesteaders practiced in full, but such perspectives were absent in the writings of Morris and the Nearings. By making the inclusion of partial practitioners explicit, Kingsolver constructed a movement that encouraged a wider range of individuals to go back-to-the-land however they may be able to in the places they call home. This is an important transition for the movement. Nearly all individuals have at least some choice in the food they eat and how it is prepared,

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so allowing individuals to partially practice going-back-to-the-land and still be considered movement members opens the door for more individuals to consider how small changes in how and what one eats may make a larger collective difference for the global environment and in local communities and economies. In addition, the fluidity of Kingsolver’s approach, in which people determine what going back-to-the-land might look like in one’s place, constructed a movement open to local deliberation that may be able to better account for questions of access the back-tothe-land lifestyle has not fully wrestled with in its history. THE EVOLUTION OF THE “BACK-TO-THE-LAND” TROPE The analysis offered here maps the evolution of the back-to-the-land trope through three distinct eras of the movement. The rhetoric of movement memoirs showed how the initial movement, based on self-sufficiency and a desire to control one’s labor and space shifted to a movement driven by desire to form a counter-culture. Kingsolver’s rhetoric illustrated that the contemporary movement has borrowed the jovial nature and commitment to doing-it-yourself represented in Morris’s writing, and paired it with the political elements of the Nearing’s militant rhetoric. In contrast to this militancy or even the professional approach of Morris, Kingsolver’s rhetoric presented going back-to-the-land as something that could be done to varying degrees, as a hobby or as a full life commitment. The contemporary movement has added a focus on community building within society, rather than outside of it. One still does things oneself, but she does so amidst others participating in the same practices within the places they live. One aim of this study was to identify back-to-the-land rhetoric as worthy of rhetorical study. I have only scratched the surface by examining these three memoirs, and encourage scholars to explore the rhetoric of movement members found in other first-hand accounts, periodicals, diaries, and even commune meeting notes. An even more complicated and rich picture of the movement will emerge if scholars take this challenge. Certainly, there is a weakness in this study that extrapolates claims about movement eras from a single representative text from each period. Community was not absent as a theme for back-to-the-landers throughout history, for example. Utopian communes striving to live and survive together marked both early eras and are not readily accounted for here. The difference in the contemporary movement, however, is that it offers community without communes. Kingsolver suggested people could go back-to-the-land while still participating in the communities to which they already feel connected. Because her rhetoric lacked the militancy of the Nearings and allowed openness for what practices count as going back-to-the-land, there is greater potential for mass participation and so-

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cial change. This potential is further multiplied by the movement’s turn to focus on food, a universal necessity and something about which nearly everyone can be educated to make choices. Tracing the evolution of going back-to-the-land also provides insight into how our cultural relationship with food has changed. In the early back-to-the-land movements, food was practical. It was needed for sustenance and, in Morris’s case, profit. The Nearings viewed most food as offlimits, a luxury that violated their rigid standards. They also reflected growing concerns about the way in which food was produced in the United States, commenting on the unhealthy nature of processed foods and raising concerns over chemical use in agricultural practices. As people like the Nearings continued to raise these questions, food became politicized, eventually becoming the center of modern back-to-the-landers’ practices. As food has become politicized, its cultural relevance has also been recognized, and its role in bringing together community (and connecting us to the past) is being emphasized. Where the rhetoric around food politics goes in the future is uncertain, but Kingsolver’s writing suggests food has the potential to be a starting point for breaking down entrenched ideological divisions, as people engage in food practices that build community and recognize the importance of food systems that can provide healthy and culturally relevant sustenance. The openness of contemporary back-to-the-land rhetoric does leave the potential for the movement to lose its political significance, especially as its practices and lifestyle get coopted as life-style brands or weekend hobbies. An article in The New Yorker, for example, discussed how the magazine Modern Farmer was not read by farmers but by Manhattanites interested in the gritty farm stories but not in actually living the farming life. The magazine’s founder and editor has called it a “farming magazine for media professionals.” 90 In another instance Gordinier wrote for The New York Times blog, “Food Matters,” about professional women taking weekend hunting getaways to reconnect with nature and relieve themselves of stress. 91 While interest in local food practices and connecting to place is illustrated in each of these articles, the individuals consuming the messaging or participating in the practices lack the intention to connect to place and build community capable of addressing pressing social concerns that mark the contemporary back-to-the-landers. As the contemporary movement continues to evolve, it is important that movement members are clear about the community-centered intentions of their practices and continue to emphasize the belonging to place that is so central to the movement’s purpose. One way to place some boundaries on what counts as back-to-the-land practices in the contemporary era is to be more strategic in telling the movement’s histories. One element missing from each of the narratives analyzed here is the acknowledgment of help these homesteaders received along the way. At a forum on place, art, and creativity I attended where I currently live in

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the North Country of New York (a popular destination for homesteaders in the 1970s), one former homesteader commented on the fact that nearly all of the back-to-the-landers that moved to the North Country would have failed without the help of those already part of the community. Farmers taught people how to grow food, community members taught them how to preserve that food, neighbors helped people build houses that were livable, and everyone shared stories of how to survive the winter. Back-to-the-landers in every era owe gratitude and acknowledgement to those who have preserved the traditions back-to-the-landers set out to reclaim; yet these stories or voices rarely find their way into the memoirs of the movement. The contemporary movement’s turn toward community provides more space for these types of narratives to be included. Back-to-the-landers are not setting out to prove their self-sufficiency in the way that earlier movement members did. Instead, there is space to recognize those who teach others how to find their way back-to-the-land. The emphasis on what McEntee called, “traditional localism” 92 (e.g., canning, gardening, hunting, etc.), opens space for those who have maintained these traditions to be elevated as knowledge producers in their communities, as others in the communities strive to reclaim those practices in their own lives. Many who have maintained these practices through generations have done so out of necessity, and are not typically at the top of social power structures within communities. As contemporary back-to-thelanders continue to build communities through their practices, they would do well to help the back-to-the-land trope evolve in such a way that it makes nod to those who have gone back-to-the-land in the past and privileges the knowledge of those who never left. Doing so has the potential to create an inclusive movement with a rich history capable of bringing people together in their places to work toward addressing the economic, environmental, and social justice issues that have brought people back-to-the-land time and time again. NOTES 1. Thomas Jefferson, “Jefferson’s Letter to John Jay,” Yale Law School, accessed October 9, 2014, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/let32.asp. 2. Brown, Donna. Back to the Land: The Enduring Dream of Self-Sufficiency in Modern America (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2011). 3. Miller, Timothy. The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999). 4. Conkin, Paul, A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transforming of American Agriculture Since 1929 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky), 2008. 5. Brown, Back to the Land, 30. 6. Jacob, Jeffrey. New Pioneers: The Back-to-the-Land Movement and the Search for a Sustainable Future (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 5.

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7. Wrage, Ernest J., “Public Address: A study in social and intellectual history,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 33 (1947): 453. 8. Wrage “Public Address,” 452. 9. Rosteck, Thomas, “Form and Cultural Context in Rhetorical Criticism: Re-reading Wrage,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 84 (1998): 472–473. 10. Rosteck, “Form and Culture,” 483. 11. Rosteck, “Form and Culture,” 477. 12. Brown, Back to the Land, 13. 13. Brown, Back to the Land, 213. 14. Agnew, Eleanor, Back from the Land: How Young Americans Went to Nature in the 1970s, and Why They Came Back (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2004), 12. 15. Brown, Back to the Land, 13. 16. Brown, Back to the Land, 231. 17. Morris, Edmund. Ten Acres Enough: A Practical Experience Showing how a Very Small Farm may be Made to Keep a Very Large Family (New York, NY: Orange Judd Company, 1916), 22. 18. Brown, Back to the Land, 27. 19. Brown, Back to the Land, 3. 20. Brown, Back to the Land, 34. 21. Morris, Ten Acres Enough, 19. 22. Brown, Back to the Land, 51. 23. Brown, Back to the Land, 51. 24. Rodgers, Daniel T., The Work Ethic of Industrial America 1850–1920 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978). 25. Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. English], Translated by Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner: 1958). 26. Morris, Ten Acres Enough, 150. 27. Morris, Ten Acres Enough, 48. 28. Morris, Ten Acres Enough, 25. 29. Brown, Back to the Land, 89. 30. Morris, Ten Acres Enough, 249. 31. Glenn, Evelyn Nakano, Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 2. 32. Jacob, New Pioneers, 7. 33. Riis, Jacob, How the Other Half Lives (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890). 34. Merchant, Carolyn, American Environmental History: An Introduction (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), 117. 35. Merchant, American Environmental History, 118. 36. De Certeau, Michel, The Practice of Everyday Life, Translated by Steven Rendall (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011), 117. 37. Carlson, W. Bernard, “Technology and America as a Consumer Society, 1870–1900.,” in The Guilded Age: Perspective on the Origins of Medorn America, ed. by Charles W. Calhoun (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 48. 38. Morris, Ten Acres Enough, 267. 39. Morris, Ten Acres Enough, 33, 41. 40. Morris, Ten Acres Enough, 269. 41. Brown, Back to the Land, 147–154. 42. Brown, Back to the Land, 144. 43. Agnew, Back from the Land, 7. 44. Brown, Back to the Land, 218. 45. Nearing, Helen, and Scott Nearing, Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World (New York, NY: Schocken Book, 1970), xv. 46. Brown, Back to the Land, 218. 47. Nearing and Nearing, Living the Good Life, xv.

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48. Nearing and Nearing, Living the Good Life, 11–13. 49. Brown, Back to the Land, 220. 50. Brown, Back to the Land, 224. 51. Nearing and Nearing, Living the Good Life, xvi. 52. Nearing and Nearing, Living the Good Life, 22. 53. Nearing and Nearing, Living the Good Life, 97. 54. Miller, The 60s Communes, 68. 55. Miller, The 60s Communes, 68. 56. Nearing and Nearing, Living the Good Life, 6–7. 57. Nearing and Nearing, Living the Good Life, 35. 58. Nearing and Nearing, Living the Good Life, 42. 59. Nearing and Nearing, Living the Good Life, 144. 60. Nearing and Nearing, Living the Good Life, 184. 61. Nearing and Nearing, Living the Good Life, 43. 62. Nearing and Nearing, Living the Good Life, 147. 63. Nearing and Nearing, Living the Good Life, 147. 64. Nearing and Nearing, Living the Good Life, 159. 65. Darsey, James, “The Legend of Eugene Debs: Prophetic Ethos as Radical Argument,” Quarterly journal of Speech 78 (1988): 435. 66. Taylor, Kate, “The Year I Saved the World,” The Sun, published August 8, 2007, http://www.nysun.com/arts/year-i-saved-the-world/60056/. 67. Grossman, Lev, “Top 10 Nonfiction Books.,” TIME, published December 09, 2007, http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1686204_1686244_ 1691789,00.html. 68. Brown, Back to the Land, 230. 69. Brown, Back to the Land, 233. 70. Kingsolver, Barbara, Steve L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (New York, NY: Happer Collins Publishers, 2007), 3. 71. Kingsolver, Hopp and Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 18–19 72. Kingsolver, Hopp and Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 5. 73. Kingsolver, Hopp and Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 6. 74. Kingsolver, Hopp and Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 262–263. 75. Kingsolver, Hopp and Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 130. 76. Blauvelt, Andrew, “Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life,” In Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life, ed. Andrew Blauvelt (Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 2003): 20. 77. Kingsolver, Hopp and Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 123. 78. McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and a Durable Future (New York: Holt Publishing, 2007), 98. 79. Kingsolver, Hopp and Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 17. 80. Kingsolver, Hopp and Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 20. 81. McKibben, Deep Economy, 169–172. 82. Taylor, “The Year I Saved the World.” 83. Kingsolver, Hopp and Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 125. 84. Kingsolver, Hopp and Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 34 and 38–39. 85. Charland, Maurice, “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québécois,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 73 (1987): 133–150. 86. Kingsolver, Hopp and Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 141. 87. Kingsolver, Hopp and Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 180–181. 88. Kingsolver, Hopp and Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 282. 89. I have written elsewhere about the lack of attention to class issues in contemporary local food writing, including in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. See Prody, Jessica M., “A Call for Polycultural Arguments: Critiquing the Monoculture Rhetoric of the Local Food Movement,” Argumentation and Advocacy 50 (2013): 104–119.

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90. Wilkinson, Alec, “Read it and Reap: ‘Modern Farmer’ and the Back-to-the-Land Movement.,” The New Yorker, published November 10, 2014. http://www.newyorker. com/magazine/2014/11/10/read-reap. 91. Gordinier, Jeff, “Food Matters: The Professional Women who Hunt, Shoot, and gut Their Dinners.,” The New York Times, published November 12, 2013, http:// tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/food-matters-the-professional-women-whohunt-shoot-and-gut-their-dinners/?_r=1. 92. McEntee, Jesse C., “Realizing Rural Food Justice: Divergent Locals in the Northeastern United States,” In Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability, eds. Alison Hope Alkon and Julain Agyeman (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011): 239–259.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Agnew, Eleanor. Back from the Land: How Young Americans Went to Nature in the 1970s, and Why They Came back. Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2004. Baskerville, Barnet. “Must we all be ‘rhetorical critics’?” Quarterly Journal of Speech 63, no. 2 (1977): 107–116. Blauvelt, Andrew, “Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life,” In Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life, edited by Andrew Blauvelt, 14–37. Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 2003. Brown, Donna. Back to the Land: The Enduring Dream of Self-Sufficiency in Modern America. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2011. Carlson, W. Bernard. “Technology and America as a Consumer Society, 1870–1900.” In The Guilded Age: Perspective on the Origins of Modern America, edited by Charles W. Calhoun, 29–52. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007. Charland, Maurice. “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québécois.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 73, no. 2 (1987): 133–150. Conkin, Paul. A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transforming of American Agriculture Since 1929. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2008. Darsey, James. “The Legend of Eugene Debs: Prophetic Ethos as Radical Argument.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 78 (1988): 434–452. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011. Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Gordinier, Jeff. “Food Matters: The Professional Women who Hunt, Shoot, and gut Their Dinners.” The New York Times. November 12, 2013. http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/food-matters-the-professional-women-whohunt-shoot-and-gut-their-dinners/?_r=1. (accessed November 28, 2014). Grossman, Lev. “Top 10 Nonfiction Books.” TIME. December 09, 2007. http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1686204_1686244_1691789,00.html (accessed August 26, 2014). Jacob, Jeffrey. New Pioneers: The Back-to-the-Land Movement and the Search for a Sustainable Future. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. Kingsolver, Barbara, Steve L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. New York, NY: Happer Collins Publishers, 2007. McEntee, Jesse C. “Realizing Rural Food Justice: Divergent Locals in the Northeastern United States.” In Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability, edited by Alison Hope Alkon and Julain Agyeman, 239–259. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011. McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and a Durable Future. New York: Holt Publishing, 2007.

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Merchant, Carlolyn. American Environmental History: An Introduction. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007. Miller, Timothy. The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999. Morris, Edmund. Ten Acres Enough: A Practical Experience Showing how a Very Small Farm may be Made to Keep a Very Large Family. New York, NY: Orange Judd Company, 1916. Nearing, Helen, and Scott Nearing. Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World. New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1970. Prody, Jessica M. “A Call for Polycultural Arguments: Critiquing the Monoculture Rhetoric of the Local Food Movement.” Argumentation and Advocacy 50, no. 2 (2013): 104–119. Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890. Rosteck, Thomas. “Form and Cultural Context in Rhetorical Criticism: Re-reading Wrage.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 84, no. 4 (1998): 471–490. Rodgers, Daniel T. The Work Ethic of Industrial America 1850–1920. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Taylor, Kate. “The Year I Saved the World.” The Sun. August 8, 2007. http:// www.nysun.com/arts/year-i-saved-the-world/60056/ (accessed August 26, 2014). Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. English]. Translated by Talcott Parsons. New York: Scribner, 1958. Wilkinson, Alec, “Read it and Reap: ‘Modern Farmer’ and the Back-to-the-Land Movement.” The New Yorker. November 10, 2014. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/10/read-reap (accessed November 28, 2014). Wrage, Ernest J. “Public Address: A study in social and intellectual history.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 33, no. 4 (1947): 451–457.

TWO Végétariens Radicaux John Oswald and the Trope of Sympathy in Revolutionary Paris Justin Killian

As a critic, I feel important moments for reflection arise when the seemingly innocuous becomes a trigger point for scrutiny by others. This critical maxim has led me to this project that unites my love of food and French culture. I am a vegetarian, and I have always thought this to be a relatively typical characteristic about myself. Furthermore, I have always treated vegetarianism as a very private decision. I do not have a “conversion” story about choosing a meatless diet. I have not proactively tried to convince someone else to become vegetarian, and I think the most political performance of my “vegetarianism” is my subscription to Vegetarian Times. From my personal perspective, I feel most people would not know I am a vegetarian unless they actually sat down to have a meal with me. However, it is those moments of “vegetarian identification” that bring me to my critical moment of reflection. I have found that I receive intense scrutiny from others for my personal decision to eat a meatless diet. I have found that my choice to be vegetarian is accidentally one of the most political decisions I have ever made. For some, my decision to be a vegetarian reflects a sense of compassion and consideration about the suffering of all creatures. For others, it marks my unity with nature or offers an alternative to live in accordance with green politics. For my critics, it signifies some level of privilege or liberal snobbery. Some of my friends view it as a feminist choice, an environmental move, a political stance, or a medical decision. For me, it has been some of these while also 27

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being something I spend very little time contemplating. I just simply prefer to be vegetarian, and this decision usually disappoints the people who ask, “Why did you become vegetarian?” The decision to not eat meat seems to cause anxiety in other people. Sometimes it is a pragmatic anxiety. People are not sure what to cook for me if I am invited to a dinner party. Other times, it is an anxiety that is manifested in terms of anger and resentment. When I publicly identify as a vegetarian, I usually become the target of criticism and contemplation. Jonathan Safran Foer describes this same experience in his book Eating Animals. 1 He notes that when he “comes out” as a vegetarian to a new person he often finds himself in a moment of inquisition and confrontation. He is immediately faced with arguments about other aspects of his life (such as a decision to carry a leather wallet) that might indicate his desire to be meatless is either unauthentic or invalid in some way. I understand his dilemma, and I would add that these moments are also further complicated with questions like: “are you vegan?,” “do you eat eggs?,” “is milk ethical?,” and “how do you get enough protein?” It seems that the mention of the term vegetarian sets forth a dialectical set of questions that transform the personal to the political in the matter of a few seconds. Vegetarianism, to put it mildly, is a term with a political and personal history that matters to the understanding of food politics. I come to this project with similar questions but different goals than my colleagues. Many of the chapters in this collection examine the language of food politics through contemporary controversies. In this chapter, I hope to offer a starting point at which we might trace the impetus for shifting many controversies about food onto the concept of vegetarian. I seek to investigate how the choice to be vegetarian has become a metaphor for political ideologies that span far beyond simple decisions of what to eat for dinner. In short, I hope to understand why and how personal decisions about eating animals became the subject of criticism and political activity. Sure dining is a social, communal and cultural experience, but it is also a private and personal activity. I spend more time eating alone on the way to work and at lunch than I do eating in the presence of other people. And yet, my identity as a vegetarian is a question on dating profiles, the subject of essays, and now the impetus for a rhetorical intervention into the history of how people talk about food. My goal in these next few pages is to rhetorically understand one moment in the historical discourse on vegetarian politics, so rhetorical scholars can start the long project of unpacking the residues that so often cloud public reception of personal decisions about food. In writing this essay, I also must acknowledge my own place of privilege. Many people in the world are vegetarian by circumstance and not by choice. As a citizen of the United States, my decision to live as a vegetarian can be described as one of privilege and opportunity and not necessity. It takes time and energy to live as a vegetarian. I have to shop

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at particular markets, and I have to be conscious of where I choose to dine. I also have to be aware that many geographic spaces do not cater to meatless diets, so I am often making the conscious choice to be an outsider. This was not always the case. At certain historical moments, vegetarianism has been a diet of the poor. It also became a way for privileged citizens to live in solidarity with the working class during key moments of western civilization. Thus, the anger and skepticism that is often tied to the word vegetarian is often rooted in a history that I did not know. This project is my attempt to unpack one political use of the term “vegetarian” to attempt to add to academic understandings of food language. In what follows, I will offer a rhetorical read of John Oswald’s The Cry of Nature; or An Appeal to Mercy and to Justice on behalf of the Persecuted Animal (TCON). 2 Oswald is a fascinating figure for students of the French Revolution, food politics, and Enlightenment rhetoric. He was born in Scotland, served in the British military, traveled to India, converted to vegetarianism, and resided in Paris during the French Revolution. He was active in politics, worked as a journalist, and was an early thinker on socialism and direct democracy. Oswald was also a military theorist who was one of the biggest proponents of violent warfare and the use of the pike 3 during the revolutionary uprisings. Stuart writes: Oswald’s combination of vegetarianism and aggressive revolutionpeddling was both scary and puzzling. His hypersensitivity about animals was matched with an equally extreme aptness for revolutionary violence, and this extraordinary paradox of aversion to shedding animal blood and eager bloodthirstiness remained the image that shocked and amused both his friends and enemies. 4

Colonel John Oswald was a displaced British revolutionary who personally chose not to eat meat while promoting violent warfare in the name of liberty and personal freedom. He thought eating meat was cruel, but he also thought evil people should be put to death. He avoided animal slaughter while literally instructing others in the art of warfare. To put it mildly, he is a perplexing and colorful figure. He is the living embodiment of the paradox that the term “vegetarian” presents. People often expect vegetarian to signal kindness and compassion in all acts. Oswald shatters this interpretation of the term, and he might offer insight into why “vegetarian” as a term is ill received and confusing. TCON was published as a response to the many public criticisms Oswald received for both his personal lifestyle choices and his violent approach to political revolution. Many of his contemporaries, both friends and enemies, did not know what to make of a man that “dined on roots” while discussing the merits of murdering all “evil doers.” His political activity brought him public attention, but his lifestyle choices were often the subject of editorials written to discredit him. Oswald offers an inter-

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esting case study for understanding how vegetarianism has often been both the subject of public scrutiny and a decision tied to political activity. John Oswald utilized the trope of sympathy or arguments ad misericordiam to situate vegetarianism as a natural extension of enlightenment and revolutionary politics. In what follows, I offer a read of both the situation surrounding Oswald and TCON. I think an analysis of the scene and text will show how Oswald gives students of rhetoric one of the best examples of how politics, culture, and language often intersect at the dinner table. First, I will provide a narrative of Oswald’s political activity and his complicated relationship with revolutionary politics. Second, I will contextualize the rhetorical environment of Paris during 1790–1793 to explain how discussions of food were often on the minds of political actors, rhetoricians and philosophers. Both of these sections will hopefully contextualize the conversation Oswald entered with TCON. Finally, I will provide a read of TCON to add one more understanding of how rhetorical tropes can cloud, clarify, and complicate conversations about food. IGNOTUS BECOMES THE MAD COLONEL OSWALD Modern scholars are unable to trace many of the details of John Oswald’s early life. He was likely born after 1750 and before 1760, but some accounts place his birthdate much earlier. Oswald’s family ran a coffee shop called John’s Coffeehouse in Edinburg, Scotland near the government buildings in the city. This is an interesting enterprise because his father was most likely a goldsmith. He would have spent much of his childhood hanging out in the family shop, and he would have been privy to many philosophical conversations and literary salons, as his family’s coffeehouse was known as a place to conduct public business. John Oswald was a literal and metaphorical child of the Scottish Enlightenment. As a child, he would have been serving beverages to some of the greatest thinkers of the eighteenth century. These thinkers would later influence his writings on politics and revolution. The lack of clear biographical facts adds to the (mis)interpretations of his actions by his contemporaries and modern scholars. He was a mystery in many ways, and it is unclear why he decided to become a vegetarian. Oswald was well known with very little actually being known about him. He was famous, but he lacked a traceable biographical narrative. This ambiguity surely sparked some of the confusion about his politics and his dietary habits, and public confusion about Oswald the person was likely transferred onto the concept of what it means to be vegetarian. He probably brought a sense of mystery to meatless diets by being one of the first “public vegetarians.” It is slightly easier to trace the intellectual and cultural influences on Oswald. He taught himself Greek and Latin as a child, and he was a well-

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read scholar. Plassart mentions that Oswald did not attend a formal university, but he received a strong education. 5 He would have been trained in some trade or profession associated with his family, but it is uncertain what he would have learned because his father’s gold work is something of speculation. In his youth, Oswald eventually enlisted in the British military, and he is sent to India to fight the French. On the journey, Oswald continued his education by teaching himself French, Italian, and Arabic. There are also records that he challenged his commanding officer to a duel on the ship. Oswald was a self-made intellectual with a flair for physical confrontation. Oswald’s time in India represents a turning point in his biography. This military mission is probably the experience that moved him toward egalitarian and socialist approaches to politics. As a soldier, Oswald grew disgusted with the condition of the colonial Indian subjects, and he eventually drew intellectual connections between their plight and the situation of the American Colonials and the British working class. He eventually rescinded his place in the British Army and took up residence with a group of Brahman priests in India. These scholars taught Oswald about Hindu belief, and they also convinced him to convert to a vegetarian lifestyle or what many of his contemporaries called the Pythagorean diet. 6 He followed vegetarian eating habits for the remainder of his life, but he did not convert to Hinduism. Oswald was most likely an atheist, which means he did not continue to practice vegetarian politics for the same spiritual reasons as the cultures he met in India. His personal decisions were likely out of the realm of caring for all creatures, and this probably allowed him to shift easily between the worlds of meatless eating and violent combat. Oswald eventually left India and found his way back to London on foot, but he also spent a brief period of time with the Kurds in Central Asia on his journey. Oswald arrived in London and many of his contemporaries described him as “eastern” and discussed how he spoke of the philosophies and lifestyle choices he learned abroad. In London, he took up a career writing for newspapers like the London Gazetteer and the Universal Patriot. He also wrote for the Political Herald and Review, but his editor hid his work in the back pages of the periodical and attributed them to the author IGNOTUS (the unknown). 7 Thus, identifying his actual articles within the publication can be difficult and sometimes requires a bit of historical speculation. It should also be mentioned that Oswald flirted with poetry writing at this moment in his life, but he eventually realized his talents lie in warfare and political commentary. Oswald is best remembered for his works that describe direct democracy and promote egalitarianism. Some of his more famous writings include: Ramae Comicae Evangelizantes, Review of the Constitution of Great Britain, and Le gouvernement du people, ou Plan de constitution pour la république universelle. In these writings, Oswald revealed his distaste for rep-

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resentative democracies and republican approaches to governance. He was fond of making arguments about the injustices created by representative governments. For Oswald, people “cannot think by proxy,” so he argued it is also impossible to vote by proxy. Oswald would say that “thinking projects” are ephemeral and the product of immediate interactions, so a political subject cannot expect to have their thoughts accurately represented with the vote and voice of another person. Oswald felt that all people should be present for the dialogues that led to the creation of rules and laws for the state. He also wrote The Alarming Progress of French Politics: A Pamphlet on the Commercial Treaty and launched a short-lived periodical known as the British Mercury. Oswald’s poetry and political commentaries are the primary relics of his colorful life. However, there are two writings that stand out from the texts already mentioned. They are also the two works that show the paradox that he presented for his colleagues and friends. Among everything else, Oswald was a strategic British military intellectual. 8 This is perhaps the best descriptor of his occupation and place in British and French society. Oswald explains his theories of violence and combat in an odd writing given the very long title: Tactics for the People or, New Principles for Military Evolutions, Which Will Teach the Masses how to learn to Fight by Themselves and for Themselves, without the Dangerous Use of Standing Armies. Oswald theorized that the nation, which did not arm itself, was in danger of losing the very rights its people had established. Oswald’s military writings promoted the use of militias, and he was very skilled in instructing others on how to use the pike 9 in order to improve the efficiency of warfare. He was a soldier and a military leader, and he was confident that the use of extreme violence in the defense of personal liberty was not to be condemned. The second odd text, TCON, is the subject of this chapter. It was printed in 1791, and it was circulated as a pamphlet in revolutionary Paris. It was a response to his critics, and it offered Oswald’s rationale for deciding to live as a vegetarian. He opened the text with an advertisement that read, “fatigued with answering the enquiries, and replying to the objections of his friends, with respect to the singularity of his mode of life, the Author of this performance conceived that he might consult his ease by making, once for all, a public apology for his opinions.” 10 From the opening lines, Oswald asserts his exhaustion with public criticisms and makes it known that many people had questioned and challenged his decision to practice a meatless diet. The pamphlet was pitched as a direct response to those challenges, and it set the table for many future conversations about vegetarian practices. John Oswald was a popular figure among the literati of London and Paris in the late 1780s and early 1790s. His strong personality and seemingly opposing viewpoints often created problems of ethos for him. For example, European Magazine took a hit at him in 1790 calling him a con-

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vert to “Hindoo system of worship” and cited cruelty, humanity and cleanliness as his reasons for vegetarianism. 11 The magazine seems to link his conversion to a foreign religion with his dietary practices as if to corrupt all his acts. The periodical uses the conversion story to tarnish his reputation and discredit his political writings on direct democracy. It was also a character attack because Oswald never converted to Hindu practices. He did receive praise from other publications. In 1787, he was listed among The Five Hundred Celebrated Authors of Great Britain Now Living. Readers also gave attention to his poetry, and he was a friend of some of the greatest thinkers of his time including Thomas Paine. He was so notorious that he is likely the inspiration for the character Oswald in William Wordsworth’s The Excursion. 12 In 1821, he was listed as a memorable Scottish poet, and André Lichtenberger casts him as a forefather of social thinking with the text John Oswald ecossaise, Jacobin et socialiste. John Oswald complicates understandings of French revolutionary politics. He was an active participant in the “British Club” of Paris that had regular meetings at White’s Hotel in the early 1790s. He made his way to Paris to assist with French independence, but he hoped for a larger revolution that would eventually unite all free peoples (primarily the populations of England and France). His vegetarian ideals were as much about sympathy as they were about living in brotherhood with the poor. Oswald proposed violent warfare, mixed with the intellectual giants of his time, wrote about humane vegetarian living, and died in battle fighting for a country that was not his own. Oswald was aware of his own paradoxical choices, but he still pursued his own form of radical vegetarian justice. 13 It is this pursuit that lead to the publication of TCON and the future complication of the term vegetarian. PARIS AND THE CONTEXT OF REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS It is also important to understand the revolutionary climate in which Oswald would have published TCON. The French Revolution simultaneously represents the best and worst extremes of the Enlightenment project. It ushered in one of the most exciting democratic experiments in the history of Western nations, and it produced documents like the Declaration of the Rights of Man which touts the principles of equality, liberty and fraternity. It was also one of the most violent and bloody revolutions in the history of the world. The architects of this movement harnessed the power of mobs, overthrew a monarchy, and developed pragmatic ways to violently silence opposition through tools such as the guillotine. This is the Paris Oswald would have inhabited, and it is important to understand the intellectual milieu that would have influenced his writings about food.

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First, Oswald’s pamphlet would have been produced during a moment in which “food choices” could be used as a tool for slander. People were literally starving, and the French people were concerned about the logistics of feeding the nation. Thus, Oswald’s personal decision to not eat meat would have fit with common topics of conversation. Second, the document should be considered as one example of many intellectual documents that question old understandings of animal consciousness. This section will further explicate both of these claims about the context surrounding TCON. First, commentary on food and quotes about food were common topoi among French revolutionary writers. One of the more popular stories about the revolution involves Queen Marie Antoinette (QMA). According to popular discourse, QMA is informed that her subjects are suffering a famine and starving due to a shortage of basic food staples such as bread. Legend says that QMA dismissed this observation with the infamous, “qu’ils mangent de la brioche” or “let them eat cake.” It is a tale of class distinction, and it was used as proof that the aristocracy and royal family were oblivious to the plight of the French people. First, it should be noted that QMA likely never uttered this line. There is no textual proof of this story. There is plenty of textual evidence to show that QMA was the subject of many false rumors and slanderous lies. 14 Second, it is likely that one of her predecessors, Queen MarieThérèse, who uttered the line “que ne mangent-ils de la croûte de pâté” or “let them eat pastry” (sometime around 1690) in response to reports that the French subjects were without bread. Also, the first record of the “let them eat” statements comes from the great Enlightenment thinker Jean Jacque Rousseau who writes in his Confessions that he wanted to buy some bread to go with a bottle of wine he had stolen. The line is mentioned in conjunction with Rousseau’s worry that he was overdressed to enter a basic bread shop. He writes, “At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, ‘Then let them eat pastry!’ Yet even this resource was attended with a difficulty.” 15 Thus, it is likely that Rousseau was the original source of this statement, and it was wrongly attributed to QMA as a character slander and further proof that the aristocracy must be overturned. I mention this story to point out the relevance of food politics as a means of personal attack during the revolution. QMA is maybe the most misinterpreted and complicated figure of the French Revolution. Thomas Jefferson marked her as the primary cause of this political moment. 16 She was a devil figure and representative of the lavish lifestyle of the aristocracy to most. She was a marker of courage and misinterpreted monarch to others. However, her most lasting cultural memory was a quote about food, starvation, and class that she likely never said. She offers an example of extreme rhetorical irony and proof that food politics were of ex-

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treme importance during the revolution. Peasants were starving, and members of the aristocracy were being accused of hoarding food from the masses. The French diet was being challenged, and many scientists were trying to invent ways to get the French people to shift culinary practices towards more sustainable crops. Oswald was entering this sphere of debate as he published TCON. The French Revolution was also a moment to reflect on and challenge the intellectual assumptions of the past, and this extended to thoughts about animal suffering and consciousness. During the Enlightenment, the church was countered with scientific advancement. Governments were toppled with the writings of Rousseau and Locke, and the means of production were being influenced by writers like Smith and Hume. Rene Descartes was also a target of the Enlightenment thinkers of revolutionary Paris. These authors treated Cartesian principles with new scrutiny and revolutionary fervor. In particular, Descartes’s writings on animal suffering and feelings were given new attention. Descartes wrote: and of which it has been said above that the nature distinctively consists in thinking, functions in which the animals void of reason may be said wholly to resemble us; but among which I could not discover any of those that, as dependent on thought alone, belong to us as men, while, on the other hand, I did afterwards discover these as soon as I supposed God to have created a rational soul, and to have annexed it to this body in a particular manner which I described. 17

Arguments of this type marked Descartes as both a villain and hero for different Enlightenment audiences. 18 For Descartes, animals were a tool for advancement. They were a mechanism by which humans, who were of a higher order due to the processes of thinking and reason, were able to improve the quality of their own lives. Writers like Rousseau, Locke, and Paine were forced to respond to not only Cartesian views about natural states of being, but they were also faced with challenging Descartes’s ordering of all creatures. This led many to explore notions of sympathy and offer rectifying philosophies that extended some degree of sympathy and reason to nonhuman species. 19 Oswald wrote TCON at a time of exciting development in Western thinking. In many ways, the text is a reflection of the ways food is related to status. Reynolds describes the intellectual context of revolutionary France by writing, “Before the Frenchman could better his station in life, he first had to recognize his human condition. At his disposal was the progress in knowledge made in science and natural philosophy.” 20 This time period witnessed one of the earliest extensions of human faculties onto animals. Revolution was about more than political freedom. It was also about freedom from all systems of the ancien régime, 21 and the Enlightenment project required questioning practice “in the name of natural laws of progress.” 22

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The French revolution was a celebration of the “cult of reason,” 23 and “reason” was being extended to the “lesser” creatures of the earth. It could have been an authentic concern for animal welfare. It might have been a political maneuver to deal with food shortages. It could have been an intellectual project. Regardless, Oswald also helped extend reason to animals, and he received questions and criticisms for his arguments. TCON was drafted in a very particular rhetorical moment. Oswald was responding to his own critics, but he was also entering a larger conversation about the relationship between food and people. He was part of a conversation that used dietary choices as a means to slander others, and he was present for a dialectical exercise that examined the place of animals in the social hierarchy. His text is a product of the Enlightenment project, and it must be understood as emerging from and responding to a multitude of discourses. JOHN OSWALD AND THE TROPE OF SYMPATHY Oswald’s comfort among the Enlightenment literati means he would have been aware of the various rhetorical themes and tropes employed by his contemporaries. The discourse of the French Revolution often ruminated on buzzwords of the day like liberty or equality, and the public interest in Rousseau and Adam Smith added the term sympathie or sympathy to the pantheon of revolutionary charged expressions. Oswald would have been keenly aware of the trend to thematize a work around one word. He seems to embrace this rhetorical method with his use of arguments drawn from sympathy (or arguments ad misericordiam) to defend his own ethos and promote his vegetarian politics. First, Rousseau gives a popular account of what Enlightenment philosophers would have meant by sympathy in his Lettres Morales. In that work, Rousseau writes of amour proper and pitié. Rousseau argues that to become aware of social consciousness is also to become aware of morality. The terms translate as self-love and sympathy, and they speak to Rousseau’s ideas that it is only through suffering that man comes to understand how to live as a moral member of society. For Rousseau, the act of not wanting to see others suffer comes from a space of “self-love.” For example, I know I do not want my friend to be in pain because I know how unhappy it makes me to feel pain. These philosophical concepts became the underpinnings of many Enlightenment philosophies, and they serve as a primary source of persuasion for Oswald. Stuart draws attention to the many rhetorical texts that all draw on Rousseau’s notion of sympathy, 24 and it is clear this was a theme that resonated with revolutionary audiences. Stuart also argues that Oswald gives a textual wink to Rousseau at the opening of TCON by citing an identical passage from Juvenile. In short, Rousseau elevated sympathy

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into a philosophical system, but Oswald was responsible for “transforming sympathy into a mandate for democratic revolution and vegetarianism.” 25 Adam Smith would have been the other source for popular discourse about sympathy during the Enlightenment. Smith wrote: How selfish soever man be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. If this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we with see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. 26

Rousseau would have been more widely circulated among the French intellectuals of Paris, but Smith would have also been a topic of philosophical discussion. Also, Oswald’s political writings showed an affinity for Scottish thinkers, and it is likely that Smith’s concepts of sympathy and pity would have also influenced his creation of this particular trope to promote his lifestyle. 27 Colin Spencer observes that “Oswald writes in a style burdened with sentiment and agony.” 28 It is this burdened style that should be of interest to students of discourse. Oswald uses the term “sympathy” in the same way rhetors of his time would have used other buzz words. Beatrice Reynolds provides an interesting analysis of how terms came to mean different things for different audiences during the revolution. She analyzes the rhetoric of Pierre Vergniaud to show he used his own definitions of terms like “rights” 29 to further his revolutionary politics. 30 Oswald seems to follow the example of Vergniaud, but his preferred terms were sympathy, pity, and compassion. In TCON, Oswald clings to the varied meanings of sympathy, within the figuration of his particular trope of sympathy, to repair his ethos and promote his vegetarian politics. The opening lines of TCON mark the text as a project of ethos repair rooted in conversations about sympathy. Oswald writes: Those who despise the weakness of his arguments will nevertheless learn to admit the innocence of these tenets, and suffer him to pursue, without molestation, a system of life that is more the result of sentiment than of reason, in a man who imagines that the human race were not made to live scientifically, but according to nature. 31

With this statement, Oswald rejects Descartes and embraces Rousseau. He professes his preference for sentiment over reason (Descartes), and he admits that he desires to live in accordance with nature (Rousseau) not science. This frames his text within a larger philosophical project, and it makes it resonate with more audiences. The text becomes more than a mere advertisement for a meatless existence. It is transformed into a discussion of basic orderings of the social and natural world. In Oswald’s

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text, all beings have sentiment and this means all beings should be freed of pain. Oswald follows his opening remarks by making it clear that many people will not like his arguments. He writes, “The Author is very far from entertaining a presumption that his slender labours (crude and imperfect as they are now hurried to the press) will ever operate an effect on the public mind.” 32 Vegetarianism, from the earliest writings, as a lifestyle is a hard sell to most people. It requires considerable efforts, and it asks people to reject culinary practices that are often rooted in celebrated cultural traditions. However, Oswald frames the arguments for his audience by further writing: And yet, when he considers the natural bias of the human heart to the side of mercy, and observes on all hands the barbarous governments of Europe giving way to a better system of things, he is inclined to hope that the day is beginning to approach when the growing sentiment of peace and good-will towards men will also embrace, in a wide circle of benevolence, the lower orders of life. 33

Oswald latches on to thinking about sympathy and sentiment and then rhetorically extends those concepts to animals in order to promote his lifestyle choice. He mentions the “natural tendencies” of human beings and the “social project” of the European governments because these terms would be agreeable subjects for his audience. He then leaves the audience to question the limits of sympathy and the reasons he has chosen to live without inflicting harm on animals. Oswald also uses TCON to directly confront the claim that he is a converted Hindu and that this in some way makes his lifestyle choice less valid. As was mentioned earlier, Oswald was likely an atheist. He also personally stated that he accepted the philosophies of the Brahmans, but he did not accept their religious practices. However, rather than flatly deny his Hindu identity in TCON, Oswald praises the religion as the anecdote to Judeo-Christian worldviews. He speaks of the “universal sympathy” of the Hindu religion, which rhetorically connects the Eastern religion to Enlightenment ideals. This in turn transfers a sense of ethos to his decisions to live in accordance with “Hindu diets.” Oswald writes: Far other are the sentiments of the merciful Hindoo. Diffusing over every order of life his affections, he beholds, in every creature, a kinsman: he rejoices in the welfare of every animal, and compassionates his pains; for he knows, and is convinced, that of all creatures the essence is the same, and that one eternal first cause is the father of us all. Hence more solicitous to save than the cruel vanity and exquisite voraciousness of other nations are ingenious to discover in the bulk, or taste, or beauty of every creature, a cause of death, an incentive to murder, the merciful mythology of Hindustan hath consecrated, by the metamorphosis of the Deity, every species of animal. A Christnah, a Lechemi, a Madu assuming, in the course of their eternal metempsychosis, the

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form of a cow, a lizard, or a monkey, sanctify and render inviolate the persons of those animals; and thus, with the sentiments of pity, concur the prejudices of religion, to protect the mute creation from those injuries which the powerful are but too prone to inflict upon the weak. 34

Enlightenment thinkers were already questioning the teachings of the church. The Christian and Jewish scriptures set animals as the tool of human beings. Rather than confront the claims that he was a Hindu, Oswald embraced the religion as an answer to the problems of the established faiths in the west. Hinduism becomes a natural extension of Enlightenment sympathy, and vegetarian practices become a manner to live in accordance with the promoted philosophies of the time. Finally, Oswald promotes vegetarianism by extending scientific arguments that would have resonated with his audience. Critics of vegetarianism will often point to aspects of the body as proof that meatless diets are “unnatural.” Oswald confronts this argument by writing, “But here the sons of science sport with the sentiments of mercy; and why, with a malicious grin, demands the modern sophist, why then is man furnished with the canine, or dog-teeth, except that nature meant him carnivorous?” 35 Oswald answers his own question by writing, “Fallacious argument! Is the fitness of an action to be determined purely by the physical capacity of the agent? Because nature, kindly provident, has bestowed upon us a superabundance of animal vigour, does it follow that we ought to abuse, by habitual exertions, and excess of force, evidently granted to guard our existence on occasions of fire distress?” 36 He then moves through a series of examples that counter this reasoning. He offers counter-narratives and examples to challenge these common arguments, and he syncs his argument with the popular belief that the Enlightenment is about surpassing the taken for granted and living at a higher level of consciousness. Thus, vegetarianism becomes the primary way to live in accordance with the sympathy that is being promoted by the revolutionary movements of Europe. Humans should not live in systems of oppression, and they should not live in systems built on the oppression of other creatures. The paradox arises when he later argues that humans should use violence to defeat the foes of egalitarian living. For Oswald, the most sympathetic act is to kill in the name of liberation. John Oswald’s rhetorical project is rooted in Enlightenment teachings about sympathy and pity. It is impossible to know why he decided to become a vegetarian. It is also impossible to know how he rectified his violent views on revolution with his progressive take on animal rights. However, we get the closest understanding of his reasons when he writes, “the practice of agriculture softens the human heart, and promotes the love of peace, of justice, and of nature.” 37 Oswald eventually follows this statement by claiming, “Animal food overpowers the faculties of the stomach, clogs the functions of the soul, and renders the mind

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material and gross. In the difficult, the unnatural task of converting into living juice the cadaverous oppression, a great deal of time is consumed, a great deal of danger is incurred.” 38 Eating meat is the antithesis to growing crops in this line of reasoning. It is a simple option compared to the complex and advanced practice of growing plants. Vegetarianism is the more sympathetic, and in turn, the more enlightened way to live in accordance with other creatures. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS Oswald ends his treatise with what he calls his “strongest argument in behalf of the persecuted creatures.” 39 For Oswald, there “exists a rooted repugnance to the spilling of blood; a repugnance which yields only to custom, and which even the most inveterate custom can never entirely overcome.” 40 He makes note that in all cultures the practice of killing animals is relegated to the “lowest class of men” and that their profession is often an object of “abhorrence.” 41 This is a rhetorical play right out of the philosophies of Rousseau. We come to know pity by reflecting on what we hope to avoid in our experience. Oswald uses taken for granted understandings of sympathy and extends them to dietary choices to further challenge the practices of previous generations and to restore his own credibility as a thinker and writer. The final paragraph of TCON reads as follows: May the benevolent system spread to every corner of the globe; may we learn to recognize and to respect in other animals the feelings which vibrate in ourselves; may we be led to perceive that those cruel repasts are not more injurious to the creature whom we devour than they are hostile to our health, which delights in innocent simplicity, and destruction of our happiness, which is wounded by every act of violence, while it feeds as it were on the prospect of well being, and is raised to highest summit of enjoyment by the sympathetic touch of social satisfaction. 42

Vegetarianism has spread throughout western societies, but the lifestyle has probably not reached as many people as Oswald would have hoped. However, the relationship between food, suffering, and injustice are still part of the conversation about meatless diets. John Oswald does not give me any answers to offer the modern critics of my own lifestyle, but he does give me some understanding of the origin of the questions. A vegetarian diet questions the very nature of old understandings of human-animal relationships. I have always viewed it as an individual choice, but in doing that I have failed to reflect on how the mere presence of an alternative causes humans to question their own identity and practice. This question can lead to discomfort and that discomfort can be deflected with debate. Oswald offers one way to promote the lifestyle in

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the face of opposition and attack. However, he may also represent the place at which thinkers start to split on the politics and humanity of eating meat. For me, he provides one example of how any move that brings questions to “old orders” will always be met with resistance. Oswald also shows me that the most “enlightened” way to live is to always treat all creatures, both omnivores and herbivores, with reason and sympathy. NOTES 1. Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009). 2. The complete text of this pamphlet can be found in many open source places such as on the website the History of Vegetarianism and http://www.ivu.org/history/ renaissance/oswald.html or the National Library of France’s public documents found at: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k679231/f4.image. All of these public domain sources use the same scanned images and have the same page numbering. I use the text found on the National Library of France’s website throughout this chapter. I will footnote the text as Oswald, TCON with a page number throughout the analysis. 3. The pike was a tool of warfare used during the Middle Ages. European armies had not used it for nearly one hundred years when it was suggested to help the French revolutionary cause. The pike is a rather violent tool, and it is odd that Oswald would preach compassion and support the use of a Medieval form of combat. It was thought that the pike would help the revolutionaries overcome their lack of numbers and resources. The pike also became a tool for displaying heads in France. John Lynn discusses French revolutionary use of the pike in “French Opinion and the Military Resurrection of the Pike, 1792–1794.” Military Affairs 41, no. 1 (February 1977): 1–7. 4. Tristram Stuart, The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), 297. 5. Anna Plassart, “A Scottish Jacobin: John Oswald on Commerce and Citizenship,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 71.2 (April 2010), 267. 6. There was a mixing of Hindu and Greek teachings at this intellectual moment. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras was often cited in arguments about vegetarian lifestyle choices. 7. David V. Erdman, Commerce Des Lumiéres: John Oswald and the British in Paris, 1790–1793 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986), 2. 8. Erdman, Commerce Des Lumiéres, 3. 9. As cited by Stuart, The Bloodless Revolution 10. Oswald, TCON, 1. 11. As cited by Stuart, The Bloodless Revolution, 296. 12. This point seems to be confirmed by Erdman. Kenneth R. Johnson also discusses the connection between Wordsworth and Oswald in The Hidden Wordsworth (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998), 577. 13. Stuart, The Bloodless Revolution, 298. 14. Queen Marie Antoinette was accused of sleeping with her relatives, having affairs, controlling the throne, not having enough interest in politics, conspiring to overthrow France, and spending too much money during a time of great need. She was the subject of lies and false rumors. So, the attribution of the quote is likely another example of a character attack on QMA. 15. This quote is found in Book 6 of The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau. This particular translation was taken from the English translation made available by Project Guttenberg. The complete text is found at: www.guttenberg.org/files/3913/3913-h. htm#link6.

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16. See Fawn McKay Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1998), 45. Brodie quotes Jefferson as saying had there “been no Queen” there would have been “no revolution.” 17. This quotation is found in Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conduction the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Science by Rene Descartes. It is from the English translation made available by The Project Gutenberg. The complete text is found at: http://www. gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm#part5. 18. I do not want to accuse, condemn, or defend Descartes for his classification of animals as machines. I merely want to mention that questioning of animal feelings are part of the larger questioning of the “old order” and Cartesian views during the Enlightenment. John Cottingham offers a commendable defense of Descartes. See: John Cottingham, “‘A Brute to the Brutes?’: Descartes’ Treatment of Animals,” Philosophy 53 (1973), 551–559. 19. Stuart offers an entire chapter about Rousseau’s challenge to Cartesian understandings of animals. Rousseau was not a vegetarian, but he did make reference to the suffering of all creatures. 20. Beatrice K. Reynolds, “Context of Girondist Rhetoric,” Western Speech 35.4 (1971) 256–263 21. Alain Touraine, “The Idea of Revolution,” Theory, Culture, and Society 7.2 (1990): 122–123. 22. Alain Touraine, “The Idea of Revolution,” 122–123. 23. Touraine, “The Idea of Revolution,” 123. 24. Stuart, The Bloodless Revolution, 299. 25. The Bloodless Revolution, 298. 26. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 9. 27. Anna Plassart, “A Scottish Jacobin,” 268. 28. Colin Spencer. The Heretic’s Feast: A History of Vegetarianism. (London: Fourth Estate, 1993), 235. 29. Beatrice K. Reynolds, “Pierre Vergniaud: Theorist of the French Revolution,” The Southern Speech Journal, 35.3 (1970): 237–243. 30. Beatrice K. Reynolds, “The Rhetorical Methods of Pierre Vergniaud, 1791–1793,” The Southern Speech Communication Journal, 39 (Winter 1973), 173–184. 31. Oswald, TCON, p. i. 32. Ibid, i. 33. Ibid, ii. 34. Ibid, 7. 35. Ibid, 12. 36. Ibid, 12–13. 37. Ibid, 16. 38. Ibid, 17–18. 39. Ibid, 29. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid, 48. 42. Ibid, 81–82.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Brodie, Fawn McKay. 1998. Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Cottingham, John. 1973. “‘A Brute to the Brutes?’:Descartes’ Treatment of Animals,” Philosophy, 53: 551–559. Descartes, Rene. Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conduction the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Science by Rene Descartes. English translation made available by The Project Gutenberg at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm#part5.

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Erdman, David V. 1968. Commerce Des Lumiéres: John Oswald and the British in Paris, 1790–1793. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Johnson, Kenneth R. 1998. The Hidden Wordsworth. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Lynn, John. 1977. “French Opinion and the Military Resurrection of the Pike, 1792–1794.” Military Affairs 41(1): 1–7. Oswald, John. The Cry of Nature, or An Appeal to Mercy and to Justice, On Behalf of the Persecuted Animals. Retrieved from The National Library of France: http://gallica. bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k679231/f4.image. Plassart, Anna. (2010). “A Scottish Jacobin: John Oswald on Commerce and Citizenship.” Journal of the History of Ideas, 71(2): 263–286. Reynolds, Beatrice K. 1970. “Pierre Vergniaud: Theorist of the French Revolution,” The Southern Speech Journal, 35(3): 237–243. Reynolds, Beatrice K. 1971. “Context of Girondist Rhetoric,” Western Speech, 35.4, 256–263 Reynolds, Beatrice K. 1973. “The Rhetorical Methods of Pierre Vergniaud, 1791–1793,” The Southern Speech Communication Journal, 39: 173–184. Rousseau, Jean Jacques. The Confessions. English translation made available by Project Guttenberg at: www.guttenberg.org/files/3913/3913-h.htm#link6. Smith, Adam. (1976). The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Spencer, Colin. 1993. The Heretic’s Feast: A History of Vegetarianism. London: Fourth Estate. Stuart, Tristram. 2006. The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Touraine, Alain. 1990. “The Idea of Revolution,” Theory, Culture, and Society, 7(2): 122–123.

THREE The Revolution Will Not Be (Food) Reviewed Politics of Agitation and Control of Occupy Kitchen Amy Pason

After nearly four weeks of protesting, and with over 10,000 occupying Zuccotti/Liberty Park, news coverage of Occupy Wall Street focused on the food the protesters were eating rather than the issues they were advocating. Peter Smith, writer at Good (a magazine for the “global citizen”) suggested Occupy should have a “signature dish”; Smith’s rationale included examples of the French Revolution’s call for bread and Gandhi’s Salt March. For Smith, the “Occu Pie” pepperoni pizza supplied by Libertatos Pizza did not pack the “same symbolic punch as other movements’ foods even though pizza orders were only one of the foods donated by those across the world in support of the encamped protesters. 1 Smith’s article is one of many connecting Occupy’s politics with the food eaten at the camp, and recognizes food’s role in enacting protest, in symbolically aligning oneself with a political issue, or in demonstrating solidarity. Food is symbolically powerful as it is part of our very survival, yet social histories often reduce the sharing of meals as something functional and simple, and do not emphasize how food is the reflection of social norms, rules, and taboos, or means to forge alliances. 2 Differently, communication scholars have recognized the everyday practices of eating as communicating aspects of human experience, and importantly have understood food practices as connected to exercises of power. 3 Smith begins to show how we can enact social movement power through aligning with others through food, yet other food review writings about what Occupy was 45

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eating show the shared symbolism of food is also a means to create boundaries and exert power over those we deem Other. 4 This project analyzes how social movement communicative functions are enacted and challenged through the genre of food writing, where outside audiences utilize the norms of the food review to also “review” the politics of the movement. Within Smith’s piece, journalist Jeff Sharlet defended the Occu Pie, arguing it represented the pragmatism part of the Occupy encampment: “Why pizza? It’s cheap, it’s there, and it’s fattening. Sleeping on cement is cold. Those revolutionaries need more padding.” 5 At the same time, food author Warren Belasco finds pizza to be “a pretty neutral, apolitical food,” 6 and although he suggests representation by pizza undercuts the radical politics of Occupy, it also helps Occupy connect with the majority of pizza eating Americans. This combination of food and politics might seem strange in the “lifestyle” section of a news source; however, the lifestyle and food sections of newspapers have a history of connecting food and politics. Food sections of newspapers (originally referred to as the “women’s page” and used mostly for advertising), have risen in importance with the rise of “foodie culture,” with food writers pushing boundaries to connect recipes with the industry, production, and culture of those foods. 7 In this, food reviewers influence what people eat— whether promoting new diets or trendy ingredients 8—but also influence how we think or evaluate what food symbolizes. In short, food writing is now a means to promote movement politics. Smith’s article and others highlighting the foods donated, cooked, and eaten at Zuccotti Park points to the potential for audiences to read the familiar framework of food reviews to understand the movement’s goals as legitimate and familiar, allowing Occupy to recruit supporters and resources, and further the message through different outlets. Food, then, became a means for movement agitation. Bowers and Ochs’ germinal social movement theory of strategies of agitation used by activists against control strategies employed by the Establishment 9 is useful in thinking about the ways food writing was employed during the encampment as talking about what the activists were eating was both used as a means to show movement support and a means to criticize and discredit the movement. The common, familiar language of food that allowed everyday citizens to identify with Occupy through the apolitical pizza also became a means for conservative, right-wing outlets to find a new way to delegitimize the movement. The New York Post, a Rupert Murdoch owned paper known most for its tabloid news and critical of Occupy from the beginning, sent their restaurant critic, Steve Cuozzo, to review Occupy’s food. Cuozzo was not impressed by the Spaghetti Bolognese with “grass-fed beef so tough the beasts must have swallowed stones,” or chicken soup with thin, separating broth. 10 Eating the food of Occupy allowed Cuozzo

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to put his own political spin on the movement, stating the privileged protesters shouldn’t complain about a free meal, and wondering “Can Occupy Wall Street’s affluent participants taste the irony in having their nightly feast whipped up in a poor, crime-ridden Brooklyn neighborhood that has nearly no restaurants at all?” 11 Unlike Good, the Post used its food writing to show how different protesters were from the average American, emphasizing in another article written the same day, that most Americans are eating Hamburger Helper, while Occupiers are getting fresh, organic meals made by five-star chefs. 12 Although protesters were eating whatever was donated (some from local, organic farms), highlighting these elements of Occupy’s food was a means to show readers that Occupy was not like them while at the same time giving their food a negative review. The Post’s food articles on Occupy were picked up and reposted to conservative blogs such as The Lonely Conservative, and used as fodder for pundits. The framework of food, then, becomes a strategy of control to suppress the movement and the support it gained through those curious about what Occupiers were eating. Moreover, reducing Occupy to the quality of its food (and by extension the quality of its politics), also obscures Occupy’s message and transforms it to another new “pop-up restaurant” or tourist destination. The rhetoric of Occupy’s food signals it’s importance in fulfilling persuasive functions of social movement rhetoric. Following Stewart, Smith, and Denton, to be effective, movements have to transform perceptions of reality, legitimize the cause, mobilize and obtain resources, and prescribe courses of action. 13 Food can fulfill these functions either symbolically as being the topic of arguments of what should be done, or materially as being the resource gathered to sustain occupations. Differently, this project focuses on how food (both symbolically and materially) is the source of contestation between the Occupy “agitators” and Establishment institutions, including the political leaders, police, and right-wing media, aiming to “control” and quell the movement. Although Bowers and Ochs’ model might seem dated in a social media age, 14 is it apt to explain why discussion and reviews of Occupy’s food (as if it were a restaurant) provided the logic and tension-filled space for Occupy to promote and enact their politics, while also providing the rhetorical resources to mobilize right-wing media in efforts to shut down the camp. Dubious claims of evacuating protesters due to an order by New York Mayor Bloomberg to “clean” the park, 15 becomes more palatable to the general public who view this as no different than health inspectors shutting down dirty restaurants. This chapter outlines the ways Occupy’s food was framed in mainstream and online news media, showing how Occupy was fitted to frames typical of food section reporting and foodie culture. First, I show how food was a means for Occupy to gain media attention, and how the norms of food journalism can work to discuss both the taste and politics

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of food. Then, I outline the “good” food reviews of Occupy, showing how common food frames connect to diverse audiences. Lastly, I show how conservative media used these same common food frames to find a new angle to criticize the movement, using food as a means to construct Occupy as a dangerous and hypocritical Other. Certainly, food discourses are not the only means to explain the rise and fall of Occupy’s Zuccotti Park camp, but does point to how dominant cultural languages (such as foodie culture) can influence other political discourses. OCCUPY BREAKS INTO MAIN STREAM MEDIA—WITH FOOD For many, Occupy was a mysterious Other—why would people give up normal comforts to camp in Zuccotti Park? How can the group operate without having leaders or making specific policy demands? News media often uses familiar frames to normalize or fit new events to patterns we already know: with movements, often it has been to marginalize, trivialize, or show dissention among protesters when reporting movement issues, 16 or to fit protest into the conflict frames of police action typical of crime reporting. However, food reporting has gained prominence, giving yet another familiar frame to cover movements. When mainstream media were largely covering police actions and arrests of Occupy, food and lifestyle writers focused on the day to day living of activists including reports on what activists were eating, who was cooking, who was donating food, and how (or if) the camp was sanitary. “Foodie” news, or reporting focused on chef profiles, ingredient exposés, and cooking techniques, has become the dominant food writing genre. 17 Now, it is “breaking news” for magazine Bon Apétit when Ben & Jerry’s supports Occupy through food donation. 18 Foodie culture, frames of food writing, and even food reviewing as a means to understand and “review” the movement became part of Occupy’s publicity, garnering attention in outlets not typically covering social movement news. This section outlines norms of food writing to give context to the focus on Occupy’s food during October 2011, which worked both to build the Occupy movement as well as to criticize it. Occupy emerged from a series of events and groups organizing in the wake of the 2008 recession. Gitlin chronicles how journalist calls for a “movement of the 99 percent” coincided with Anonymous, 19 New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts, and others organizing encampments outside New York Mayor Bloomberg’s Office and a planned Zuccotti Park protest before AdBusters sent out their infamous blog post and tweet to Occupy Wall Street. 20 AdBusters’ call posted on July 13, 2011, with the now iconic image of a ballerina atop the Wall Street Bull sculpture, to “Occupy Wall Street” on September 17th–the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution—asked people to “set up tents, kitchens, peaceful

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barricades and occupy Wall Street.” 21 Occupy was already gaining momentum before September 17 with the “We Are the 99 percent” Tumblr page, and the initial march on Wall Street and encampment was no small affair with over 1,000 in attendance, and 100–200 staying to camp. 22 Yet, mainstream media paid little attention to the activists until nearly a week into the occupation. Some Occupy activists claim mainstream media maintained a media blackout, although Gitlin notes the New York Times and other news outlets did have stories of Occupy during the first week. At the same time, Gitlin notes National Public Radio waited to cover the story until later because of the “small number” of activists, with other news outlets not knowing what to report on as Occupy was a bunch of revolutionary dreamers with no specific grievances. However, news coverage and internet searches for Occupy began to increase around September 24, when New York Police Department’s Anthony Bologna pepper sprayed women protesters at point blank range. 23 News frameworks typically cover conflict and police brutality stories, so the September 24 incident was then followed by coverage of 700 protesters arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1. National and international media were then present to report on the nearly 10,000 demonstrators marching through Manhattan on October 5. Around this time is when journalists began to vary their coverage on Occupy and turned their attention to food, reporting on food donations sent to the camp from across the country, as well as how the camp organized to feed over 1,000 each day. The October 1 protests gained the attention of local chefs, who began to volunteer for Occupy Kitchen. 24 Those same chefs were the focus of profiles in stories emphasizing the five-star cuisine being served by those who used to cook at luxury hotels or who had experience working with acclaimed celebrity chefs such as Mario Batali. 25 News coverage of Occupy in October 2011 is largely all about the food. Focusing on food by news media is no surprise as food entertainment has exploded over the past decade. Food is part of popular culture alongside film or theater, where millions of “foodies” eat in restaurants as their primary form of entertainment. 26 Food is literal entertainment for viewers of the Food Network (reaching over 80 percent of homes with a television) or those that tune into the plethora of cooking competition shows on network and cable TV (Top Chef, Master Chef, Hell’s Kitchen, and Chopped to name just a few). O’Neill reports there were fewer than twenty food magazines in the 1950s, but by 2003, over 145 food magazines with a readership of nearly 20 million exist. More chefs receive celebrity status not just through James Beard awards or Michelin stars, but because of name recognition through winning their own cooking TV show or because they can tout beating Bobby Flay in his latest cooking showdown program. As food culture has gained value for “foodies” and the general public alike, the same cultural capital conveyed to celebrity chefs is asso-

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ciated with Occupy with every endorsement from famous chefs and those working in Occupy Kitchen. Food reporting, however, did not always carry this cultural capital. Once being the domain of journalists not cut out for hard news and relegated to publishing recipes for food advertisers in the 1950s, by 2001, some of the top journalists were being moved to food sections with top writers approaching food stories with the same research as reporting on foreign policy or arts stories. 27 Instead of publishing favorable reviews to gain advertising dollars from restaurants, New York Times’ Craig Claiborne invoked a new ethic to reporting where journalists had to refuse compensated meals or sponsored trips, systematizing reviewing into a four-star rating, only given after multiple, anonymous dining experiences. 28 When Mimi Sheraton took over for Claiborne in 1975, she recognized food reviewing should follow hard news norms: not only should critics describing dishes, but should also explain the context of where that food comes from, whether talking about international culture or food industry. 29 Although a majority of food writing still exists as entertainment and has been criticized for only helping consumers become more discriminating, 30 food writing has influenced cultural relationships and identities by ushering “readers into social, geographic, and cultural worlds where they otherwise might not go.” 31 Food has always been a signifying practice, where “people declare their social, cultural, and class allegiances with what they eat,” 32 and food readers have also changed in the new foodie landscape. Whereas Gourmet magazine was targeted to “food connoisseurs” and not home cooks when launched in 1941, it began to include more recipes, albeit those catering to upper-class hostesses serving the latest trend. 33 O’Neill notes food writers were there to give lifestyle advice, and served as a lesson of gender and class training. The food writer was an arbiter of taste, presenting worlds for the reader to aspire. Although promotion of the latest food trends by appointed critics still occurs, their advice now competes with the numerous food bloggers and Yelp reviewers who have also gained celebrity status, with restaurants holding press dinners and preview meals for these amateur critics. 34 The rise of food blogging has pushed mainstream presses to do more reviewing online, providing the instantaneous reactions akin to Yelp reviews, based on first impressions and single meal experiences—leaving behind the rules established by Claiborne. Cuozzo’s review, for example, was based on one experience, tasted from the donated soup kitchen prep space, without accounting for the entire context of Occupy’s operation. The genre of food reviewing has become a shared language, taken up by professionals and the general public, and although might show thematic differences, all food reviews work to shape and influence our collective tastes, how we identify, and even position us politically.

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In an age where our cultural tastes have become more fragmented, food culture has gained cultural capital by becoming a dominant shared cultural resource. As Lindenfeld argues, “Food is an important site for studying the contestation of cultural citizenship, that is, the kind of citizenship that appears in everyday life, in the consumption of goods and services, and in the leisure activities and entertainment.” 35 Through the shared language of food, we assert our identity and politics through what we cook, eat, or review. Occupy was able to claim a space in our public attention because of the food it served, which also opened space to present its politics. Similarly, Cooks, following de Certeau, argues food has always been a “tactic of the weak,” acting as a means to resist or exercise power over others. Our food systems and consumer choices are an everyday act of resistance as these choices become more dictated by states and corporations. Resistance, then, is defined around how we obtain, share, and live through food. 36 Food marks the “dominant ordering of social relations,” and thus stands in for “both compliance and resistance to dominant forces in the culture.” 37 Thus, analyzing Occupy through discourse about its food shows how food frames reflects the movement and opposition to the movement. FOOD SUPPORT, MOVEMENT SUPPORT Food has a way of bringing people together, and as Kaufmann contends, “Sharing food has always set the seal on friendship and peace and forges social bonds in all societies.” 38 Some of the first food reporting on Occupy came from aligned movement groups reporting on camp experiences. Melanie Butler, reporting for CODEPINK, gave an hour by hour account of day three at the encampment for the Global Exchange blog. 39 In between reports of activists getting arrested, Butler notes how the food committee has not let anyone go hungry—evidence for how organized and well-managed the occupation. She then relays how a member of Occupy’s media team sees her CODEPINK T-shirt, and thanks her for the oatmeal, having read about CODEPINK’s donation via Twitter. After a day of demonstrations, protesters are rewarded with the now ubiquitous pizzas. Butler makes specific mention about a dumpster-diving committee being formed, highlighting activist politics to reclaim usable “waste” in the form of supplies or even food, symbolizing a politics against corporate excess. She also notes how the food committee was concerned about a lack of vegan options for activists as Occupy practiced a politics of inclusion even with dietary options, and Butler assures readers she has always had enough to eat. Her pizza meal was from the delivery of vegan ones. Social bonds at Occupy were being made from activists groups donating to Occupy, but also in emphasizing that Occupy was where

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many activists could be at home—where political choices through food were being accommodated by the various offerings. Emphasizing that there was enough to eat was also to demonstrate the organization and strength of the movement to sustain their protest, encouraging others to come or help support the camp’s presence for the long haul. For example, independent journalist Kevin Gosztola reported about the pizza orders coming from around the world to support Occupiers, suggesting the steady supply of pizza was proof the occupation could be long lasting through the continued support from donors. 40 Gosztola’s post also includes phone numbers and websites for readers to order and donate other food to Occupiers, arguing these donations help energize the activists. Food reporting centered on supporting Occupy through food donations, emphasizes the strength of the movement through highlighting the abundant food resources, and emphasizes the normality of protesters through the everyday foods present at the camp. Identification through food works to frame the movement positively and fulfills Bowers and Ochs’ agitation functions of promulgation, solidification, and nonviolent resistance. Although a shared language of food translated into some apolitical food tourism, importantly, the frameworks of food helped to build the Occupy movement. Solidification includes persuasive techniques used to unite followers or create a sense of community. 41 Benford and Snow extend this concept with their development of collective action frames used in social movements, or the messages and tactics aiming to mobilize constituents, garner bystander support, and legitimize social movement actions. 42 Food reporting of the movement utilized these frames by identifying food as a means to donate and support the movement. For a general audience, with celebrity chefs, well-known restaurants, and well-known brand products being among the list of donated items, Occupy was legitimatized through association, showing others it was safe to support the cause if their favorite TV chef donated resources. Food, then, is the shared cultural resource for bystanders to understand and participate in Occupy. Collective action frames work to interpret experience and guide action, often by simplifying and condensing aspects of the “world out there.” 43 Headlines from Occupy during the month of October indicate this collective action frame, with attention paid to how daily operations of the camp worked. “Wall Street Protest Functions Like a Small City,” 44 or “Feeding the Masses, Fueling a Movement” 45 exemplify stories highlighting the variety of goods and foods donated to Occupy, and listing the items of Occupy’s pantry or daily menus. The camp grew to 100–200 permanent occupants, with thousands more visiting and organizing during daylight hours, necessitating the feeding of thousands daily. Anywhere from 12–15 cooks ran what was named the “People’s Kitchen,” with kitchen operations being a collective effort of those managing dona-

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tions, prepping food that did not require cooking at Zuccotti, or others cooking from donated apartment kitchens or eventually a more permanent soup kitchen space in Brooklyn offered by Overcoming Love Ministries. 46 Reports like these offer not only a list of the kinds of foods offered at Occupy (ranging from granola bars, eggplant parmigiana, to fresh fruits and vegetables), but also the range of organizations, restaurants, and farms lining up to support Occupy through food. Other food movement activists can identify with Occupy through the emphasis of quality and vegetarian friendly foods, while others can associate positive qualities to the movement through language, such as “organic,” that has gained value in our food discourse. At the same time, for as many references to the locally sourced, organic produce being sent to Occupy from New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts farms, there were references to more recognizable brand name foods donated: Wolfgang Puck soup, Pepperidge Farm crackers, and SPAM among them. Activists were as likely to be eating deli sandwiches or pulled pork as they were vegan pizzas, while some activists would forgo the communal food altogether if they had the means to provide their own food. Again, the variety of foods identified in the food reporting is a reflection of the diverse issues and activists included in Occupy, while also showing the tension of defining new politics while dependent on and interwoven in the (food) systems already present. Activists were grateful to local restaurants such as Liberatos Pizza and Katz’s Deli for providing food, but recognizing that these businesses were profiting from the donations ordered. Fitting to norms of food writing, this free publicity cued owners to provide quotes emphasizing the quality of the food, with Katz’s Deli only sending food to the camp that would travel well (deli sandwiches, but not latkes). 47 Occupy was legitimized through its association with these name brands, emphasis of quality food, and famous restaurants, as well as gaining the social proof that the public supported Occupy’s goals through its continued donation of supplies. Reporters found participants declaring they ate better at Occupy, some even noting they were gaining weight, while others conveyed they had so much food during the third week that they would need to donate some of it to shelters. 48 By reporting on what protesters are eating, and showing they were eating “normal” foods donated by other regular citizens, the general public would be more open to listening to the issue messages of Occupy. As Benford and Snow argue, the more inclusive and flexible the frame used, the more it is able to become a master frame, or a more generic frame that can be applied to different contexts. The more specific focus on the food operations of the protest opened to include Occupy as part of other general food reporting—such as chef profiles. Media appointed spokespersons for the movement were Eric Smith, who once worked as executive chef at a luxury hotel, and Chris O’Donnell who worked under celebrity chef

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Mario Batali. Huffington Post even had a series of “faces of Zuccotti Park,” choosing Sean Dolan as “The Chef” featured. 49 This framing forces the association between the quality of food served with the quality of the movement. We are assured that the food is prepared following the same guidelines as five-star establishments as we are reading interviews with the head chef directly. Legitimation through identification of food, amplified by endorsements by celebrity chefs, allowed for discourses of promulgation and showing how food is a tactic of nonviolent resistance. For Bowers and Ochs, promulgation includes the means activists use to publicly proclaim their goals and issues and can include use of mass media, staging of events, or mass meetings. Food writers were extensions of Occupy, using the space of their columns to connect broader food movement goals to the breaking news of protester food. Huffington Post proclaimed, “The Food Movement must Occupy Wall Street,” 50 while Mother Jones requested “Foodies, Get Thee to Occupy Wall Street.” 51 These articles connect the broader issue of how concentrated power in the hands of a few ruined the economy, to how corporate takeovers also affect food systems from Monsato controlling and patenting the seeds used to grow food to the monopolies creating the processed foods filling most shelves of the grocery store. Connections like these prompted Slow Food USA to endorse Occupy on its website, proclaiming that the good, clean and fair food offered at Occupy aligns with their movement, and although “We might not all agree on all the ideologies of OWS [. . .] their position on what is happening to our food system is spot on!” 52 In terms of collective action frames, this indicates the process of frame bridging or where two or more “ideological congruent but structurally unconnected frames regarding a particular issue or problem” become aligned. 53 Importantly for movements, aligning with other organizations, public sentiment, or powerful individuals allows movement networks to grow and thrive. Food for Occupy was more than message promulgation and frame alignments; “feeding the movement” was itself an act of non-violent resistance, or more so a means of pre-figurative politics to serve as a food safety net in a world where many go hungry. Using what might otherwise go to waste with dumpster diving, promoting healthy eating, supporting local farmers, and ensuring that all eating needs were met show how a different social order is possible through enacting and living it. The food politics practices of Occupy were also reflected in the discourse of the larger movement such as on a Tumblr named “We are the 99 Percent,” 54 where individuals would handwrite their stories of how they had been affected by the recession. Not surprisingly, many of these stories relate to food—those living on food stamps, those dealing with hunger, and those concerned about where their next meal will come from. Those donating food or kitchen space saw their donations as helping create a world that addressed the larger food security issues noted by

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Tumblr participants. As one woman who donated her kitchen stated, “It’s all about sharing resources and creating a world where 100 percent of people can have their needs met, and we think we should lead by example.” 55 Although supporters may not have known or supported all the various causes and issues represented by Occupy, they supported those willing to take a stand—supporting in a way that any political perspective would approve in feeding the hungry. Writing about the food of Occupy, then, was part of strategies of agitation: utilizing frames of food journalism to produce social movement collective action frames. In part, food itself was the mechanism to promote these frames with food having the ability to communicate positive identity and solidarity, 56 and that by feeding and eating with others, we declare individual or collective identities. 57 Similarly, Staggenborg and Lang point to the use of cultural productions, ritual events and practices, and cultural centers as essential to maintaining movements over time by “renewing the energies of existing activists and providing spaces for newcomers to encounter movement ideologies, activists, and tactics.” 58 Food becomes a shared cultural production in that way since, although different, we all have food rituals and consumption practices. As protester Deborah Mulligan (who was also part of the Madison, Wisconsin Capitol occupation) stated, “When you eat together and break bread together, you talk and you learn and you get even more informed and inspired.” 59 At the same time, cultural productions run the risk of obscuring the political import of an event, with participants joining for the entertainment value. The food review writing of Occupy suggests this double-edge sword: indeed more people were mobilized and supported the movement with resources, but others ventured down to Zuccotti Park as a tourist destination, lured by descriptions of the “developed a cuisine . . . free form, eclectic, improvisatory, and contradictory.” 60 Zagat even wrote about their “food tour” through Occupy, noting the food trucks on surrounding streets (serving everything from smoothies to gyros), the protesters eating McDonald’s, or asking an activist what he was having for breakfast (asking him to describe his plate of scrambled eggs and hash browns). 61 Yahoo News posted its own Occupy Wall Street Dining Guide, directing readers to where they would likely find police, journalists, and out-oftowners eating, 62 while other reported about intrepid tourists actually using Zuccotti as a tourist destination, some of which left inspired while others thought they might encounter violence given what they had seen on the news. 63 As much of the food writing was not dictated by Occupy activists, the openness of the frame allowed for the writing to venture into food-as-entertainment instead of food-as-political. Just because food writing had the potential to connect to political contexts of what we eat, does not mean that most food writers follow that trend. Brown warns that food reporting is sliding back towards the entertainment side of the

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lifestyle continuum, shying away from incisive coverage of industry producing the food. We should be wary of turning movements into forms of entertainment, limiting our exposure to its politics. Food frames shed light on the ways the general public makes sense of movements that seem foreign to their own experiences. The particular framing of Occupy as a food “tour” resembles patterns of how individuals negotiate with and enter into “new” cultures through food. Although typical of food writers to introduce the new and exotic foods to readers, people actually touring and eating from Occupy Kitchen is similar to how travels negotiate new cultures through food. Travelers at first are curious to try the exotic foods (but following their home food rituals such as meal times), but eventually want to have home foods (and liking those better by comparison). 64 Similarly, Shugart’s analysis of the use of food in films demonstrates how food is used “to engage and assuage anxieties attendant on contemporary cultural ambiguities and permeabilities,” 65 for her, centered around race and gender but could easily be applied to any groups exhibiting “lateral deviance” or those using “outsider” systems, norms, and values. 66 In this way, food serves as a boundary to safely engage and begin to learn about the movement without necessarily having to become part. Regardless of whether food is the means to bring in new activists or just curious individuals, food writer Mark Bittman sees it all as positive. He notes, “What we need are more activists who are interested in food than ‘food activists’. . . [and] a movement that question everything—from food justice to economic justice—is a fine start.” 67 RIGHT-WING REVIEWS AND ATTACK ON OCCUPY Although food has been part of movements in the past, it is a new phenomenon that a movement might be evaluated through an actual food review. On one hand, the legitimacy conveyed through food reviewing is somewhat revolutionary and allows readers to see both upper-class and lower-class food as equal—an aim aligned with Occupy. For example, restaurant critic Ruth Rietchl was one of the first to disrupt the star-rating system by using it not only for fine dining, but also ethnic cuisine in the far corners of Los Angeles. 68 However, the New York Post sending their critic, Steve Cuozzo to Occupy’s food prep kitchen in Brooklyn probably was not intended for the same ends as Rietchl’s review practices. The fact Cuozzo reviewed Occupy’s food was news in itself with The Gothamist proclaiming, “Post Critic Steve Cuozzo Goes Behind Enemy Lines, Dines at Occupy Wall Street.” 69 The Gothamist goes on to point out the hypocrisy of the Post’s own reporting because as Cuozzo was panning the food, while another Post article by Rebecca Rosenberg mocks protesters for “eating like kings.” 70 The Gothamist believes the Post’s reviews will backfire, sending more to join the revolution that also “enjoy the virtues of

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fine dining,” but Epicurious sees Cuozzo’s review for what it really is: using the frames of “organic” and “grass fed” to associate Occupiers with the “dirty hippies,” and finding any headline possible to call Occupiers hypocrites. 71 Although the “bad” review did not gain much traction to discredit Occupy, other news stories critiquing the restaurant conditions and operations of Occupy Kitchen did have circulation among right-wing outlets and pundits, working to quell Occupy support through creating its food as dangerous and unsanitary. This strategy of control, counterpersuasion, demonstrates how the shared experience and languages of food can also work against movements. If the successful operations of Occupy Kitchen demonstrated the effectiveness of the movement, then finding fault in food services could also be used to find fault in the utopian ideals of Occupy. The New York Post not only countered the “quality” food reports through their own food reviews, but also discredited the movement when reporting the kitchen volunteers were overworked and underappreciated and, therefore, were going to stop feeding “freeloading” homeless and other occupants. 72 This story was immediately picked up and spread to other news outlets (e.g. Huffington Post, the Gothamist) prompting Occupiers to initiate counterstatements (such as to the Atlantic Wire 73) to deny the claims Occupy no longer had an “open door” or inclusive policy to care for any who wanted to participate in the camp. The truth was the kitchen working group needed to scale back, re-strategize, and figure out how best to continue serving thousands of meals a day—especially since they found themselves serving “legitimate” protesters, homeless who relocated (or were relocated) to Zuccotti Park, tourists curious about what Occupiers were eating, and others literally grabbing a free meal in the park. 74 Despite the seemingly minor hiccup in the otherwise successful operations of a spontaneous encampment, right-wing bloggers and pundits could not let go of the story, charging Occupiers with hypocrisy, accusing them of turning conservative, and using this moment as a means to advocate their own principles of free markets and capitalism. The Right’s logic: Occupy cannot claim to be inclusive of all if it turns away some looking for free food; Occupy cannot advocate “socialist” policies if they deny “handouts” to the homeless. Although some writers came to Occupy’s defense, 75 the understanding of Occupy as a restaurant, allowed for it to be controlled through right-wing and other Establishment discourses. Because of how the Occupiers were eating, their politics could be discredited. One strategy of control is through the avoidance technique of counterpersuasion. Bowers, Ochs, Jensen, and Schulz describe counterpersuasion as members of the establishment discussing with leaders of the dissent movement about why they are wrong, but we could extend that counterpersuasion can occur between any groups of the extended networks of movements and countermovements. 76 In this case, right-wing or conser-

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vative media used food reporting to persuade neutral or progressive audiences not to identify with Occupy. In an age of social media, what is reported in one media outlet is allowed to be repeated, repurposed, and continually spread through the blogosphere network, where counterpersuasion occurs from a variety of sources to a variety of audiences. Counterpersuasion occurs every day when it comes to food: through the proliferation of newspaper food reviews, but more so through the plethora of Yelp and immediate online social media reviewing. Whereas we used to rely on food writers to enable readers to become more discriminating and expert consumers, 77 online avenues allow us to be experts ourselves—and not very forgiving ones at that. Online reviews follow the same norms as regular food reviews, paying attention to the taste, presentation, and quality of food, but also the ambiance and atmosphere (including cleanliness) of the restaurant. Just as some food reviewers decry the immediate reviewing of restaurants due to this online culture (however unfair those reviews might be), 78 the same norms were placed on Occupy’s food—no matter how DIY and decisively uncommercial their operations were. Anti-Occupy forces used this to their advantage, with any associations to Zuccotti being “dirty” used to justify evicting the camp. 79 Combined with U.S. American hyper-sanitized norms of food with our abundance of food safety regulation, health codes inspections, and food contamination scares, the already “exotic” cuisine of Occupy could be seen as dangerous. Scholars have noted individuals’ food consumption is overall conservative and resistant to acculturation or change, with foods cultures accustomed to different hygienic standards being particularly problematic for U.S. American palates. 80 Even for adventurous eaters, seeing buffets of beans and rice without knowing quite how or where they were prepared could turn away those accustomed to eating from pasteurized, plastic-wrapped brand name packages. To combat the “dirty” frame, pro-Occupy articles, especially those that interviewed members of Occupy Kitchen, referenced how food preparation was kept sanitary, including the efforts to obtain an industrial kitchen space for food prep. Bloggers interviewed kitchen volunteers who emphasized how clean the kitchen was and volunteers’ use of gloves, sanitizers, and even non-organic soap. 81 The implication, of course, is that Occupiers are not “dirty hippies” as they use regular industrial soap for sanitation. Discourse of sanitation and health inspections manifested with someone posting an “A” rating sign like the ones used by the Health Department. 82 Although the reports of the rating were to make fun of the kitchen volunteers who initially posted a picture on Twitter believing it to be genuine, it still gave kitchen volunteers an opportunity to be quoted on how much they pride the cleanliness of Occupy Kitchen. After the main camp eviction on November 15, 2011, Occupiers took extra pains to show how much they follow health regulations when planning Thanksgiving dinner for 2,000. From Occupy’s own

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webpage, they emphasize how “individually wrapped plates” would be distributed in accordance with New York State Health Code and that the entrees were overseen by a former high-end chef and owners of Texas BBQ. 83 As feeding the movement was part of support of the nonviolent resistance of the encampment as well as demonstrating the food politics of supporting local, non-factory farms (in part), showing that Occupy Kitchen indeed operated as other restaurant kitchens was necessary to keep movement support. The goal with counterpersuasion is for one side (the Establishment most often) to emerge as the “reasonable” party, attempting to make the other side of the conflict understand the truth of the situation, with escalation of agitators as proof of their unreasonableness and unwillingness to deliberate. If Occupy could not feed everyone with organic, locally sourced food, or maintain sanitation standards of commercial kitchens, then the Establishment could use that as evidence of how factory farming and government regulation was still the best policy to feed America. A dirty kitchen equated with dirty politics. However, in terms of the sanitation debate, Occupy seemed to have the upper hand, thus this issue was not taken up by right-wing pundits nearly as much as the issues of eating elitist food and turning away “freeloaders”—both more directly related to Occupy’s politics. On October 27, 2011, every right-wing personality from Rush Limbaugh to bloggers couldn’t report enough of the Occupy cooks being tired of freeloaders, rationing food, starving out vagrants and ex-convicts, and underscoring how Occupiers don’t like distributing their own wealth (and therefore might be becoming conservative by not sharing their accumulated/donated wealth). In fact, a majority of articles in a Google or LexisNexis Academic search about Occupy Kitchen point to this controversy. Led by articles in the Post, the latest food news was how Occupy cooks refused to serve food for two hours, and had made plans to scale back the “high end” menu in favor of more “spartan grub” of sandwiches and chips. 84 Paired with reports of “professional homeless” and “glassy-eyed druggies” taking over the camp contributing to reports of violence and lack of security in the camp, construct a narrative both of danger and the unwillingness of Occupiers to live up to their ideals. Occupy Kitchen volunteers denied the allegations they were “protesting” to dissuade the non-protesters from eating there, and emphasized how even in their reorganization process, they would still provide food or at least a list of other food resources for those that needed it. 85 Right-wing bloggers, however, continued to have fun pointing out the “sweet irony” of Occupiers rationing their “brown rice gruel,” and even using this as an opportunity to show how “Obamacare” would also fail by having people abuse a “free” handout. 86 Kitchen operations, then, were used to represent Occupy’s political agenda at-large in order to criticize and counterpersuade against it.

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However practical the need to regroup and limit the food offers at the camp, this opened up space for right-wing media to criticize the movement’s political philosophy by turning Occupy into the same “Them” they protested against. For a movement that touts inclusivity and creating alternative systems, stopping food services was read by conservatives as demonstrating the futility of the movement. Matt, writing for Conservative Hideout 2.0, pointed out how Occupy “heavily favors re-distributive forms of government, like communism. . . . However, they seem to not practice what they preach in this situation.” 87 A blogger on Newsbusters.org wondered “Do you think any of the OWS protesters will realize the flaws of socialism based on their bad experiences with socialist principles at OWS protests?” 88 Perhaps most hurtful is Rush Limbaugh’s depictions of Occupiers as now being the 1 percent who won’t feed the homeless or “share the organic wealth.” 89 While polarization or creating an “us vs. them” defined by issues or individuals is a common agitation strategy, 90 the Right used the kitchen shut down moment to equate Occupy with the 1 percent—upholding the Right’s own position against socialism. The moves of the Right also show how movements, and the broader food movement, have to guard against arguments of hypocrisy to delegitimize their aims. Hypocrisy is a common criticism for those in the broader food movement and those that write politically about food. Stokes outlines criticisms of the Slow Food movement, in that their quest to provide taste education, they also point consumers to rarified ingredients that might be outside the grasp of most consumers. 91 Food writers like Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, or Bill McKibben were instrumental in creating a trend of writing about the political, environmental, and ethical implications of food, but at the same time, are criticized for not readily acknowledging their “boutique” eating is a luxury good. 92 Eating locally and sustainably with seasonal ingredients is not available to all in a society still run by factory farms and corporate food processers. As Cooks argues, food is political as it is no longer a widely accessible and equally produced resource, and that there are still class divides between those who can afford locally or organically produced food versus the more readily available refined and chemically processed foods. Moreover, the food Establishment has been successful in limiting discourse critical to Genetically Modified Foods or transparent food labeling practices, 93 making it easy to discredit those who protest against the “rich” companies such as Monsato, but then eat food otherwise reserved for the wealthy. 94 On top of that, Occupy’s hypocrisy was in seemingly turning away the poor who couldn’t afford healthy food, even though they had abundance. The Right’s criticism of Occupy’s food, primed through the Post’s food review, was a means to frame the movement as a restaurant. Readers, then, evaluate the quality of the politics through the quality of service, who eats there, and what is being served. For the Right, the focus on food

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is a means to construct Occupy as elite or “fine dining” against the regular citizens struggling and eating Hamburger Helper. Food and politics are often linked with, as Lindenfeld describes, food providing a medium for social class critique, 95 or, as Click and Ridberg describe, food is a means to examine the cultural impact and political possibilities of everyday practices. 96 Thus the same medium used to bring political awareness, also became a means to discredit Occupy’s politics. At the same time, the quick, immediate review culture developed from food blogging, has eliminated most of the “hard news” aspects of food reviewing, making it easy for the Right to condemn separating soup broth without also having to provide the context or explanation of cooking conditions or the “socialist” politics of Occupy being able to make use of donated space and volunteer time. Missing in all the discourse of how the kitchen was not operating smoothly is questioning why Occupiers have become responsible for taking care of the homeless, the loss of other social safety nets, or why alternative systems are held to higher standards than politics as usual. 97 CONCLUSION: THE REVOLUTION SHOULD NOT BE FOOD REVIEWED? “The soundtrack at the pop-up is a near-constant cacophony of construction noise, the wail of sirens and the pounding of drum circles, and it is almost certainly the only dining establishment in America with a cartoon drawing of a ‘global tapeworm’ a few feet from where people line up for lunch.” 98 This is part of the New York Times reporting of Occupy’s food, where writer Jeff Gordinier combines descriptions of a “make-shift” kitchen with the trendier “pop-up” and likens the improvisation necessary when dealing with donated items to an episode of Chopped. In all, Gordinier provides a fair assessment, attempting to paint the picture of the whole food scene, akin to famed critics Gael Greene and Ruth Rietchel who used more hyperbolic descriptions and dialogue from diners as part of their reviews. 99 The politics of Occupy being reduced to sound bites of vague “support of what the people are doing here” combined with “And who doesn’t love a cookie?” 100 As a frame meant to simplify and interpret the complex politics and operations of Occupy, Gordinier’s reporting for the dining section utilizes the cultural language of food to provide interest and intrigue for readers without alienating readers opposed to the protest in general. In this way, food reviewing and the focus of Occupy’s food was helpful in gaining media attention and support from those who donated to the camp. The flipside of this, however, is exemplified by Esquire’s “Eat Like a Man” blog who briefly assures us Occupiers are eating well, but ending the post with “Well, I’m told there are actual demands down there” with

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a hyperlink to Esquire’s political blog outlining what some have “come to find” at Occupy Wall Street. 101 Missing from all this food reporting—at least from more mainstream outlets—are any descriptions of Occupy’s actual food politics or even links to an Occupy General Assembly list of grievances noting the movement’s stance against corporatized farming. 102 The limited sound bites from chefs like Eric Smith directly talking about Monsato or why it’s important to support organic farmers doesn’t do enough to tie what we eat to its politics, nor best represents how food is part of the overall Occupy Movement. For, as Schein argues, “The ambitions of the park occupations went beyond simple meeting space, however, implicitly linking the political vision of OWS with the communal provision of basic human necessities in the park—food, shelter and washrooms, as well as books, music, and space for recreation.” 103 Schein argues, the camp was clear evidence of the lack of public spaces, and the struggles of people without the luxury of private ownership to have their rights and needs rendered invisible—privatization has led to an absence of basic material security. Somehow this message gets lost amidst descriptions of scrambled egg breakfasts and vegan chili. In this, the movement should not be food reviewed, unless that food review resists food blogging norms and includes the systematic analysis of some of the best food reporting. There is a potential to utilize the shared language and experience of food to align and bridge with diverse audiences who may not recognize the politics embedded in the food, but only if writers find a balance between writing trendy reports and focus on issues. On the movement side, the food writing of Occupy also provides lessons of how to utilize dominant cultural frames and transforming them into collective action frames, with the recognition that counter-movements and Establishment forces will also do the same. The more inclusive the frame, the more it is open to interpretation and use by all sides of an issue conflict. The jury of public opinion is still evaluating the effectiveness of the Occupy Movement. Localized organizations have been instrumental helping owners fight home foreclosures, getting ballot initiatives combatting political campaign finance, and developing activist networks in their home communities. The Occupy movement at large did work to change national conversations about the economy, student debt, and food production. Even the troubled legacy of Occupy’s food lives on: where protesters used to be, artisanal food trucks now “camp”—albeit with paid permits to prevent being evicted as the Occupiers were. 104 NOTES 1. Peter Smith, “Watch Your Mouth: The Protest Food of Occupy Wall Street and the Protest Food of our Generation,” Good, October 11, 2011, http://magazine.good.is/ articles/watch-your-mouth-the-protest-food-of-occupy-wall-street.

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2. Jean-Claude Kaufmann, The Meaning of Cooking, trans. David Macey (Malden, MA: Polity, 2010). 3. Barry Brummett, “Food and Communication: An Overview,” First Amendment Studies 48, no. 1 (2014): 1–4. 4. Helene A. Shugart, “Sumptuous Texts: Consuming ‘Otherness’ in the Food Film Genre,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 25, no. 1 (2008): 68–90. 5. Cited in Smith. 6. Ibid. 7. Doug Brown, “Haute Cuisine,” American Journalism Review 26, no. 1 (2004): 50–55; see also Molly O’Neill, “Food Porn,” Columbia Journalism Review 42, no. 3 (2003): 38–45. 8. M. O’Neill. 9. John W. Bowers, Donovan J. Ochs, Richard J. Jensen, and David P. Schulz, The Rhetoric of Agitation and Control, 3rd ed. (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2010). Bowers and Ochs initially published this theory in 1971, with subsequent editions including new co-authors. 10. Steve Cuozzo, “Cordon Bleu Behind the Cordon of Blue,” New York Post, October 19, 2011, http://nypost.com/2011/10/19/cordon-bleu-behind-the-cordon-of-blue/. 11. Ibid. 12. Rebecca Rosenberg, “Protest Mob is Enjoying Rich Diet,” New York Post, October 19, 2011, http://nypost.com/2011/10/19/protest-mob-is-enjoying-rich-diet/. 13. Charles J. Stewart, Craig Allen Smith, and Robert E. Denton, Jr., Persuasion and Social Movements, 5th ed. (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2007). 14. Bowers and Ochs initially developed this in the 1970s with pre-social media age movements in mind. 15. See Saki Knafo, “Occupy Wall Street Protesters Clean Zuccotti Park in Preparation of Evacuation,” Huffington Post, October 13, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost. com/2011/10/13/occupy-wall-street-clean-zucotti-park_n_1010092.html. 16. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (with a New Preface) (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003). 17. M. O’Neill reports that in 2000, nearly 80 percent of all New York Times food section stories are devoted to “foodie” news. 18. Sam Dean, “Ice Cream Activism! Ben & Jerry’s Publicly Supports Occupy Wall Street,” Bon Appétit, October 10, 2011, http://www.bonappetit.com/trends/article/icecream-activism-ben-jerry-s-publicly-supports-occupy-wall-street. 19. Anonymous is a hacktivist group that utilizes cyberattacks on government and corporate websites for political purposes. 20. Todd Gitlin, Occupy Nation: The Roots, The Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street (New York: itbooks/Harper Collins, 2012). 21. Cited in Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Malden, MA: Polity, 2012): 159. 22. Castells. 23. Kevin M. DeLuca, Sean Lawson, and Ye Sun, “Occupy Wall Street on the Public Screen of Social Media: The Many Framings of the Birth of a Protest Movement,” Communication, Culture, & Critique 5 (2012): 483–509. 24. Chris O’Donnell began to volunteer after a friend was arrested on Brooklyn Bridge (see Cyndi Amaya, “Occupy Wall Street’s Kitchen,” Marcus Samuelsson.com, October 20, 2011, http://www.marcussamuelsson.com/news/occupy-wall-street percentE2 percent80 percent99s-kitchen). Chef Sean Dolan came to Occupy after being fired, and noted cooking for Occupy brought his cooking passion back (see Hunter Stuart, “Faces of Zuccotti Park: The Chef,” Huffington Post, October 11, 2011, http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/11/occupy-wall-street-zuccotti-chef_n_1088870. html). 25. See for example the profile on Eric Smith: “Five-star Occupy Wall Street Chef— Broke, but Proud,” RT News, October 25, 2011, http://rt.com/usa/occupy-chef-eric-

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smith-727/. Smith is cited and used as spokesperson often in other reports and reviews of Occupy’s food. 26. See Brown and also Robert Sietsema, “Everyone Eats . . . But that Doesn’t Make You a Restaurant Critic,” Columbia Journalism Review 48, no. 5 (2010): 42–46. 27. See Brown. Quoting famed food critic Ruth Riechel, understanding what Americans eat today also requires knowledge of government and immigration policy as well as understanding the history and geography of specific ingredients. 28. See Brown. See also Sietsema. Claiborne became food editor in 1957. 29. Sietsema. See also Kimberly Wilmot Voss, “Food Journalism or Culinary Anthropology? Re-evaluating Soft News and the Influence of Jeanne Voltz’s Food Section in the Los Angeles Times, American Journalism 29, no. 2 (2012): 66–91, for the connection between food writing and hard news. 30. See Brown. 31. M. O’Neill, 39. 32. Brummett, 1. 33. M. O’Neill. 34. See Sietsema. Sietsema does note that more “professional” food bloggers have established their own code of ethics in 2009, and some retain similar standards of reviewing after multiple visits or revealing if they received free food. 35. Laura Lindenfeld, “Can Documentary Food Films Like Food Inc. Achieve their Promise?” Environmental Communication 4, no. 3 (2010): 380. 36. Leda Cooks, “You are What You (Don’t) Eat? Food, Identity, and Resistance,” Text and Performance Quarterly, 29, no. 1 (2009): 94–110. 37. Cooks, 95 (italics hers). 38. Kaufmann, 51. 39. “The 99 percent Demand Occupy Wall Street! Bring Our War $$ Home!” Global Exchange, September 23, 2011, http://www.globalexchange.org/blogs/peopletopeople/ 2011/09/23/the-99-demand-occupy-wall-street-bring-our-war-home/. Global Exchange is an international human rights nonprofit organization. 40. Kevin Gosztola, “Pizza Orders from Around the World: A Sign #OccupyWallStreet Could Last Awhile?” The Dissenter, September 19, 2011, http://dissenter. firedoglake.com/2011/09/19/pizza-orders-from-around-the-world-a-signoccupywallstreet-could-last-awhile/. Fire Dog Lake is an online progressive blog community. Gosztola connects Occupy’s pizza orders to those made from around the world in support of the Madison, Wisconsin Capitol occupation in February 2010 protesting the anti-union laws of Governor Scott Walker. 41. Bowers, Ochs, Jensen, and Schulz. 42. Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movement: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology, 26 (2000): 611–639. 43. Benford and Snow, 614. 44. Karen Matthews, “Wall Street Protest Functions like a Small City,” Associated Press, October 7, 2011, Available on LexisNexis Academic. 45. Helen O’Neill, “Feeding the Masses, Fueling the Movement,” Associated Press, October 16, 2011, Available on LexisNexis Academic. 46. Ibid. 47. Jeff Gordinier, “Want to Get Fat on Wall Street? Try Protesting,” New York Times, October 11, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/dining/protesters-at-occupywall-street-eat-well.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. 48. Jessica Firger and Aaron Rutkoff, “Feeding the Protest: Giant Subs, Pizzas, and ‘Too Many Apples,’” Wall Street Journal, October 3, 2011, http://blogs.wsj.com/ metropolis/2011/10/03/feeding-the-protest-giant-subs-pizzas-and-too-many-apples/. 49. Stuart. 50. Kristin Wartman, “The Food Movement Must Occupy Wall Street,” Huffington Post, October 14, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristin-wartman/the-foodmovement-must-oc_b_1010635.html.

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51. Tom Philpott, “Foodies, Get Thee to Occupy Wall Street,” Mother Jones, October 14, 2011, http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2011/10/food-industrymonopoly-occupy-wall-street. 52. Slow Food USA, “Occupy Wall Street: What’s food got to do with it?” Slow Food USA, October 7, 2011, http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/slow_food/blog_post/ occupy_wall_street_whats_food_got_to_do_with_it/. 53. Benford and Snow, 624. 54. http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/. See also Adam Weinstein, “‘We are the 99 percent creators revealed,” Mother Jones, October 7, 2011, http://www.motherjones. com/politics/2011/10/we-are-the-99-percent-creators. 55. Rebecca Rosenberg, “Cooking up some help: Neighbor is lending protesters her kitchen,” New York Post, October 14, 2011, http://nypost.com/2011/10/14/cooking-upsome-help/. 56. Shugart. 57. Fleura Bardhi, Jacob Ostberg, and Anders Bengtsson, “Negotiating Cultural Boundaries: Food Travel and Consumer Identities,” Consumption Markets and Culture 13, no. 2 (2010): 133–157. 58. Suzanne Staggenborg and Amy Lang, “Culture and Ritual in the Montreal Women’s Movement,” Social Movement Studies 6, no. 2 (2007): 179. 59. Quoted in H. O’Neill, n.p. 60. Gordinier. 61. Liz Berntson, “A Food Tour of Occupy Wall Street: Street Carts, Fast Food, and the Protester’s Kitchen,” Zagat, October 26, 2011, http://www.zagat.com/buzz/a-foodtour-of-occupy-wall-street-street-carts-fast-food-and-the-protesters%E2%80%99kitchen. 62. Adam Martin, “The Occupy Wall Street Dining Guide,” Yahoo News, October 18, 2011, http://news.yahoo.com/occupy-wall-street-dining-guide-154740566.html. 63. Verena Dobnik, “Occupy Wall Street Becomes NYC Tourist Stop,” Associated Press, October 19, 2011, Available on LexisNexis Academic. 64. Bardhi, Ostberg, and Bengtsson. 65. Shugart, 69. 66. Bowers, Ochs, Jensen, and Schulz. 67. Mark Bittman, “Finally Making Sense on Wall Street,” The New York Times, October 11, 2011, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/finally-makingsense-on-wall-street/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0. 68. Sietsema. 69. Jamie Feldmar, “Post Critic Steve Cuozzo Goes Behind Enemy Lines, Dines at Occupy Wall Street,” The Gothamist, October 19, 2011, http://gothamist.com/2011/10/ 19/steve_cuozzo_goes_behind_enemy_line.php. 70. Rosenberg, “Rich Diet.” 71. Michael Y. Park, “Occupy Wall Street: The Food Scandal,” The Epi Log, Epicurious, October 20, 2011, http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/blogs/editor/2011/10/ occupy-wall-street-the-food-scandal.html. Park argues that no matter what Occupiers were eating, Cuozzo would have found some way to spin the story against the movement: for example, if Occupiers were only eating from friends’ kitchens, then the Post would criticize them for denying restaurant workers wages. 72. Selim Algar, “Occupy Wall Street Kitchen staff protesting fixing food for freeloaders,” New York Post, October 27, 2011, http://nypost.com/2011/10/27/occupy-wallstreet-kitchen-staff-protesting-fixing-food-for-freeloaders/. 73. Adam Martin, “Occupy Wall Street Kitchen Denies Starving Out Freeloaders,” The Atlantic Wire, October 27, 2011, http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/10/ occupy-wall-street-kitchen-denies-starving-out-vagrants/44200/. 74. Ted Kruckel, “Navigating Food Day, and the Occupy Wall Street Kitchen at Zuccotti Park,” BizBash, October 27, 2011, http://www.bizbash.com/navigating_food_ day_and_the_occupy_wall_street_kitchen_at_zuccotti_park/new-york/story/21708/ #sthash.7cBCEFyi.dpbs.

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75. Adriana Velez, “Occupy Wall Street Pests Should Stop Leeching Off Protesters for Food,” The Stir, October 28, 2011, http://thestir.cafemom.com/food_party/128028/ VKJtMqt_dPA. 76. Bowers, Ochs, Jensen, and Schulz even offer that groups such as MoveOn.org, and corresponding conservative organizations such as Freedom’s Watch, are those that engage in today’s counterpersuasion campaigns, working to mobilize those on their side of the political spectrum. 77. Brown. 78. Sietsema. 79. Max Liboiron, “Tactics of Waste, Dirt and Discard in the Occupy Movement.” Social Movement Studies, 11 nos. 3 and 4 (2012): 393–401. Mayor Bloomberg did use the argument to evict Occupy in order for the city to provide its regular maintenance and cleaning of the park, although when police enacted the eviction, cleaning meant throwing away protesters’ personal gear and even some of Occupy’s library collection of books. 80. Bardhi, Ostberg, and Bengtsson. 81. Chloe Rouveyrolles, “Volunteers in Occupy Wall Street Kitchen.” Chloe Rouveycolles’ Sandbox, October 20, 2011, http://crouvey.journalism.cuny.edu/2011/10/20/ volunteers-in-occupy-wall-street-kitchen/. 82. Frank Rosario, Josh Saul, and Hannah Rappleye, “Zuccotti’s Cooks Can’t Take ‘A’ Joke,” New York Post, October 24, 2011, http://nypost.com/2011/10/24/zuccottiscooks-cant-take-a-joke/. 83. OccupyWallSt.org, “Occupy Wall Street Thanksgiving.” Occupy Wall Street, October 23, 2011, http://occupywallst.org/article/occupy-wall-street-thanksgiving/. 84. Selim Algar and Bob Fredericks, “Exclusive: Zuccotti a Hell’s Kitchen, Cooks Revolt vs. Food Freeloaders,” New York Post, October 27, 2011, Available on LexisNexis Academic. 85. See Martin, “OWS Kitchen Denies.” 86. See “Sweet, Sweet Irony: #OWS Denies To No Longer Share Their Own Wealth with Freeloaders,” Right Wing News, October 28, 2011, Available on LexisNexis Academic; “Shocker: Occupy Wall Street Kitchen Rationing Food,” Say Anything, October 28, 2011, Available on LexisNexis Academic; and “Occupy Wall Street Kitchen Staff Tired of Freeloaders?” Right Wing News, November 1, 2011, Available on LexisNexis Academic. With these blog posts, they also often reference the menu sampled by Post reviewer Cuozzo, to compare how the “squatters” no longer were going to have spaghetti bolognase and roasted beet salad. 87. Matt, “Occupy Wall Street to Cut Food for Vagrants and Ex-convicts: Are They Becoming Conservative?” Conservative Hideout 2.0., October 27, 2011, http:// conservativehideout.com/2011/10/27/occupy-wall-street-to-cut-food-for-vagrants-andex-convicts-are-they-becoming-conservative/. 88. Newsbusters.org, “Open Thread: Occupiers Don’t Like Redistributing their Own Wealth,” Newbusters.org (Blog), October 27, 2011, Available on LexisNexis Academic. 89. Rush Limbaugh, “Occupy Wall Street Cooks Join the 1 percent, Refuse to Feed Homeless,” RushLimbaugh.com, October 27, 2011, http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/ daily/2011/10/27/occupy_wall_street_cooks_join_the_1_refuse_to_feed_the_homeless. 90. Bowers, Ochs, Jensen, and Shulz. Gitlin (Whole World) also notes a popular mass media framing strategy to discredit movements is to emphasize polarization with reports on counterdemonstrations or emphasizing internal dissension within the movement organization. 91. Ashli Quesinberry Stokes, “You are What You Eat: Slow Food USA’s Constitutive Public Relations,” Journal of Public Relations Research 25, no. 1(2013): 68–90. 92. Christopher Shea, “New Grub Street: How did Ethics Become a Staple of Contemporary Food Writing?” Columbia Journalism Review 46, no. 1(2007): 55–59. 93. Stephanie Houston Grey, “A Famine of Words: Changing the Rules of Expression in the Food Debates,” First Amendment Studies 48, no. 1 (2014): 5–26.

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94. Carey Polis, “What Occupy Wall Street Has To Do With Food,” Huffington Post, October, 12, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/occupy-wall-streetfood_n_1007172.html Polis asks, “So is there hypocrisy at play with anti-Wall Street protesters are welcoming free Ben & Jerry’s pints…and then going dumpster diving?” (n.p.). 95. Lindenfeld notes food films made before 1980 including this type of critique, which gave way to films showing food more as an idealized, sublime experience. 96. Melisa A. Click and Ronit Ridberg, “Saving Food: Food Preservation as Alternative Food Activism,” Environmental Communication 4, no. 3 (2010): 301–317. 97. Issues such as these were addressed by alternative media outlets, just not connected to food or Occupy Kitchen as directly. See Joshua Holland, “Why If they Sent in Social Services to Help Occupations Instead of Riot Cops to Bust Heads?” Alternet, November 29, 2011, http://www.alternet.org/story/153257/what_if_they_sent_in_ social_services_to_help_occupations_instead_of_riot_cops_to_bust_heads. 98. Gordinier. 99. See Seitsema. 100. Bob Reich, former baker of Birdbath Bakery in Manhattan, quoted by Gordinier. 101. Elizabeth Gunnison Dunn, “Occupy Wall Street Goes Beyond Pizza for Week 4 Survival,” Esquire Eat Like a Man, October 12, 2011, http://www.esquire.com/blogs/ food-for-men/occupy-wall-street-food-6512263. 102. Using the Declaration of Independence as a model, the General Assembly crafted a list of grievances (not demands) including: “They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.” See NYC General Assembly, “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City,” #OccupyWallStreet, September 29, 2011, http://www.nycga.net/resources/documents/ declaration/. 103. Rebecca Schein, “Whose Occupation? Homelessness and the Politics of Park Encampments,” Social Movement Studies, 11 nos. 3 and 4 (2012): 337. 104. Noreen Malone, “Former Occupy Wall Street Space Now Occupied by Artisanal Food Trucks,” New York Magazine, May 15, 2012, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/ 2012/05/former-ows-space-now-occupied-by-food-trucks.html. Some of the initial food controversies surrounding Occupy also included how Occupiers were harming the businesses and food carts around Zuccotti by diverting normal customers and at the same time not supporting the local carts (See Alex Klein, “Occupy Wall Street: Fighting Capitalism, One Food Cart at a Time,” New York Magazine, October 15, 2011, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2011/10/occupy_wall_street_destroys_ca.html).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Algar, Selim. “Occupy Wall Street Kitchen Staff Protesting Fixing Food for Freeloaders.” New York Post, October 27, 2011. http://nypost.com/2011/10/27/occupy-wallstreet-kitchen-staff-protesting-fixing-food-for-freeloaders/. Algar, Selim and Bob Fredericks. “Exclusive: Zuccotti a Hell’s Kitchen, Cooks Revolt vs. Food Freeloaders.” New York Post, October 27, 2011. Available on LexisNexis Academic. Amaya, Cyndi. “Occupy Wall Street’s Kitchen.” Marcus Samuelsson.com, October 20, 2011. http://www.marcussamuelsson.com/news/occupy-wall-street%E2%80%t99skitchen. Bardhi, Fleura, Jacob Ostberg, and Anders Bengtsson. “Negotiating Cultural Boundaries: Food Travel and Consumer Identities.” Consumption Markets and Culture 13, no. 2 (2010): 133–157. Benford, Robert D., and David A. Snow. “Framing Processes and Social Movement: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology, 26 (2000): 611–639. Berntson, Liz. “A Food Tour of Occupy Wall Street: Street Carts, Fast Food, and the Protester’s Kitchen.” Zagat, October 26, 2011. http://www.zagat.com/buzz/a-food-

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tour-of-occupy-wall-street-street-carts-fast-food-and-the-protesters percentE2 percent80 percent99-kitchen. Bittman, Mark. “Finally Making Sense on Wall Street.” The New York Times, October 11, 2011. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/finally-making-sense-onwall-street/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0. Bowers, John W., Donovan J. Ochs, Richard J. Jensen, and David P. Schulz. The Rhetoric of Agitation and Control, 3rd ed. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2010. Brown, Doug. “Haute Cuisine.” American Journalism Review 26, no. 1 (2004): 50–55. Brummett, Barry. “Food and Communication: An Overview.” First Amendment Studies 48, no. 1 (2014): 1–4. Butler, Melanie. “The 99 percent Demand Occupy Wall Street! Bring Our War $$ Home!” Global Exchange, September 23, 2011. http://www.globalexchange.org/ blogs/peopletopeople/2011/09/23/the-99-demand-occupy-wall-street-bring-ourwar-home/. Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Malden, MA: Polity, 2012. Click, Melisa A., and Ronit Ridberg. “Saving Food: Food Preservation as Alternative Food Activism.” Environmental Communication 4, no. 3 (2010): 301–317. Cooks, Leda. “You are What You (Don’t) Eat? Food, Identity, and Resistance.” Text and Performance Quarterly, 29, no. 1 (2009): 94–110. Cuozzo, Steve. “Cordon Bleu Behind the Cordon of Blue.” New York Post, October 19, 2011. http://nypost.com/2011/10/19/cordon-bleu-behind-the-cordon-of-blue/. Dean, Sam. “Ice Cream Activism! Ben & Jerry’s Publicly Supports Occupy Wall Street.” Bon Appétit, October 10, 2011. http://www.bonappetit.com/trends/article/ ice-cream-activism-ben-jerry-s-publicly-supports-occupy-wall-street. DeLuca, Kevin M., Sean Lawson, and Ye Sun. “Occupy Wall Street on the Public Screen of Social Media: The Many Framings of the Birth of a Protest Movement.” Communication, Culture, & Critique 5 (2012): 483–509. Dobnik, Verena. “Occupy Wall Street Becomes NYC Tourist Stop.” Associated Press, October 19, 2011. Available on LexisNexis Academic. Dunn, Elizabeth Gunnison. “Occupy Wall Street Goes Beyond Pizza for Week 4 Survival.” Esquire Eat Like a Man, October 12, 2011. http://www.esquire.com/blogs/foodfor-men/occupy-wall-street-food-6512263. Feldmar, Jamie. “Post Critic Steve Cuozzo Goes Behind Enemy Lines, Dines at Occupy Wall Street.” The Gothamist, October 19, 2011. http://gothamist.com/2011/10/19/ steve_cuozzo_goes_behind_enemy_line.php. Firger, Jessica, and Aaron Rutkoff. “Feeding the Protest: Giant Subs, Pizzas, and ‘Too Many Apples.’” Wall Street Journal, October 3, 2011. http://blogs.wsj.com/ metropolis/2011/10/03/feeding-the-protest-giant-subs-pizzas-and-too-many-apples/ . “Five-star Occupy Wall Street Chef—Broke, but Proud.” RT News, October 25, 2011. http://rt.com/usa/occupy-chef-eric-smith-727/. Gitlin, Todd. Occupy Nation: The Roots, The Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street. New York: itbooks/Harper Collins, 2012. Gitlin, Todd. The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (with a New Preface). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003. Gordinier, Jeff. “Want to Get Fat on Wall Street? Try Protesting.” New York Times, October 11, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/dining/protesters-at-occupywall-street-eat-well.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. Gosztola, Kevin. “Pizza Orders from Around the World: A Sign #OccupyWallStreet Could Last Awhile?” The Dissenter, September 19, 2011. http://dissenter.firedoglake. com/2011/09/19/pizza-orders-from-around-the-world-a-sign-occupywallstreetcould-last-awhile/. Grey, Stephanie Houston. “A Famine of Words: Changing the Rules of Expression in the Food Debates.” First Amendment Studies 48, no. 1 (2014): 5–26.

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Holland, Joshua. “Why If they Sent in Social Services to Help Occupations Instead of Riot Cops to Bust Heads?” Alternet, November 29, 2011. http://www.alternet.org/ story/153257/what_if_they_sent_in_social_services_to_help_occupations_instead_ of_riot_cops_to_bust_heads. Kaufmann, Jean-Claude. The Meaning of Cooking, trans. David Macey. Malden, MA: Polity, 2010. Klein, Alex. “Occupy Wall Street: Fighting Capitalism, One Food Cart at a Time.” New York Magazine, October 15, 2011. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2011/10/ occupy_wall_street_destroys_ca.html. Knafo, Saki. “Occupy Wall Street Protesters Clean Zuccotti Park in Preparation of Evacuation.” Huffington Post, October 13, 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ 2011/10/13/occupy-wall-street-clean-zucotti-park_n_1010092.html. Kruckel, Ted. “Navigating Food Day, and the Occupy Wall Street Kitchen at Zuccotti Park.” BizBash, October 27, 2011. http://www.bizbash.com/navigating_food_day_ and_the_occupy_wall_street_kitchen_at_zuccotti_park/new-york/story/21708/ #sthash.7cBCEFyi.dpbs. Liboiron, Max. Tactics of Waste, Dirt and Discard in the Occupy Movement. Social Movement Studies, 11 nos. 3 and 4 (2012): 393–401. Limbaugh, Rush. “Occupy Wall Street Cooks Join the 1 percent, Refuse to Feed Homeless.” RushLimbaugh.com, October 27, 2011. http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/ 2011/10/27/occupy_wall_street_cooks_join_the_1_refuse_to_feed_the_homeless. Lindenfeld, Laura. “Can Documentary Food Films Like Food Inc. Achieve their Promise?” Environmental Communication 4, no. 3 (2010): 378–386. Malone, Noreen. “Former Occupy Wall Street Space Now Occupied by Artisanal Food Trucks.” New York Magazine, May 15, 2012. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/ 2012/05/former-ows-space-now-occupied-by-food-trucks.html. Martin, Adam. “Occupy Wall Street Kitchen Denies Starving Out Freeloaders.” The Atlantic Wire, October 27, 2011. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/10/ occupy-wall-street-kitchen-denies-starving-out-vagrants/44200/ Martin, Adam. “The Occupy Wall Street Dining Guide.” Yahoo News, October 18, 2011. http://news.yahoo.com/occupy-wall-street-dining-guide-154740566.html Matt. “Occupy Wall Street to Cut Food for Vagrants and Ex-convicts: Are They Becoming Conservative?” Conservative Hideout 2.0., October 27, 2011. http:// conservativehideout.com/2011/10/27/occupy-wall-street-to-cut-food-for-vagrantsand-ex-convicts-are-they-becoming-conservative/. Matthews, Karen. “Wall Street Protest Functions like a Small City.” Associated Press, October 7, 2011. Available on LexisNexis Academic. Newsbusters.org. “Open Thread: Occupiers Don’t Like Redistributing their Own Wealth.” Newbusters.org (Blog), October 27, 2011. Available on LexisNexis Academic. NYC General Assembly. “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City.” #OccupyWallStreet, September 29, 2011. http://www.nycga.net/resources/documents/ declaration/. OccupyWallSt.org. “Occupy Wall Street Thanksgiving.” Occupy Wall Street, November 23, 2011. http://occupywallst.org/article/occupy-wall-street-thanksgiving/. “Occupy Wall Street Kitchen Staff Tired of Freeloaders?” Right Wing News, November 1, 2011. Available on LexisNexis Academic. O’Neill, Helen. “Feeding the Masses, Fueling the Movement.” Associated Press, October 16, 2011. Available on LexisNexis Academic. O’Neill, Molly. “Food Porn.” Columbia Journalism Review 42, no. 3 (2003): 38–45. Park, Michael Y. “Occupy Wall Street: The Food Scandal.” The Epi Log, Epicurious, October 20, 2011. http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/blogs/editor/2011/10/ occupy-wall-street-the-food-scandal.html. Philpott, Tom. “Foodies, Get Thee to Occupy Wall Street.” Mother Jones, October 14, 2011. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2011/10/food-industrymonopoly-occupy-wall-street.

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Polis, Carey. “What Occupy Wall Street Has To Do With Food.” Huffington Post, October 12, 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/occupy-wall-street-food_ n_1007172.html. Rosario, Frank, Josh Saul, and Hannah Rappleye. “Zuccotti’s Cooks Can’t Take ‘A’ Joke. New York Post, October 24, 2011. http://nypost.com/2011/10/24/zuccottis-cookscant-take-a-joke/. Rosenberg, Rebecca. “Cooking Up Some Help: Neighbor is Lending Protesters Her Kitchen.” New York Post, October 14, 2011. http://nypost.com/2011/10/14/cookingup-some-help/. Rosenberg, Rebecca. “Protest Mob is Enjoying Rich Diet.” New York Post, October 19, 2011. http://nypost.com/2011/10/19/protest-mob-is-enjoying-rich-diet/ Rouveyrolles, Chloe. “Volunteers in Occupy Wall Street Kitchen.” Chloe Rouveycolles’ Sandbox, October 20, 2011. http://crouvey.journalism.cuny.edu/2011/10/20/ volunteers-in-occupy-wall-street-kitchen/. Schein, Rebecca. “Whose Occupation? Homelessness and the Politics of Park Encampments.” Social Movement Studies, 11 nos. 3 and 4 (2012): 335–341. Shea, Christopher. “New Grub Street: How did Ethics Become a Staple of Contemporary Food Writing?” Columbia Journalism Review 46, no. 1 (2007): 55–59. “Shocker: Occupy Wall Street Kitchen Rationing Food,” Say Anything, October 28, 2011. Available on LexisNexis Academic. Shugart, Helene A. “Sumptuous Texts: Consuming ‘Otherness’ in the Food Film Genre.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 25, no. 1 (2008): 68–90. Sietsema, Robert. “Everyone Eats . . . But that Doesn’t Make You a Restaurant Critic.” Columbia Journalism Review 48, no. 5 (2010): 42–46. Slow Food USA. “Occupy Wall Street: What’s food got to do with it?” Slow Food USA, October 7, 2011. http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/slow_food/blog_post/ occupy_wall_street_whats_food_got_to_do_with_it/. Smith, Peter. “Watch Your Mouth: The Protest Food of Occupy Wall Street and the Protest Food of our Generation.” Good, October 11, 2011. http://magazine.good.is/ articles/watch-your-mouth-the-protest-food-of-occupy-wall-street. Staggenborg, Suzanne, and Amy Lang. “Culture and Ritual in the Montreal Women’s Movement.” Social Movement Studies 6, no. 2 (2007): 177–194. Stewart, Charles J., Craig Allen Smith, and Robert E. Denton, Jr. Persuasion and Social Movements, 5th ed. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2007. Stokes, Ashli Quesinberry. “You are What You Eat: Slow Food USA’s Constitutive Public Relations.” Journal of Public Relations Research 25, no. 1 (2013): 68–90. Stuart, Hunter. “Faces of Zuccotti Park: The Chef.” Huffington Post, October 11, 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/11/occupy-wall-street-zuccotti-chef_n_ 1088870.html. “Sweet, Sweet Irony: #OWS Denies To No Longer Share Their Own Wealth with Freeloaders.” Right Wing News, October 28, 2011. Available on LexisNexis Academic. Velez, Adriana. “Occupy Wall Street Pests Should Stop Leeching Off Protesters for Food.” The Stir, October 28, 2011. http://thestir.cafemom.com/food_party/128028/ VKJtMqt_dPA. Voss, Kimberly Wilmot. “Food Journalism or Culinary Anthropology? Re-evaluating Soft News and the Influence of Jeanne Voltz’s Food Section in the Los Angeles Times.” American Journalism 29, no. 2 (2012): 66–91. Wartman, Kristin. “The Food Movement Must Occupy Wall Street.” Huffington Post, October 14, 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristin-wartman/the-foodmovement-must-oc_b_1010635.html. Weinstein, Adam. “‘We are the 99 percent’ creators revealed.” Mother Jones, October 7, 2011. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/we-are-the-99-percent-creators.

FOUR Exoticizing Poverty in Bizarre Foods America Casey Ryan Kelly

The expression “culinary slumming” refers to the unreflective enjoyment of adventurous cuisine that is by-and-large the product of poverty and marginalization. 1 In the United States, taco trucks, gas station delis, cafeterias, juke joints, barbecue shacks, open-air markets, and country cookoffs all provide affluent culinary tourists with an exhilarating opportunity to sample the cuisine of the Other, or in bell hooks’ words, season “the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.” 2 Slummers, repelled yet fascinated, venture into the country or the ghetto seeking out exotic dishes that challenge the most intrepid of foodies: neck bones, ears, skin, snouts, tails, brains, intestines, organ meat, foraged vegetable greens, insects, garbage fish, rodents, invasive species, birds, and other scraps and lesser cuts that reflect histories of economic subjugation. The rhetorical construction of these dishes as chic food trends ultimately masks the legacies of exclusion and exploitation that force communities living in poverty to “make do” with society’s leftovers. For their temporary disavowal of privilege, however, slummers are putatively availed of the authentic experience of America’s dispossessed. 3 Such adventurous eating fortifies this progressive cosmopolitan subject through joyful displays of tolerance and multicultural consumption. 4 While sojourners invest money into struggling local economies, they implore the inhabitants of modern-day hush harbors and hidden vernacular spaces to confess their secret recipes and make their food and culture part of the next culinary trend. 5 The slummer, therefore, forgoes their luxury cuts to appreciate what society once discarded; yet, their reverent, touristic gaze elides the 71

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economic force of capitalism, slavery, and colonialism that produced cuisines of poverty and necessity. In the past decade, the lived practice of culinary slumming has been supplemented by the popular ascendance of the food television industry. In dozens of programs across a variety of networks including The Travel Channel, The Food Network, and The Cooking Channel, celebrity chefs, travel writers, and television food personalities offer fellow slummers the opportunity to vicariously participate in culinary excursions to exotic regions across the globe without leaving the comfort of their living room. 6 Hosts engage in embodied performances of slumming, acting as a tour guide who shapes and guides audiences, experience with the foodways of foreign cultures. In one sense, the slummer is invited to move outside of their comfort zone and face their fear of otherness. In another sense, slummers are disciplined to experience foreign cultures through a framework of exoticism that keeps otherness at arms length. As I have argued elsewhere, programming that depicts culinary tourism is part of a larger shift in documentary television that employs ethnographic filmmaking to represent people, places, and cultural traditions as they exist. 7 Driven by the imperative to both educate and entertain cosmopolitan viewers, “ethnotainment” employs the gaze of a hobby anthropologist or tourist, exoticizing the foodways and cultural practices of subaltern communities. 8 In food and travel television, hosts and their team of producers and camerapersons frequently travel to remote corners of the globe to document food cultures that deviate from the mundane, everyday cuisine of their middle class viewers. They infiltrate the open-air market, the bazaar, the back alley restaurant, and even the home kitchens to illuminate exotic cuisines to be conquered by the intrepid food adventurer. While the universality of cuisine renders distant cultures familiar for spectators, many scholars have argued that the consumption of Otherness—both through eating and viewing—is a veiled colonial endeavor that erases the power lines of inequity that divide the globe and commodify the cultural experience of difference in support of the Western globalization. 9 I have argued that representations of bizarre and exotic foods mediate the putative crisis of contemporary whiteness by representing difference as “useful, pleasurable, even titillating to white onlookers besieged by a complicated world of fragmented and hybrid identities.” 10 By useful, I mean that the consumption of difference confirms the ongoing salience of white identity in a transnational global culture. Indeed, the opaque politics of the Western food adventure are tainted by histories of colonialism in which the primitive mysteries of “the Orient” are consumed to season the life and palate of the Western subject. 11 Drawing from existing postcolonial scholarship on food discourse, this chapter seeks to explain how celebratory depictions of culinary adventurism addresses the structural dynamics of poverty under late capitalism. With a slight change in emphasis from my previous work on food

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exoticism, in this chapter I argue that televisual discourses on culinary slumming assimilate food cultures of poverty into the pantheon of contemporary haute cuisine. I contend that food television represents “making do” as a set of proud choices, tied to deep investments in cultural heritage, that symbolizes the happy contentment of poor and dispossessed communities who seemingly prefer their humble traditions to the private accumulation wealth. For an audience of predominantly middle class and affluent consumers, images of vibrant food cultures in the rural countryside and zones of suburban triage are made to attest to the sustainability of the growing wealth gap and an economic system premised on a politics of disposability. 12 Culinary slumming not only overlooks the economic and cultural factors that have shaped cuisines of necessity, but glorify those cuisines as the proud and exotic traditions of simple but ingenious people who live off the land without pretense. To provide a companion class-based analysis to the program Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern, this chapter analyzes the Travel Channel’s spinoff Bizarre Foods America, attending to exotic representations of poor rural communities. While I have argued that Bizarre Foods consumes Otherness to secure Western cultural hegemony, I contend that Bizarre Foods America exoticizes America’s rural poor by celebrating food traditions that actually bespeak persistent economic inequalities. With forty-six million Americans living in poverty at the time of the program’s premiere, I read the show as a post-recessionary acquiescence to historic rates of income inequality. 13 Representing cuisines of necessity as evidence of the nobility of poverty, Bizarre Foods America’s fixation with the exotic delights of the rural poor obscures the growing pervasiveness of rural hunger as well as the dwindling economic opportunities among America’s permanent underclasses. The program’s emphasis on food as an embodiment of heritage, tradition, and authenticity reduces rural poverty to nativist lifestyle politics. In other words, poverty cuisine becomes the representative anecdote for a culture adopted by choice in resistance to the excesses of capitalism. 14 The selective visibility and vicarious consumption of folksy communities from the Ozarks to the Mississippi Delta—happily stuck in time but willing to share their secrets with the chic culinary world—disguises the taste of economic exploitation. The program confirms that the table scraps, the nasty bits, the waste products relegated to America’s rural poor are a source of enjoyment, something converted by the dispossessed into a hot commodity that adds diversity and deliciousness to the bourgeois American palate. In my analysis, I focus on the episodes that sojourn into some of the poorest regions of the American South, paying attention to how discourses of heritage belie the structural exploitation of America’s permanent underclass that traces its roots to the colonization of North America.

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EXOTICIZING POVERTY IN AN AGE OF AUSTERITY In 2012, the income gap in America reached an all time. 15 One in seven Americans now lives below the poverty line. Rural poverty is particularly acute. According to the Southern Rural Development Center at Mississippi State University, the poverty rate in rural America is 16.6 percent and the poverty rate for rural children is approximately 27 percent. 16 The National Poverty Center found that 400 rural counties have rates over 20 percent and nearly 60 percent of those living in poverty are racial minorities. 17 As Congress considers four billion dollars in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), children living in rural communities continue to be the most likely to experience food insecurity. 18 Despite the persistence of rural poverty, the public is woefully under-educated on the subject and overwhelmingly lacks empathy toward those living in such conditions. For instance, the Salvation Army found that nearly half of Americans believed that those living in poverty could find a job or improve their circumstances if they were properly motivated. 19 Kenneth L. Deavers and Robert A. Hoppe surmise that “the current gap between reality and public beliefs is about the incidence of poverty results largely from the close contact between city people and the urban poor and from the prominence given to the urban poor by national broadcast media. In contrast, the rural poor, who live in many small scattered settlements in apparently ‘picturesque’ country surroundings, are relatively invisible.” 20 Indeed, the lack of attention to rural poverty is a byproduct of not only invisibility, but also the perception that rural living is bucolic, rustic, simple, and romantic. As Michael Harrington observed, “seeing in them a romantic image of mountain life as independent, self-reliant, and athletic, a tourist could pass through these valleys and observe only quaintness.” 21 Unfortunately those living in poverty outside of urban and suburban landscapes “suffer terribly at the hands of beauty.” 22 That is to say that while the sight of urban poverty might inspire reflection on the harsh realities of life in a postindustrial society, rural poverty is often misread as a rustic country lifestyle that embraces simplicity and even offers a hopeful escapism from urban blight. To the extent that it is made visible, representations of rural poverty can take a variety of stereotypical forms, including imagery of “rednecks” and “White trash,” backwater racists who remain willfully (and sometimes comically) ignorant and downtrodden. 23 For instance, a variety of reality television programs such as Duck Dynasty, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo Child, Hillbilly Handfishing, Moonshiners, Redneck Island, Redneck Weddings, Rocket City Rednecks, and Swamp People position audiences to laugh at redneck’s contentment with impoverishment or total lack of cultural refinement. Elsewhere in media culture, rednecks are portrayed as dangerous and primitive (i.e. Deliverance (1972). 24 At the same time,

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representations of rural Black poverty frequently accentuate the wisdom derived from “making do,” or the mythical freedom of living outside of civilization (i.e. The Beasts of the Southern Wild [2012]). 25 This chapter, however, is concerned with how efforts to counter misconceptions of rural culture with authentic portrayals of simple rustic lifestyles romanticize what are by-and-large difficult living conditions. 26 To their credit, programs like Bizarre Foods America use the long-standing food traditions of rural Southern communities to demonstrate that the aforementioned cultural stereotypes are in many ways misleading. The program offers a vicarious experience of culinary slumming through exotic and misunderstood cuisines as evidence that rural communities adapt and preserve traditions in response to economic challenges. Yet, Bizarre Foods America’s vision of rural life leaves audiences with the underdeveloped perception of a tourist interloper who is invited to accept the “staged authenticity” of proud food traditions as an “illusion of familiarity with that culture.” 27 The façade of country folk who are happy to share their fascinating yet challenging cuisine presents an image of rural life as humble, traditional, frozen in time, and free from the confines of modern civilization. The audience is invited to consume the rural South’s proud heritage, to better understand rural life through a soulful, reverent valiance toward foods and lifestyles born of necessity. In this way, Bizarre Foods engages in “poverty tourism,” a practice Biana Freire-Medeiros argues “is a by-product of Western fascination with the exotic ‘Other,’ of a middle-class romanticism of the poor.” 28 Poverty tourism and culinary slumming are the providence of the heritage industry, which converts the authentic cultural experience of marginalized communities into an opportunity to educate and profit from middle-class consumer’s desire for authentic otherness. 29 Poverty tourism is an experience in navel gazing, that Stefan Palmie characterizes as “catering consumers economic capacitated to engage in a sumptuary politics of selfauthentification [sic].” 30 The experience of communities living in poverty is commodified into a celebratory image that satisfies the consumers’ desires to affirm their cosmopolitan, multicultural ethos. The spectacle of proud and delighted eaters—seemingly unburdened by the histories of their cuisine—replaces old stereotypes with a pleasing image of happy concordance. Mediating the rural South through the lens of the bizarre and exotic also keeps the program’s subjects at arm’s length from the tourist/spectator. The production and consumption of Otherness requires that the show’s producers find the most extreme version of “making do,” including the most unpalatable dishes found in poor communities. The rhetoric of exoticism is marked by ambivalent desires, the coexistence of fascination, curiosity, and revulsion toward difference. 31 Julia Kristeva contends that food taboos are the first source of childhood encounter with the abject, a site at which we learn through bodily expulsion to separate the

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self from Other. 32 This observation frames the significance of food traditions in demarcating the Western civilized self from the unclean and disgusting food habits of people living in poverty. Focusing on the most challenging cuisine helps audiences mark their separation from the program’s subjects and confirms the authenticity of their otherness. This chapter adopts a postcolonial approach to interrogating representations of poverty cuisine and culinary slumming. Postcolonial scholarship attends to how Western discourses and systems of representation construct regimes of knowledge that legitimize the ongoing practice of colonialism in its present form, including but not limited to the expansion of neoliberal globalization. 33 Raka Shome suggests that a postcolonial perspective places “the texts we critique or the theories that we produce against the larger backdrop of neocolonialism and racism, and interrogate to what extent these discourses and our own perspective on them reflect the contemporary global politics of (neo)imperialism.” 34 Indeed, the poverty cuisines celebrated in Bizarre Foods America are byproducts of slavery and segregation, the colonization of American Indians, and the impoverishment of poor white laborers. They are also reflections of the invisible structural inequalities that continue to impinge rural upward mobility. 35 From this approach, poverty tourism is a neocolonial practice, driven by the same “colonial desire to fix the identity of the other in order that it remains . . . distinct from tourist identity.” 36 The exoticization of poverty draws from hidden colonialist assumptions about the primitive and nostalgic beauty of life outside the metropole, the mastery of knowledge of unconquered frontiers, and superiority of Western civilization, the universal desirability of capital and consumerism. In this case, the glorification of poverty cuisine is an extension of economic colonialism that lends authority to the discourses of self-reliance and private initiative that uphold the myth of unlimited upward mobility for all regardless of race and class. Rhetorical scholars such as Kent Ono, Jason Edward Black, Rae Lynn Schwartz-Dupre, and Darrel Wanzer among others argue that neocolonialism continues to structure the contours of both public and popular culture. 37 While colonialism as a formal practice has waned, neocolonialism continues to operate inferentially in discourse and media representations about race and multiculturalism, geopolitical alignments, global governance, and economic globalization. This chapter shows how neocolonialism is the latent ideology imbedded in discursive efforts to make those living in poverty knowable subjects whose lives are enlisted as testimony to the desirability of Western cultural and economic hegemony. This project contributes to the expansion of neocolonial analysis to discourses that share a likeness in structure to colonial thought to document the pervasiveness of neocolonialism as an organizing principle of contemporary public life. 38 The glorification of poverty cuisine narrates a history of rural life where the predations of colonialism and capitalism

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play no fundamental part. Representations of ingenuity, self-reliance, and proud heritage invite audiences to take delight in humble traditions without reflection on the historic forces that created and sustain a permanent underclass in the U.S. BIZARRE FOODS AMERICA AND EXOTIC AT HOME Bizarre Foods America is a one-hour documentary style program that chronicles the culinary tours of host Andrew Zimmern. Following the same format as the original Bizarre Foods (2006–2011), the program is shot on location in different destinations throughout the United States. Each episode showcases different local and regional cuisine that deviates from what the producers assume to be a standard American diet, including wild fish and game, lesser cuts and organ meats, foraged greens, and other foods that might be considered challenging to unfamiliar audiences. All episodes typically involve trips to scouted locations such as local bars and restaurants, butchers, farmer’s markets, food festivals, food-processing facilities, and other purveyors of exotic ingredients. Zimmern also typically shares a meal with local residents, prepared in a family’s home or community center. In episodes shot in rural locations, Zimmern is often invited to participate in a hunt or fishing expedition, followed by a sampling of local traditional meal preparations. Through voice over narration, Zimmern provides background information about the people and places he visits, attending to the relationship between the food and local culture. On camera, Zimmern samples and displays foods while he describes the experience for the audience. Each episode concludes with Zimmern providing a short reflective summary of his experience and his tagline slogan, “if it looks good eat it!” The episodes are celebratory and lighthearted in tone, a feeling accentuated not only by the use of a playful score but also Zimmern’s whimsical affect. To his credit, Zimmern is always cordial, respectful, and willing to try any cuisine. The Bizarre Foods franchise has been integral to the development of the Travel Channel’s brand. The show is part of a slate of food and travel programming on a network that reaches 94 million households. 39 Scripps Network Interactive—the parent company of The Travel Channel, The Food Network, and The Cooking Channel—boasts that Bizarre Foods America is part of television trends that are “injecting new life into the channel and introducing media consumers around the world to the quality and engaging nature of our travel content.” 40 Above all, Scripps sells the discretionary spending power of their affluent audience to shareholders and advertisers. 41 As Scripps internal documents confirm, Bizarre Foods America is a central component of the Travel Channel’s brand image as providing quality entertainment for a sophisticated, well educated, and relatively affluent audience of predominantly Western consumers.

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The network produced Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern for six seasons and just completed the seventh season on Bizarre Foods America in 2014. The channel has also committed to an additional original series with Zimmern titled Bizarre Foods: Delicious Destinations, scheduled to air in 2015. 42 The success of the Bizarre Food franchise attests to both widespread public interest in culinary adventurism as well as the cultural influence of food television. This chapter analyzes episodes of Bizarre Foods America across seven seasons that showcase the cuisine of the rural American South. This includes episodes shot in Appalachia, the Ozarks, the Mississippi Delta, Central Florida, Alabama, West Virginia, and the Gulf Coast. I selected these episodes because they are locations that currently experience some of the most disproportionately high rates of poverty and food insecurity in the U.S. They are also places still affected by the legacy of slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, as well as the economic subjugation of poor white laborers. 43 Despite Zimmern’s demonstrable commitment to philanthropy and cultural education through food, the program’s potential positive contributions are eclipsed by the demands of the ethnotainment format. Zimmern candidly attests to the fact that the program deviates from what he originally proposed to the network. 44 Recalling a conversation with a Travel Channel executive, Zimmern explains, “He said, ‘If you do the show for us, you need to invert that model, and it has to be 80 percent entertainment and 20 percent intellectual gravitas.’ I remember looking at him and saying, ‘As long as I get to keep the 20 percent intellectual gravitas, you got a deal.’” 45 Dispensing with deeper intellectual engagements with culture and geopolitics adopted in a program like CNN’s Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain, Zimmern is often reduced to feel good tropes and folksy witticisms that provide shallow insights into the economic and historical conditions that shape rural communities’ relationship with food traditions. Thus, it is important to note that this chapter is not a criticism of Andrew Zimmern the private individual but the program as a cultural text subject to techniques of mediation and the commercial forces exerted on cable programming. In this analysis I attend to three specific moves that emerge throughout these episodes. First, I examine how the program ties exotic rural food traditions to a simple, rustic way of life that elides the conditions under which the food continues to be produced and consumed. Second, I explore how the program cultivates faux intimacy with its subjects, inviting the audience not to see themselves as interlopers but instead welcome guests who are entitled to only positive and self-affirming encounters with happy natives. Finally, I analyze how the program assimilates poverty cuisine into the establishment of haute cuisine and bourgeois food culture, a commodity of the new south unburdened by economic disparities.

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SIMPLE COUNTRY FOLKS Each of the episodes examined in this chapter assert that food traditions are a cultural medium, a type of heuristic that can be used to evaluate and understand why specific rural communities organize around particular rituals, modes of work, and ways of life. For instance, when visiting the Gulf Coast (Season 4, Episode 3) Zimmern declares “my greatest joys in traveling is actually getting to taste a culture.” 46 While foodways clearly reflect specific cultural histories and traditions, the practice of consuming a culture through a medium requires reduction and condensation. How food is produced and consumed becomes the representative anecdote for all elements of culture represented on and off screen. Throughout the program, the ingenuity, hard work, and survival skills that go into some aspects of rural food production represent the proud traditions of living off the land. Terms like “heritage” and “tradition” are frequently associated with the difficult labor of hunting, growing, or foraging a meal not available in grocery stores. In the process, the difficult labor of “making do” becomes tied to a romantic ideal of living simply and without pretense. Heritage and tradition are reflections of lifestyle choices and contentment, rather than structural economic conditions. Indeed, for every happy hunter and self-reliant mountain person depicted on screen there are countless others living with persistent food insecurity. First, the program uses the ingenuity of Southern food cultures as testaments to the benefits and freedom of self-help. For instance, in the Ozark of Arkansas (Season 3, Episode 8), with happy hunters and anglers dressed in camouflage and navigating rural swamps portrayed on screen, Zimmern explains in voice over “People here treasure their freedom, their family, and the timeless heritage of living off the land.” 47 He notes that while modernity is a part of Arkansas’s landscape, there is “pluck and self-reliance . . . everywhere you look.” 48 Through meals of bear cracklings, bacon-wrapped crow, rabbit legs, and suckerfish, the difficulty of attaining these hard to find proteins is framed as a purposeful and joyful enactment of personal agency. The episode also emphasizes the festive and communal elements of hunting and cooking exotic cuisines. Zimmern is invited to participate in a suckerfish fish fry and squirrel cook off with diverse home preparations. The reason that these communities can make “the unpalatable, palatable” is because they put “a high value on preserving the skills and the wisdom handed down from generations of mountain living.” 49 While the festive atmosphere depicted onscreen is undeniable, the framing of these events as representations of “folksy Arkansas” transform temporary moments of community enjoyment into summations of the joyful freedom experienced by living only on what the land provides. 50 Without denying the pride of those who hunt and fish as a way of life, the repetition of “freedom” and “selfreliance” assimilates cuisines of necessity into the grand narratives of late

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capitalism in which private initiative, hard work, and independence are envisioned as replacements for the welfare state. The subjects depicted as happily and even defiantly living off the land, harnessing survival skills developed under conditions of absolute freedom, provides a plausible portrait of alternatives to public assistance. Self-reliance is a rational and empowered choice, not one born of necessity. As Zimmern concludes, food in the Ozarks is “a perfect example of how one culture’s trash becomes another’s culinary treasure.” 51 He makes a similar argument when visiting the Mississippi Delta, noting that the food represents “a very old tradition of making a little go a long way.” 52 In other words, the ingenuity of the rural South is a fitting example of how socioeconomic status need not be a barrier to unlimited upward mobility. This episode in particular imparts the lesson that society’s culinary wastes are a treasure trove of edible delights. Through hard work and self-reliance, table scraps can become as delicious as high-end cuisine. Second, Bizarre Foods America represents poverty cuisines as signs of a fiercely defended way of life. The program’s romantic portrayal of declining food traditions that rely on hunting, fishing, and gathering laments the wane of noble poverty, of cultures content with living off the land. This portrayal is most prominently foregrounded in episodes featuring the cuisine of the Gulf Coast, The Mississippi Delta, and rural Florida. In these episodes, Zimmern continually highlights these are places “you can taste a vanishing way of life.” 53 During a community dinner of various exotic fish and organ meat with Isleno descendants of early immigrants from the Canary Islands, he explains: “only a few families still hold on to this way of life.” 54 For Zimmern, dish after dish represents “another vestige of a lost way of life.” 55 In Clarksville, Mississippi (Season 2, Episode 7), Zimmern calls the Delta “a place standing outside of time.” 56 In the rural outskirts of New Orleans (Season 1, Episode 2), Zimmern observes country home cooking with optimism that “grandma’s favorite food hasn’t faded into the sunset quite yet.” 57 In these episodes, romantic attachment to the old South encases these communities behind museum glass, so to speak, rendering them a kind of curated living display of doomed cultures. The food of the rural South is represented as primitive, preserved for its quaint and sentimental attachment to bygone eras. Specifically, the rural South is both spatially and temporally remote from contemporary civilization. For instance, the Gulf Coast is “a corner of the country forgotten by most,” 58 while in the Mississippi Delta “time has more or less stopped.” 59 Nonetheless, rural Southerners cling to their exotic and outdated traditions. In fact, for those who “proudly call themselves crackers,” “living off the land the way their ancestors did is just a practical way of life.” 60 In these episodes Zimmern explains the pride rural Southerners feel in defending ways of life that are ostensibly pre-modern. Meanwhile the camera cuts between shots of local residents in camouflage outfits, load-

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ing hunting and fishing gear, and preparing to head into forests, swamps, and bayous. The subjects are framed by the program as holding emphatic attachments to tradition in spite of modern conveniences. Thus, the framework of the program sustains a modern/primitive binary in which poverty cuisines exist out of a charming refusal to integrate into the mainstream consumer economy. Again, the rhetoric of heritage and tradition explains access to wealth and resources as phenomena structured by how cultures relate to modernity. Exotic food traditions in the rural South are the product of parochial cultures choosing to live outside of time’s passage, deciding instead to live off pig entrails, junk fish, and squirrel meat. Finally, the program represents rural Southern cuisine as the savage and playful spirit of primitive America. On the Gulf Coast, Zimmern employs a lighthearted tone to introduce “a cast of characters [who] fight to preserve their way of life.” 61 These “characters” are frequently characterized as “rowdy” “rough” or “wild” and depicted happily touting guns, drinking beer, and smoking mystery meats in makeshift contraptions. For instance, Zimmern describes the residents of Hurricane Alley, AL as “rough and tumble,” “armed to the teeth,” and “rowdy.” 62 And while they work hard, they enjoy “having a damn good time while they’re at it.” 63 Outside New Orleans, Zimmern praises the “rough and ready country cooking.” 64 He also visits what he characterizes as a “rowdy road house” that serves turtle and raccoon. While harvesting bullfrogs in the Everglades he observes the “rugged way of life” of the rural Gladesman. 65 In many ways, this frame provides a positive elaboration on the standard redneck caricature that is ubiquitous in American popular culture. But, the image presented here is also of happy savages unaware and unconcerned about modern refinement, standards of cleanliness, and convenience. The wild and challenging nature of the cuisine symbolizes a culture with seemingly child-like maturity and aspirations. That is to say that in the rural South we see the humble yet unrefined cuisines of the poor and less civilized. The audience is assured, however, that these rowdy individuals are quite content, if not overly joyed by the difficult task of scrounging for a meal. Their culture is proudly primitive and continues to be passed on and adopted by choice. As Zimmern watches a peaceful sunset over the Everglades he tells his backwater hosts, “you’ve got it pretty good, my friend.” 66 Here, the sincere admiration for primitive ways of life overshadows the implicit assumption that, in general, eking out a meager existence on difficult to obtain protein sources is the preference of those who do. Certainly, the subjects with whom Zimmern visits express pride and enjoyment, but audiences are left to positively generalize about rural life in general, saved from having to observe the harsher side of making do.

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Faux Intimacy and Family Meals In each episode, Zimmern is invited to join a local family for a home cooked meal. During the preparation of the meal, Zimmern interacts with the cook, samples ingredients, and explains cooking processes to the audience. Throughout the preparation and meal, Zimmern asks his hosts questions about their family history, life circumstances, and the significance of particular rituals and ingredients. While the conversations are ostensibly about unique and exotic foods, the dialogue often unfolds the cook’s personal and family history, their stature in the local community, and how food relates to their cultural heritage. While many of the festival and hunting scenes turn poverty cuisine into spectacle, the family dinner sequences are profoundly intimate and work to humanize the program’s subjects. They offer a glimpse into how model rural families structure their lives around exotic foods. Though these recurring sequences build familiarity and comfort with the food customs of rural families, they also ensure that the presence of the exotic does not fundamentally disturb the audience’s privilege. Like Zimmern, the audience is entitled to be welcome guests in the rural Southern kitchen, to have exotic subjects make them feel at ease, comforted, and taken care of as they experience difference. This sense of intimacy is an invitation to engage in culinary slumming. It reminds viewers that for the price of a temporary disavowal of privilege, tasting the South’s exotic edibles provides unmediated access to the authentic cultural experience of the Other. The audience is not forced to confront the unpleasant power lines that divide them from the program’s subjects. The Other is made present to confirm that the world is open and accessible for the upwardly mobile food aficiando. In particular, two meal sequences demonstrate how the program cultivates comfort and welcomeness for the adventurous foodie. First, in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, local community organizer David Pham brings Zimmern to lunch in the home of first generation Vietnamese immigrants Min and Ho Tran. Bayou La Batre has a large Vietnamese community that predominantly makes a living in the local seafood industry. 67 As an unofficial ambassador for the Vietnamese community, Pham secures Zimmern and his cameras entrance into Buddhist temples, Vietnamese markets and groceries, and even the homes of local residents. The Ho family provides Zimmern with a tour of their garden of Vietnamese vegetables, their prized roosters, and homespun varieties of dried and fermented fish. A majority of the preparations are unavailable in local restaurants because the Food and Drug Administration prohibits the fermentation processes employed by the Ho family. Zimmern’s delight with this fact suggests that the audience is privy to the most challenging and authentic experience with Southern-Vietnamese fusion. They are treated to the most secret and mysterious cuisine that the South has to offer.

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The dangers of fermented fish are made comforting and delightful by how the program cultivates intimacy between Zimmern and the host family. During home meal sequences, Zimmern provides voice over narration where he explains the family’s history and cuisine over old black and white portraits. The experience has the documentary quality of rummaging through old family photo albums. Throughout the meal, Zimmern spends as much time describing the meal as he does expressing reverence for the family’s traditions of making the unpalatable, delicious. At the conclusion of the meal, Zimmern embraces the family’s matriarch with a high level of familiarity and comfort. He complements David for how well he negotiates being “trapped between two cultures” and complements the Min and Ho for the authenticity of the meal. 68 In a second example, Zimmern visits a family cookout with the Chow family of Clarksdale, Mississippi. He is treated to “a showcase of the wonderful things that can happen when the Far East meets Deep South,” including traditional Southern dishes like pigs feet and tails with Chinese spices and cooking techniques. 69 While in the previous example the Trans were portrayed as a relatively lower income immigrant family making the best of their circumstances, the Chows are fourth generation immigrants who came from humble roots to become “a family of white collar professionals.” 70 This episode contrasts black and white photos of the family’s humble beginnings with their present day success, including a vibrant family with the creature comforts of affluence. Zimmern is invited to participate in the kitchen, sample ingredients, and even join the family in prayer before the meal. Again, the family’s openness to Zimmern provides a portrait of a welcoming South, eager to share its culinary secrets with the affluent consumers on the other side of the camera. Above all, the program’s emphasis on the family’s assimilation into American culture and their adherence to the American Dream mythology makes servings of pig feet more palatable. Though the family once relied on poverty cuisine to survive, evidence of their hard work and perseverance makes their festive celebration of pig feet and crawfish safely accessible to those with the privilege to choose how they wish to dine. This intimate portrayal of a successful immigrant family also confirms that the consumption of bizarre foods may have at one point been about necessity, but today they are a part of family heritage and community traditions. The invitation that the audience be part of the family attests to the welcomeness of culinary slummer. Images of happy natives, opening their homes to be observed, give the viewer tacit approval to gawk for their pleasure. In other words, the program’s subjects seemingly consent to being studied and examined; rendered knowable, and consumed for the edification of viewers at home. The feeling of closeness is, however, staged as a device to ease audience fears of otherness and authorize their pleasurable consumption of poverty cuisines.

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New South Cuisine Bizarre Food America portrays poverty cuisine as part of the chic new food trends that are revitalizing contemporary Southern cuisine. Here, techniques born of necessity and survival are used to spice up and add exotic qualities to mundane restaurant fare. Assimilating poverty cuisine into the fine dining experience extends the experience of slumming beyond the tour to the everyday life of the adventurous eater. In this way, the audience can capture the experience of Otherness at their local farmer’s market, the specialty grocer, or the neighborhood gastro-pub. In these spaces, poverty cuisines can be consumed without a discomforting confrontation with the historical and economic context of the cuisine. With an expert chef at the helm and pleasant likeminded patrons as company, the nasty bits and lesser cuts can be experienced with the comfort of refinement. The program’s promise that these exotic elements will be coming to a hip new restaurant near you provides reassurances that an authentic encounter with otherness can be obtained without self-risk or liberal guilt. In another sense, the high price of these exotic new menu items assuages the guilt associated with slumming by bringing them under the canopy of elite taste. Representations of new Southern cuisine offer transcendence from the “old South,” a place where lines of race, class, and gender dictate access to food and capital. In several episodes, Zimmern showcases popular Southern chefs who have turned to rural cuisine to update the menus at their high-end eateries. In the episode eponymously named “The New South” (Season 1, Episode 2), Zimmern spends time with Chef Chris Hastings of the James Beard Award winning Hot and Hot Fish Club in Birmingham, Alabama. 71 The episode follows Zimmern and Hastings’ adventures through the aisles of local butchers and international markets where they ponder the relative merits of everything from blood cake to dried and fermented fish. Through voice over, Zimmern remarks, “this isn’t your grandma’s Piggly Wiggly,” and declares, “Birmingham food and cultural scene are evolving.” 72 Hastings observes that new Southern cuisine is about assimilating and fusing classics with rare and undiscovered ingredients. Observing the influence of local foods and international markets, Hastings explains, “us white guys starting showing up and saying this is the coolest thing ever.” 73 Similarly, in Oxford, Mississippi, Zimmern shops with Chef John Currence of the critically acclaimed City Grocery where the two ponder combinations like Japanese Miso and locally sourced pigs ear and testicles. Zimmern remarks that the market “is a monument to changing times.” 74 His exotic excursions with local celebrity chefs put the privileged practice of cultural appropriation on display. Here, the hallmark of great Southern chefs is their ability to turn the unfamiliar and even distasteful ingredients of first generation immigrants and country rednecks into contemporary haute cuisine. The kitchens of Hot and Hot

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Fish Club and the City Grocery are portrayed as places where teams of trained professionals make the nasty bits pleasurable to those who have not likely had the need to eat ingredients like testicles out of necessity. Most importantly, the food is made to tell a different story that harkens vaguely to heritage and tradition with no reference to history and context. For those who do not typically dine in James Beard award-winning restaurants, new Southern cuisine is also supposedly the rising-tide that lifts all boats. That is to say that the program suggests that the demands of affluent consumers for new and exotic ingredients might provide economic support to communities who hunt, trap, and raise wild game to survive. These individuals are now poised to use their unique set of skills and traditions to profit from the rise of culinary tourism. The most profound example can be found in Zimmern’s discussion of the unique ingredients harvested by the Seminole Indian nation of central Florida. In a tour through the exotic game preserves to the Brighton reservation, Zimmern suggests that Seminole business success in supplying wild game to the region means “hunting for food is not a necessity anymore.” 75 Casinos notwithstanding, the demand for Seminole ranching is responsible for “keeping their culture alive.” 76 Implicitly, the emergence of an affluent class of exotic eaters is responsible for improving the lives of the marginalized and dispossessed. The purveyors and consumers of rare and bizarre foods are now presented with the kind of upward mobility that affords a more discerning and refined palate. Again, the Seminole are offered as evidence that self-reliance and tradition can be marshaled by underclasses to market their quaint and charming lifestyle to the upper-class consumer. While the Seminole’s success is well documented, the program presents self-help, cultural commodification, and entrepreneurialism as the pathway out of poverty and marginalization. In essence, the show suggests that the exotic tastes of affluent consumers can, in part, alleviate centuries of economic dislocation caused by their ancestors. THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DIET Despite Zimmern’s best efforts to show rural Southerners as they live, Bizarre Foods America provides an inadequate account of the economic realities of food production and consumption. For every self-reliant country family depicted as living happily off the land; every charming food culture poised to compete in the new cosmopolitan marketplace; and every culinary slummer invited into home kitchens where secret recipes are divulged, there are countless individuals living with the legacies of capitalism. This chapter demonstrates that glorification of poverty cuisine masks the discontent of America’s rural underclass. Pride, heritage,

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and charm obscure the profound lack of choices and the severe limitations on upward mobility that characterize the modern crisis of rural poverty. While those living in poverty are adept, skillful, and resilient, the celebratory exoticization of their foodways overlooks the need for a more equitable distribution of material resources. Attention to the historic legacies of “soul food,” and other cuisines fashioned from the scraps and leftovers of the haves, would do more to contextualize the parallel development of different food classes in America. Perhaps Zimmern’s original formula for the program could have provided the context audiences need to understand the implications of culinary slumming and appropriation. With attention to the relationship between food, capitalism, and American empire, this analysis brings attention to how the televised food adventure dispenses with an analysis of economic colonialism to placate the new cosmopolitan eater. In this program, the rural South is quite literally domesticated and its food cultures contorted to tell a narrative of humble contentment with existing social and economic structures. Indeed, economic austerity has profoundly impacted the Southern diet. For instance, while high rates of obesity are attributed to high fat protein sources and deep fried treats, the unfortunate reality is that systemic poverty is primarily responsible. The new poverty cuisines of the South are fast food and cheap carbohydrates sold at discount chains such as Walmart. 77 Decades of depressed wages and declining employment opportunities have also changed attitudes toward physical fitness and healthy eating. The self-reliant family living off the land is an idyllic image that obscures the proliferation of low priced processed foods, produced by companies that have taken advantage of economic austerity. While more affluent culinary tourists consume what is presented as the authentic South, many rural Southerners either go hungry or fill up on low nutrition fillers. If anything, these chemically enhanced and artificially sweetened treats more appropriately deserve the label of “bizarre foods.” This chapter shows how reverence and exoticization push aside the economic realities of food for a self-affirming portrait of an exhilarating food adventure, complete with servile natives, rustic beauty, and challenging tests for the intrepid foodie. In Bizarre Foods America, the culinary slummer remains unburdened by the painful histories of the cuisines they vicariously consume. Ultimately, those same foods will be featured at a local fine dining establishment, marketed as new Southern cuisine, to be enjoyed without the disturbing presence of Others. NOTES 1. Doris Witt, Black Hunger: Soul Food and America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 101; See also Jeffrey Pilcher, “From ‘Montezuma’s Revenge’ to

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‘Mexican Truffles’: Culinary Tourism Across the Rio Grande” (pp. 76–96) in Culinary Tourism, ed. Lucy M. Long (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2013). 2. bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992), 21. 3. Biana Freire-Medeiros, Touring Poverty (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 3. 4. See Casey Ryan Kelly, “Bizarre Foods: White Privilege and the Neocolonial Palate.” In Race and Hegemonic Struggle in the United States, edited by Michael G. Lacy and Mary E. Triece, 43–67. Lanham, MD: Farleigh Dickinson Press, 2014. 5. For instance, Frederick Douglass Opie traces the history of “soul food” to the secret cultural practices and religions of African American slaves. See Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); Also see Jessica Harris, High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011); Rachel Lauden, Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013); Adrian Miller, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine One Plate at a Time (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013); Andrew Warnes, Savage Barbecue: Race, Culture, and the Invention of America’s First Food (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2008). 6. On the Travel Channel alone there is Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, Dangerous Grounds, Man vs. Food, Man vs. Food Nation, No Reservations, Samantha Brown, and The Layover. 7. See Casey Ryan Kelly, “Strange/Familiar: Rhetorics of Exoticism in Ethnographic Television.” In Communication Colonialism: Readings on Postcolonial Theory and Communication, ed. Rae Lynn Schwartz-Dupre. New York: Peter Lang. 8. Kelly, “Strange/Familiar,” 196. 9. See Lisa M. Heldke, Exotic Appetites: Ruminations of a Food Adventurer (New York: Psychology Press, 2003); Laura Lindenfeld, “Visiting the Mexican American Family: Tortilla Soup as Culinary Tourism.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 4 (2007): 303–320; and Helene Shugart, “Sumptuous Texts: Consuming ‘Otherness’ in the Food Film Genre.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 25 (2008): 68–90; 10. Kelly, “Bizarre Foods,” 47. 11. See Edward Said, Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. 12. See Henry Giroux, “Beyond the Biopolitics of Disposibility: Rethinking Neoliberalism in the New Gilded Age.” Social Identities 14 (2008): 587–620. 13. Ruth Manthell, “Household Income Falls as 46 Million in Poverty,” MarketWatch, September 12, 2012, Accessed October 13, 2014 at http:// www.marketwatch.com/story/ household-income-falls-as-46-million-in-poverty-201209-12. 14. The “representative anecdote” is borrowed from Kenneth Burke, Grammar of Motives. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1969. For its application in media criticism see Barry Brummett, “Burke’s Representative Anecdote as a Method in Media Criticism.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 1 (1984): 161–176. 15. Don Lee, “U.S. Income Gap Between Rich, Poor Hits New High,” Los Angeles Times, September 12, 2012. Accessed October 13, 2014 at http://articles.latimes.com/ 2012/ sep/12/business/la-fi-census-poverty-rate-20120913. 16. Thomas D. Rowley, “Food Assistance Needs of the South’s Vulnerable Populations,” August 2000. http://srdc.msstate.edu/publications/archive/218.pdf; See also Tom Zeller Jr., “Rural Minorities Ponder the American Dream From the Bottom Rung of the Economic Ladder,” The Huffington Post, September 20, 2012. Accessed October 13, 2014 at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/rural-poverty-minorities_n_1829911.html. 17. Daniel T. Lichter, Domenico Parisi, and Michael C. Taquino, “The Geography of Exclusion: Race, Segregation, and Concentrated Poverty,” National Poverty Center Working Paper #11-16, May 2011. Accessed October 13, 2014 at http://npc.umich.edu/ publications/u/2011-16 percent20NPC percent20Working percent20Paper.pdf.

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18. Rural child food insecurity rates have been as high as 46 percent. See Alan Pyke, “REPORT: Child Hunger is Concentrated in Rural America,” ThinkProgress June 10, 2013. Accessed October 15, 2014 at http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/06/10/ 2132331/report-child-hunger-is-concentrated-in-rural-america/; and Feeding America, “Map the Meal Gap, Food Insecurity in Your County,” 2001. Accessed October 15 at http://help.feedingamerica.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Hunger_in_america& s_src=W14ADIRCT& s_subsrc=http%3A%2F%2Fhelp.feedingamerica.org%2Fsite%2FPageServer%3Fpagen ame%3Dpage_not_found. 19. The Salvation Army, “Perceptions of Poverty: The Salvation Army’s Report to America,” October 2012. Accessed October 13, 2014 at http://salvationarmynorth.org/ wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2012SAPovertyReportWEB.pdf. 20. Kenneth L. Deavers and Robert A. Hoppe, “Overview of the Rural Poor in the 1980s,” ed. Cynthia M. Duncan, Rural Poverty in America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1993), 3. This point extends Michael Harrington’s foundational work on poverty in the U.S., in which he argues that the interstate highway system enables most to travel without ever seeing the grim realities of structural poverty that exists just minutes from the on ramp. See Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York: Touchstone, 1962). 21. Harrington, Other America, 41. 22. Harrington, Other America, 41. 23. See Diana Elizabeth Kendall, Framing Class: Media Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2011). 24. See Derek Nystrom, Hard Hats, Rednecks, and Macho Men: Class in 1970s American Cinema (London: Oxford University Press, 2009). 25. With the exception of civil rights and Blaxploitation films, most of popular culture looks past the public memory of poverty, slavery, segregation, the Ku Klux Klan, and Jim Crow. 26. See Paul J. Cloke and Jo Little, Contested Countryside Cultures: Otherness, Marginalization and Rurality (New York: Psychology Press, 1997). 27. Lucy M. Long, Culinary Tourism (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2013), 2; See also Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, 2nd ed. (New York, Schocken Books, 1989); and J. Urry, The Tourist Gaze (London: Routledge, 1990). 28. Biana Freire-Medeiros, Touring Poverty (London and New York: Routledge, 2013). 29. See C. Michael Hall and Hazel Tucker, “Tourism and Postcolonialism: An Introduction,” ed. C. Michael Hall and Hazel Tucker, Tourism and Postcolonialism: Contested Discourses, Identities, and Representations, pp. 1–24 (London and New York: Routledge, 2004). 30. Stephan Palmie, The Cooking of History: How Not to Study Afro-Cuban Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 240. 31. See Stephen William Foster, “The Exotic as Symbol System.” Dialectical Anthropology 7 (1982): 22–30; Said, Orientalism; and Marianna Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. 32. See Julia Kristeva, The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. 33. See Kent Ono, Contemporary Media Culture and the Remnants of a Colonial Past. New York, Peter Lang, 2009; Raka Shome and Radha Hegde, “Culture, Communication, and the Challenges of Globalization.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19 (2002): 144–165; “Postcolonial Approaches to Communication: Charting the Terrain, Engaging the Intersection.” Communication Theory 12 (2002): 172–189. 34. Raka Shome, “Postcolonial Interventions in the Rhetorical Canon: An ‘Other’ View,” Communication Theory 6 (1996): 41 35. The colonial roots of “soul food” and country cooking are explored in Opie, Hog and Hominy.

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36. Urry, The Tourist Gaze, 17. 37. See Jason Edward Black, “Rhetorical Circulation, Native Authenticity, and Neocolonial Decay: The Case of Chief Seattle’s Controversial Elegy.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 15 (2012): 635–646; Casey Ryan Kelly, “Neocolonialism and the Global Prison in National Geographic’s Locked Up Abroad.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 24 (2012): 123–151; Ono, Contemporary Media Culture; Rae Lynn Schwartz-Dupre, “Rhetorically Representing Public Policy,” Feminist Media Studies 7 (2007): 433–453; and Darrel A. Wanzer, “Delinking Rhetoric, or Revisiting McGee’s Fragmentation Thesis Through Decoloniality.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 15 (2012): 647–658 38. For examples of this kind of criticism see ed. Rae Lynn Schwartz-Dupre’s edited collection Communication Colonialism: Readings on Postcolonial Theory and Communication, New York: Peter Lang. 39. Amanda Kondolojy, “‘Bizarre Foods America,’ ‘Dangerous Grounds,’ ‘Hotel Impossible,’ and ‘Mysteries at the Museum’ Renewed by Travel Channel,” October 7, 2013. Accessed October 15, 2014 at http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2013/10/07/bizarre-foods-america-dangerous-grounds-hotel-impossible-and-mysteries-at-the-museum-renewed-by-travel-channel/207320/. 40. Scripps Networks Interactive, Brands For Life: 2012 Annual Report. Accessed October 15, 2014 at http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NDk5ODI0fENoaWxkSUQ9NTM5NjY4fFR5cGU9MQ ==&t=1. 41. See Scripps, Brands, 8. 42. Kent Gibbons, “Travel Channel Adds New Andrew Zimmern Show,” Broadcasting & Cable, October 7, 2014. Accessed October 15, 2014 at http:// www.broadcastingcable.com/news/ programming/travel-channel-adds-new-andrewzimmern-show/134636. 43. See David Roediger. Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. New York: Verso, 1999. 44. See “Foodies, Fun and Philanthropy,” Star Tribune, March 14, 2014. Accessed October 15, 2014 at http://www.startribune.com/local/248299801.html. 45. Tim Carman, “Andrew Zimmern’s ‘Bizarre Foods America,’ Returns Monday with D.C. Episode,” The Washington Post, February 8, 2013. Accessed October 15, 2014 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/going-out-guide/wp/2013/02/08/andrewzimmerns-bizarre-foods-america-returns-monday-with-d-c-episode/. 46. Bizarre Foods America, “Third Coast,” Travel Channel, July 15, 2013, written by Andrew Zimmern. 47. Bizarre Foods America, “The Ozarks,” Travel Channel, April 1, 2013, written by Andrew Zimmern. 48. Bizarre Foods America, “The Ozarks.” 49. Bizarre Foods America, “The Ozarks.” 50. Bizarre Foods America, “The Ozarks.” 51. Bizarre Foods America, “The Ozarks.” 52. Bizarre Foods America, “The Blues Trail,” Travel Channel, August 20, 2012, written by Andrew Zimmern. 53. Bizarre Foods America, “Third Coast.” 54. Bizarre Foods America, “Third Coast.” 55. Bizarre Foods America, “Third Coast.” 56. Bizarre Foods America, “The Blues Trail.” 57. Bizarre Foods America, “New Orleans,” Travel Channel, January 30, 2012, written by Andrew Zimmern. 58. Bizarre Foods America, “Third Coast.” 59. Bizarre Foods America, “The Blues Trail.” 60. Bizarre Foods America, “The Other Florida,” Travel Channel, August 27, 2012, written by Andrew Zimmern. 61. Bizarre Foods America, “Third Coast.” 62. Bizarre Foods America, “Third Coast.”

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63. Bizarre Foods America, “Third Coast.” 64. Bizarre Foods America, “New Orleans.” 65. Bizarre Foods America, “The Other Florida.” 66. Bizarre Foods America, “The Other Florida.” 67. In this episode, Pham’s role as political advocate for Southeast Asia immigrants is backgrounded to his role ambassador for the community’s cuisine. 68. Bizarre Foods America, “Third Coast.” 69. Bizarre Foods America, “The Blues Trail.” 70. Bizarre Foods America, “The Blues Trail.” 71. Bizarre Foods America, “Birmingham (The New South),” Travel Channel, July 29, 2013, written by Andrew Zimmern. 72. Bizarre Foods America, “Birmingham.” 73. Bizarre Foods America, “Birmingham.” 74. Bizarre Foods America, “The Blues Trail.” 75. Bizarre Foods America, “The Other Florida.” 76. Bizarre Foods America, “The Other Florida.” 77. Patrik Jonsson, “Mississippi Most Obese State: Southern Diet or Culture on the Skids,” Christian Science Monitor, August, 14, 2012. Accessed October 16, 2014 at http:// www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2012/0814/Mississippi-most-obese-state-Southerndiet-or-culture-on-the-skids.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Black, Jason Edward. “Rhetorical Circulation, Native Authenticity, and Neocolonial Decay: The Case of Chief Seattle’s Controversial Elegy.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 15 (2012): 635–646. Brummett, Barry. “Burke’s Representative Anecdote as a Method in Media Criticism.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 1 (1984): 161–176. Burke, Kenneth. Grammar of Motives. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1969. Carman, Tim. “Andrew Zimmern’s ‘Bizarre Foods America,’ Returns Monday with D.C. Episode.” The Washington Post, February 8, 2013. Last modified February 8, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/going-out-guide/wp/2013/02/08/andrew-zimmerns-bizarre-foods-america-returns-monday-with-d-c-episode/. Cloke, Paul J. and Little, Jo. Contested Countryside Cultures: Otherness, Marginalization and Rurality. New York: Psychology Press, 1997. Deavers, Kenneth L. and Hoppe, Robert A. “Overview of the Rural Poor in the 1980s,” edited by Cynthia M. Duncan, 3–20. Rural Poverty in America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1993. Harrington, Michael. The Other America: Poverty in the United States. New York: Touchstone, 1962. hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992. Feeding America, “Map the Meal Gap, Food Insecurity in Your County,” 2001. Last modified January 1, 2001 at http://help.feedingamerica.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Hunger_in_america&s_src=W14ADIRCT&s_subsrc=http%3A%2F %2Fhelp.feedingamerica.org%2Fsite%2FPageServer%3Fpagename%3Dpage_not_f ound. “Foodies, Fun and Philanthropy.” Star Tribune, March 14, 2014. Last modified March 14, 2014, http://www.startribune.com/local/248299801.html. Foster, Stephen William. “The Exotic as a Symbol System.” Dialectical Anthropology 7 (1982): 22–30. Freire-Medeiros, Biana. Touring Poverty. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. Gibbons, Kent. “Travel Channel Adds New Andrew Zimmern Show.” Broadcasting and Cable, October 7, 2014. Last modified October 7, 2014, http://

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www.broadcastingcable.com/news/programming/travel-channel-adds-new-andrew-zimmern-show/134636. Giroux, Henry. “Beyond the Biopolitics of Disposability: Rethinking Neoliberalism in the New Gilded Age.” Social Identities 14 (2008): 587–620. Hall C. Michael and Tucker, Hazel. “Tourism and Postcolonialism: An Introduction,” In Tourism and Postcolonialism: Contested Discourses, Identities, and Representations, edited by C. Michael Hall and Hazel Tucker, 1–24. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. Harris, Jessica. High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011. Heldke, Lisa M. Exotic Appetites: Ruminations of a Food Adventurer. New York: Psychology Press, 2003. Jonsson, Patrik. “Mississippi Most Obese State: Southern Diet or Culture on the Skids.” Christian Science Monitor, August, 14, 2012. Last modified August 14, 2012, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2012/0814/Mississippi-most-obese-stateSouthern-diet-or-culture-on-the-skids. Kelly, Casey Ryan. “Bizarre Foods: White Privilege and the Neocolonial Palate.” In Race and Hegemonic Struggle in the United States, edited by Michael G. Lacy and Mary E. Triece, 43–67. Lanham, MD: Farleigh Dickinson Press, 2014. ———. “Strange/Familiar: Rhetorics of Exoticism in Ethnographic Television.” In Communication Colonialism: Readings on Postcolonial Theory and Communication, edited by Rae Lynn Schwartz-Dupre, 190–209. New York: Peter Lang. ———. “Neocolonialism and the Global Prison in National Geographic’s Locked Up Abroad.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 24 (2012): 123–151. Kendall, Diana Elizabeth. Framing Class: Media Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2011. Kondolojy, Amanda. “‘Bizarre Foods America,’ ‘Dangerous Grounds,’ ‘Hotel Impossible’ and ‘Mysteries at the Museum’ Renewed by Travel Channel,” October 7, 2013. Last modified October 7, 2013, http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2013/10/07/bizarre-foods-america-dangerous-grounds-hotel-impossible-and-mysteries-at-themuseum-renewed-by-travel-channel/207320/. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. Lauden, Rachel. Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013. Lee, Don. “U.S. Income Gap Between Rich, Poor Hits New High,” Los Angeles Times, September 12, 2012. Last Modified September 12, 2012 at http://articles.latimes.com/ 2012/sep/12/business/la-fi-census-poverty-rate-20120913. Lichter, Daniel T., Parisi, Domenico and Taquino, Michael C. “The Geography of Exclusion: Race, Segregation, and Concentrated Poverty,” National Poverty Center Working Paper #11–16, May 2011. Last modified May 2011, http://npc.umich.edu/ publications/u/2011-16%20NPC%20Working%20Paper.pdf. Lindenfeld, Laura. “Visiting the Mexican American Family: Tortilla Soup as culinary tourism.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 4 (2007): 303–320 Long, Lucy M. Culinary Tourism. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2013. MacCannell, Dean. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, 2nd ed. New York, Schocken Books, 1989. Manthell, Ruth. “Household Income Falls as 46 Million in Poverty,” MarketWatch, September 12, 2012. Last modified October 13, 2014, http://www.marketwatch.com/ story/household-income-falls-as-46-million-in-poverty-2012-09-12. Miller, Adrian. Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine One Plate at a Time. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Nystrom, Derek. Hard Hats, Rednecks, and Macho Men: Class in 1970s American Cinema. London: Oxford University Press, 2009. Ono, Kent A. Contemporary Media Culture and the Remnants of a Colonial Past. New York: Peter Lang, 2009.

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Opie, Frederick Douglass. Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Palmie, Stephan. The Cooking of History: How Not to Study Afro-Cuban Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013 Pilcher, Jeffrey. “From ‘Montezuma’s Revenge’ to ‘Mexican Truffles’: Culinary Tourism Across the Rio Grande.” In Culinary Tourism, edited by Lucy M. Long, 76–96. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2013. Pyke, Alan. “REPORT: Child Hunger is Concentrated in Rural America,” ThinkProgress June 10, 2013. Last modified June 10, 2013, http://thinkprogress.org/economy/ 2013/06/10/ 2132331/ report-child-hunger-is-concentrated-in-rural-america/. Roediger, David. Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. New York: Verso, 1999. Rowley, Thomas D. “Food Assistance Needs of the South’s Vulnerable Populations,” August 2000. Last modified August 1, 2000, http://srdc.msstate.edu/publications/ archive/218.pdf. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Scripps Networks Interactive. Brands For Life: 2012 Annual Report. Last modified October 2014, http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NDk5ODI0fENoaWxkSUQ9NTM5NjY4fFR5cGU9 MQ==&t=1. Shome, Raka. “Postcolonial Interventions in the Rhetorical Canon: An ‘Other’ View.” Communication Theory, 6 (1996): 40–59. Shome, Raka and Hedge, Radha. “Culture, Communication, and the Challenges of Globalization.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19 (2002): 172–189. ———. “Postcolonial Approaches to Communication: Chart the Terrain, Engaging the Intersections.” Communication Theory 12 (2002): 249–270. Shugart, Helene. “Sumptuous Texts: Consuming ‘Otherness’ in the Food Film Genre.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 1 (2008): 68–90. Schwartz-Dupre, Rae Lynn. Communication Colonialism: Readings on Postcolonial Theory and Communication, New York: Peter Lang. ———. “Rhetorically Representing Public Policy.” Feminist Media Studies 7 (2007): 433–453 The Salvation Army, “Perceptions of Poverty: The Salvation Army’s Report to America,” October 2012. Last modified October 2012, http://salvationarmynorth.org/wpcontent/uploads/2012/10/2012SAPovertyReportWEB.pdf. Torgovnick, Marianna. Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Urry, J. The Tourist Gaze. London: Routledge, 1990. Wanzer, Darrel A. “Delinking Rhetoric, or Revisiting McGee’s Fragmentation Thesis Through Decoloniality.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 15 (2012): 647–658. Warnes, Andrew. Savage Barbecue: Race, Culture, and the Invention of America’s First Food. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2008. Witt, Doris. Black Hunger: Soul Food and America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. Zeller Jr., Tom. “Rural Minorities Ponder the American Dream From the Bottom Rung of the Economic Ladder,” The Huffington Post, September 20, 2012. Last modified September 20, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/rural-povertyminorities_n_18299 11.html.

FIVE Pungent Yet Problematic The Class-Based Framing of Ramps in the New York Times and the Charleston Gazette Melissa Boehm

Ramps, or wild leeks, used to be seen as something uniquely Appalachian, alongside apple stack cakes. 1 The dark green-leaved spring plant, Allium tricoccum, is one of the first to sprout in shaded areas with an elevation of at least 2,500 feet and is often likened to wild onions or wild garlic due to its strong odor. 2 Previously, the vegetable carried a social stigma because it was believed to be eaten primarily by poor people who could not afford to purchase vegetables at the grocery store and instead had to forage in the woods for it. 3 Those who ate ramps, it was said, could be easily distinguished from others due to the distinctive and pungent odor left on the breath; some claimed the pores in the skin exuded it for days or even weeks later. 4 Finer palates now seek ramps in fancy restaurants both inside and outside Appalachia. 5 Fred Sauceman, writing for Crossroads: A Southern Culture Annual, chronicled the childhood ramp collecting of JoAnn Kalonaheskie, a Cherokee in North Carolina, and what were believed to be the healing properties of the plant. Like later residents of Appalachia, for centuries, the Cherokees relied on ramps for much needed Vitamin C after a long winter, as well as for its blood-pressure lowering effects. 6 The Encyclopedia of Appalachia repeats a popular European saying: “By eating ramps in May, all the year after physicians may play” as evidence of the well-known healing and restorative properties of the plant. 7 93

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Books wholly dedicated to ramps have also been published. Prominent examples include: two by a West Virginia ramp farmer, Glen Facemire 8 in 1991 and a more comprehensive version in 2009, another by a Michigan forager, Brian Cool 9 in 2013; and a third, a cookbook, by Paul Kelly 10 in 2012. Each of these books provides evidence of the growing popularity of ramps. In academic literature, folklorists and cultural geographers have documented the cultural significance of ramps to the people of Appalachia. 11 Mary Hufford’s ethnography of ramps in 1998 12 documented the many ways that ramps were a part of spring for West Virginians. A specialist at the American Folklife Center, she took part in the annual preparations for a ramp festival in Naoma, West Virginia in 1996. While there, she found that ramp suppers bring local people together; often the men go and forage for ramps and bring them back to the women who prepare them in community kitchens. Hufford listened while the women of Naoma cleaned and cooked the ramps to serve “nearly five hundred plates piled high with potatoes, fried apples, pinto beans, cornbread, and ramps.” 13 She also found a strong sense of camaraderie among the women who talked while they prepared the annual ramp supper and characterized it as “crafting locality.” 14 She continued, “Through such talk the women enunciate their place in the hills, a place remarkable not only for its biodiversity, but for the interweaving of biodiversity and community life.” 15 Finding ramps in the mountains for the annual supper was also a community-building tradition for many men in Naoma. Hufford recounted the conversation two older gentlemen had while remembering where they used to pick ramps years ago and the clear joy it brought them. Perhaps one of the most interesting points Hufford made in her ethnography was that the mountains served as a commons where local people shared in a resource they did not own. “Such sites, scattered throughout the mountains, define the social collective, serving both as touchstones to a shared past, and as thresholds to a future in which a historic, mixed mesophytic landscape continues to form a hedge against social, environmental, and economic crises.” 16 Based on participant observation, interviews, and an analysis of Facebook posts, Bridgette Rivers, Robert Oliver, and Lynn Resler most recently found that, “While it is true that consuming ramps can be reduced to a simple act of absorbing nutrients . . . the consumptive act can also include an engagement with symbolic notions of tradition, rootedness, and communal and regional history.” 17 Rivers, Oliver, and Resler asserted that “ramps used to be associated with poverty and Appalachia” but now are highly desirable to some of the most popular chefs throughout the country. 18 Causes for this recent increase in popularity credit “popular cooking sources like Martha Stewart and Better Homes and Gardens for featuring ramps in the early 1990s.” 19 The main themes that arose throughout their interactions with

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ramp collectors, ramp eaters, and ramp preparers were: personal or community benefit, family, and memory. 20 Ramps are an important element of the Appalachian identity and the act of collecting, preparing, and eating ramps connects people to their food, their community, and their history. 21 STEREOTYPES OF APPALACHIA Popular culture fixtures like television programs The Beverly Hillbillies, The Dukes of Hazzard, and MTV’s Buckwild or movies like Deliverance and Wrong Turn and even “documentaries” like Diane Sawyer’s 2009 Hidden America: Children of the Mountains continually perpetuate many of the most negative stereotypes of Appalachia like ignorance, laziness, wildness, moonshiners, feuds, and bare feet. In a recent essay on Buckwild, Chad Berry argues that the reality television program was created by outsiders for outsiders. He asserts this is a common practice in many media representations of the region: “the consistent aim is to attract a non-Appalachian audience by reinforcing stereotypes of Appalachia that make the urban audience feel better about itself—more orderly, more ambitious, more sophisticated, more cosmopolitan.” 22 Though Buckwild is a very recent illustration of the practice, some of these stereotypes can be traced back hundreds of years. Chapters throughout the text Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes served as a basis for this study. Published in 1999, the text relies on early travel narratives, magazine and newspaper articles, and popular fiction to demonstrate the pervasiveness of stereotypes of people from Appalachia. 23 Among the most often cited works were fictional accounts written by John Fox, Jr., who published widely in the late 1800s and early 1900s. From a poor family in Kentucky, Fox “attended Harvard University on a scholarship from the Garth Fund for Poor Boys” 24 and eventually became an interpreter of mountain culture for an eager east coast audience. One of Fox’s most prominent fans was future president Theodore Roosevelt. 25 Fox made his home in places other than the mountains, often in New York City, and based most of his stories on second-hand information from brothers still living in the mountains and other associates. 26 He used this second-hand information to create stories “which were offered to the New York-based commercial newspapers as vital components of an aggressive marketing campaign seeking investments for coal and timber exploitation in the Southern Appalachian Region.” 27 Wilson asserted, as did Ledford, 28 that negative descriptions of the mountain people were used to reinforce their unsuitability to own or occupy land with valuable minerals beneath the surface. Once the mountain people were characterized as undeserving of the land, it became easy to question their claims to

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the land and that then made the land more available for capitalist ventures. 29 Ronald L. Lewis traces the negative stereotypes back to an 1873 Lippincott’s Magazine article written by Will Wallace Harney. 30 Harney focused on an alleged “physical and cultural isolation” of the region and its people. 31 Lewis discredited that notion by citing several studies that illustrated the diversity of economic systems in Appalachia at the time. He concluded that much like other areas in the United States, Appalachia had varying levels of interaction with capitalistic society and assertions to the contrary were simply inaccurate and untrue. Tracing the “hillbilly” stereotype further back into the 1600s, Ledford argued that the negative elements of the stereotype of “backwardness, superstition, and ignorance, or innocence, simplicity, and kindness . . .” took shape “during the colonial, early Republic, and antebellum periods, coalescing out of struggles over land, money, and class.” 32 Ledford read travel narratives from the 1660s to the 1850s and found that early explorers like John Lederer, who wrote about his travels in 1669 and 1670, characterized the mountains as dangerous and inhospitable. It was only when the land was seen as valuable for its natural resources that a perceptible shift in characterizations occurred. 33 Ledford found in the writings of William Byrd in the 1720s and 1730s that the mountains were no longer inhospitable and dangerous but the people who lived there began to take on negative attributes. Byrd stated that mountain people were “slovenly, lazy, unfit for living on the land” and likened some of them to pigs.” 34 Ledford reports that Byrd later alleged that mountain people “eat too much pork.” 35 This association with pigs—acting like them and eating too much pork—indicates Byrd’s disgust for the people of Appalachia who are prone to gluttony. She succinctly stated “. . . when that landscape turned into a valuable commodity and settlers were a potential barrier between the explorers and exploitation of natural resources, the mountains became beautiful and desirable while the inhabitants became adversarial, unnatural, and out of control.” 36 Like other recent scholars mentioned above, Katie Algeo 37 questioned the accuracy and motivations of early travel writers who used Appalachia as their subject. In her 2003 study, she outlined the many inaccuracies of Harold Foght’s 1913 travel essay about communities in the North Carolina mountains. From misnaming rivers to practically copying John Fox, Jr.’s fictional narrative from Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Foght, a respected academic, reinforced many negative stereotypes of the region. What makes Algeo’s study unique is that she found evidence of the people of Appalachia rejecting Foght’s characterizations via a local newspaper. This is one of the few studies that document the voices of local people repudiating the stereotypes through mass media. It is also important to note, as Algeo does, that local media, not national media, provides the space for local people to disagree with the negative representations.

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Studies of news media’s coverage of Appalachia often use national outlets as their basis. For instance, Martinson’s study of national newsmagazines’ framing of West Virginia from 1965–1976 illustrates the ongoing complicated representation of the area and found these common themes: (1) that religious fundamentalism was an important influence on the state, (2) that political corruption was a problem in the state, (3) that the people had a sense of despair and/or resignation about the future, that they were proud but stubborn, (4) that in certain areas the state was slightly behind the rest of the country—for better or worse, and finally (5) that progress was being made and that the future of West Virginia looked much brighter. 38

In those themes, much of the negative stereotypes of the past are echoed and can still be seen today (i.e. Pentecostal snake handlers, crookedness, fatalism, pre-modern social practices). Similarly, Eileen Hoover studied major magazine coverage of Appalachian socio-economic conditions prior to, during, and after President Johnson’s War on Poverty. 39 Hoover determined that renewed interest in Appalachia seemed to be sparked by John F. Kennedy’s necessity to win the state’s primary in 1960. His continued attention to the region and the eventual creation of the Appalachian Regional Commission followed by Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty were the main subjects of coverage. The later drop off in coverage reflected less federal attention to poverty and the region. 40 In a similar study of more recent coverage, Honey L. Comer documented the representation of Appalachia in major metropolitan newspapers during 2005. She found that articles that originated in Appalachia were associated with more positive coverage than articles that originated outside of Appalachia. Negative stereotypes of Appalachia were much more likely in newspapers that were outside of Appalachia. 41 Studies of local news media and Appalachia are not common in the literature with a few exceptions. Rita Colistra documented the different frames used by two newspapers during the month following the Buffalo Creek mine disaster of 1972. 42 She selected the Charleston Gazette, a regional newspaper that was not pro-coal and compared its coverage frames to the more local Logan Banner which is much more pro-coal. Her findings indicate a major difference in the coverage between the two very different newspapers. The Logan Banner used relief/aid/recovery efforts most often in stories (45 percent) while the Charleston Gazette used the attribution of responsibility/conflict frame most often in their stories (33 percent). The lack of analysis of local newspaper coverage of Appalachia needs to be addressed by scholars. By comparing the coverage of a national newspaper, the New York Times, and a more local/regional newspaper, the Charleston Gazette, this research will explore the gap in the literature

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between national news coverage of Appalachia and local news coverage of Appalachia. And building on the work of Algeo, what differences emerge between the framing of ramps in a national newspaper outside of Appalachia since 1980 versus a local newspaper inside Appalachia since 1995? 43 It is important to provide voice in order to prevent the ongoing representative silence 44 of the people of Appalachia. Studying a more local newspaper takes one step closer to doing that. The result of ongoing representative silence is that “ideology and icon are shaped from the outside, leaving Appalachians and Southerners stuck with age-old stereotypes.” 45 In his essay, Ferrence argues for a greater acceptance of diverse voices of the people of Appalachia, voices that compete against and contest stereotypes but also voices that might reinforce the stereotypes. It is the complex plurality of voices and viewpoints that is much closer to the realities of Appalachia. And so, local newspapers, which are more likely to give voice to local people, are of critical importance to a more accurate representation of Appalachia. Looking at articles in local newspapers creates a more dialectical process for us to understand the social, political, and economic significance of ramps and may help explain their popularity within haute cuisine. METHOD This mixed-method study was conducted in two phases. The first phase was a quantitative content analysis of articles. The second phase was a qualitative textual analysis of relevant articles. In the first phase, a keyword search of “wild leeks” and ramps 46 was performed in September 2014 using the National Newspapers Core database and limited to the New York Times from January 1980 to September, 2014. The New York Times was selected as the national newspaper in this study because it has the third highest circulation in the country, behind only USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. 47 It is also geographically situated in areas where ramps commonly grow. The keyword search resulted in a total of 36 articles but upon closer analysis, three of the articles were duplicates and were discarded. Of the thirty-three articles in the New York Times that included both “wild leeks” and “ramps,” twenty-one articles were not focused on ramps but instead on related topics like recipes or fine foods. These twenty-one articles were comprised of ten restaurant reviews, six specialty foods articles, four miscellaneous articles, and one brief mention of a four-course ramp dinner in Manhattan for 120 dollars per person. 48 The Charleston Gazette was selected for a more local analysis because it is situated in the only state that is located entirely in, and often considered to be quintessentially Appalachian, West Virginia. The Charleston Gazette has headquarters in West Virginia’s state capitol, Charleston, and

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is locally owned. Though it is not the only daily newspaper in Charleston (there is one other, the Charleston Daily Mail), it has the highest average readership of the two dailies and was established prior to the only other competing daily. 49 Articles in the Charleston Gazette using the search terms “wild leeks” and ramps yielded thirty-one articles; all but five of the articles did more than make a passing mention of ramps. The final total for detailed analysis in the Charleston Gazette was twenty-six articles. This was unlike the New York Times which had thirty-three total articles with only twelve of those articles making more than a passing reference to ramps. Each article was logged, read at least twice, and coded for these a priori categories based on previous readings about ramps and Appalachia: geographic locations mentioned, time of year the articles were published, smell, foraging, tradition, and sustainability in the first phase of the study. After the quantitative portion of this study was done, the second phase, the qualitative textual analysis of the twelve directly relevant articles in the New York Times and the twenty-six directly relevant articles in the Charleston Gazette, was conducted. In this phase, based on the historical stereotyping of Appalachia, I explored the framing of a food once thought unique to the region: ramps, also known as wild leeks. This portion of the study was informed by these questions: What happens when ramps, a food grown mostly in the wild, becomes popular among elite diners? Who has justifiable claims to harvesting these wild plants? Is it just another natural resource with which Appalachian people cannot be trusted? Is the implication that Appalachian people squander the ramps by their unrefined ways of preparing and eating them? Is it the natural gluttony of Appalachian people that causes them to eat too many ramps at once and subsequently reek of it for days? How is the food framed and named (ramps versus wild leeks) when it is not situated in Appalachia? Is there a difference? FINDINGS FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES AND CHARLESTON GAZETTE GEOGRAPHIC LOCATIONS In the twelve articles in the New York Times that made more than a passing reference to ramps, only three listed a dateline which is traditionally used in newspapers to indicate the geographic focus of the article: one in Rensselaerville, NY, one in Richwood, WV, and one in Westchester County, NY. Appalachia was mentioned in five of twelve (42 percent) articles and West Virginia was mentioned in six of twelve articles (50

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percent). Only two articles mentioned that ramps can also grow in Canada. In the Charleston Gazette, the geographic locations specifically mentioned Appalachia in sixteen of the twenty-six articles. All of the articles mentioned West Virginia that appeared in the Charleston Gazette. Two articles mentioned that ramps could be grown in Canada while two other articles mentioned North Carolina and one mentioned New York. TIME OF YEAR Most articles in the New York Times were published in April (8 of 12 or 66 percent), which is not surprising because that is when most ramps are harvested and therefore when most ramp festivals are scheduled. One article each appeared in March and May while two appeared in June. In the Charleston Gazette, most articles appeared in April (19 of 26 or 73 percent) while three appeared in May, and two each appeared in February and March. Smell The unique odor of ramps was mentioned in most of the articles (10 of 12 or 83 percent) in the New York Times. The first article that the smell went unaddressed was about gardening and the other article was about dining in Westchester County. The ramps’ pungent smell was mentioned in six of the twelve (50 percent) articles. Only one of the articles mentioned students being sent home from school for eating ramps. 50 In the Charleston Gazette, twenty of the twenty-six (77 percent) articles mentioned the smell of ramps; fourteen articles (54 percent) of which mentioned pungent at least once in the article. Three articles mentioned the lore of children being sent home from school in the past for eating ramps. 51 FORAGING The practice of foraging was mentioned in seven of twelve (58 percent) articles in the New York Times. Mushrooms were mentioned in only four of twelve (33 percent) articles in the New York Times. Two articles in the New York Times mentioned Native Americans’ (or Indians) and their use of ramps. 52 Foraging was mentioned in sixteen of the twenty-six (62 percent) articles in the Charleston Gazette. Mushrooms were mentioned in eight of the twenty-six (30 percent) articles. There was no mention of Native Americans (or Indians) in any of the articles in the Charleston Gazette.

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TRADITION AND SUSTAINABILITY In the New York Times, ten of the twelve (83 percent) articles mentioned the traditional aspects of collecting ramps. In the Charleston Gazette, twenty-two of the twenty-six (85 percent) articles mentioned the traditional practice of collecting and/or eating ramps in the spring. Four of twelve (33 percent) articles mentioned sustainability in the New York Times while four of twenty-six (15 percent) articles mentioned sustainability in the Charleston Gazette. These manifest categories were best suited for content analysis and are reported to provide a quick overview of the coverage of ramps in both newspapers. If we were to rely only on these numbers, we might think that the framing of ramps in both the New York Times and the Charleston Gazette was similar. Numerically, it was but content analysis cannot account for the latent content in the text. Because the goal of this study was to also find out how ramps were framed and the complicated subtleties and nuances of the text, a more detailed in-depth textual analysis and interpretation follows. DISCUSSION Even the twenty-one articles in the New York Times that made only passing mention of ramps and wild leeks provides some indication of the changing discourse surrounding the food during the period studied. Most articles from the 1980s (three of four) used the term wild leeks prior to mentioning ramps in the body text. Conversely, articles printed in the 1990s through 2014 used ramps on first reference in fifteen of seventeen instances. In eight of the fifteen articles, wild leeks were a parenthetical reference. This consistent difference in the way ramps were introduced to the reader might imply greater familiarity among writers and readers with ramps rather than wild leeks and aligns with the growing popularity of ramps with chefs on television and in magazines since the middle to late 1990s. In the twenty-one articles that only made passing mention of ramps, there was just one article that described ramps or wild leeks as pungent. Instead, it seemed those articles used ramps or wild leeks as a marker for fine cuisine. For example, one article stated, “Another winning dish, an entrée, was grilled salmon steak with a sauce of pureed yellow peppers flavored with ramps, also known as wild leeks.” 53 Other articles used ramps similarly for the home chef, “A fine way to present these pungent and savory vegetables is in the Italian vegetable pie called tora di verdura, a sort of crustless quiche or baked omelet in which the eggs and cheese diminish somewhat the assertive flavor of the greens.” 54

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TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF ARTICLES IN THE NEW YORK TIMES After a textual analysis of the articles in this study, it was found that when ramps are purchased at the Greenmarket (a farmer’s market) in New York City or harvested in upstate New York, the narrative in the New York Times is much different than when ramps are situated in West Virginia or Appalachia. Therefore, this analysis is organized based on geographic focus of the article. First, articles from the New York Times that are set in New York will be discussed. Then, articles from the New York Times but set in Appalachia will be discussed. And lastly, articles in the Charleston Gazette and set in West Virginia will be discussed. NYT Ramps in NY/non-Appalachia. Two articles, published in 1995 55 and 1999 56 respectively, were written by the same journalist, Molly O’Neill. Her 1995 article situated ramps in O’Neill’s home state of Ohio where she and a brother gathered the ramps from the woods and then prepared them. She said the ramps “made us feel sophisticated, as if we alone had discovered wild onions, when in fact they are considered to be (by all but revisionists) extremely primitive. Nor did we notice . . . the rest of the family gave us a wide berth” after eating them. 57 The comment about ramps being extremely primitive alludes to the history of ramps and veers away from the rising popularity of ramps among gourmet chefs. O’Neill’s article four years later is set in upstate New York and follows a chef who forages for ramps in the hills near his home. O’Neill states that ramps can be found as far north as Canada and as far south as Georgia and ramp festivals “can be found in Elks’ lodges and church basements throughout Appalachia and New England, and in parts of the Midwest and the South.” 58 She spends considerable time explaining the different ways city chefs prepare ramps compared to rural cooks, be it olive oil versus pork or goose fat, or ramp home fries versus a gratin of ramps, potatoes, and Gruyere cheese but she does not make any disparaging remarks about ramps or the people who eat them. Joan Lee Faust wrote about ramps in her gardening column in April 2000 and characterized them as a weed that needed to be rooted out. The only other comment she made was that a friend from Appalachia informed her that the plant was a “much sought out and considered a spring delicacy.” 59 Perhaps this is an example of ramps being useful only to Appalachians (who probably know no better) and otherwise needing to be removed from the nicer gardens of more civilized New Yorkers. Marian Burros’ 2002 article focuses on the many different ways chefs in New York prepare ramps and other spring vegetables and how home cooks can do the same. She still makes a point about the odor of ramps “But beware! Once the ramps are cut, nothing can contain the smell.” 60 A brief June 2002 article about an alcoholic drink called a Gibson revealed an additional manner of ramp characterizations: city versus

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country or urban versus rural but both situated in New York, not Appalachia. “Standing in place for those mothballesque jarred onions, you will find a group of slender, slightly pink, cheek-puckering pickled ramps perched on the lip of your glass. . . . Pungent with a sweet and peppery kick, they add the right tang to the classic cocktail.” 61 The chef gathered the ramps himself at an upstate New York farm and in the article explained how he prepared them for use in the cocktail: “pickled them in a hot brine made from champagne vinegar, coriander, mustard seed, bay leaves, peppercorns, sugar, salt, and maple sugar.” 62 In these drinks, ramps were used as a garnish. Again, no mention of Appalachia, but a focus on the sophistication of ramps, especially ramps grown in upstate New York. Similarly, an article that appeared in 2003 also creates a mystique around ramps gathered in upstate New York. Along with fiddlehead ferns, ramps were “picked in the wild, usually by foragers; consequently, relatively small quantities reach the marketplace.” 63 These small quantities were used by chefs in New York City, some of whom were mentioned by name in the article. Though this article stated that ramps grow in Southeastern bogs (a bit inaccurate because they grow from the shaded hillsides in the Southeast, through Appalachia, and into Canada), there was no mention of Appalachia and no negative characteristics associated with ramps. Alice Feiring wrote about her experience harvesting ramps in upstate New York in 2006. Throughout her article, she exalts the spring plant and even “arranged them in bouquets around the house until I was ready to cook them.” 64 She then mentioned that Southerners overharvest ramps. “Meanwhile, here in the Catskills, where they also grew in abundance, the locals forgot about them.” 65 This statement indicates that Feiring believes it is southerners who are being careless and gluttonous in their harvesting and consumption of ramps. A local forager from upstate New York “took the ramps to the Union Square Greenmarket in Manhattan in 1986 but it wasn’t until the late 90s that ramps really took off, and even then it was with city folk rather than country folk.” 66 Chefs began using them more often as well. This article reflects the manner in which New Yorkers embrace ramps now that they are locally grown and foraged. Feiring recalls driving a carload of ramps into New York City “their intense garlic smell turned floral, almost like the scent of lilacs.” 67 It would be very unlikely to see this characterization of ramps in a New York Times article situated in West Virginia. The most recent article included in the study appeared in 2013 and listed the many different ways New York City chefs often harvest their own ramps. 68 Interestingly, there was no mention of sustainability or overharvesting in the article but there were several mentions of the sauces, sides, and salads that featured ramps. Again, we see ramps celebrated by New York City chefs and no mention of ramps in Appalachia.

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Most of the articles set in New York State rely on quotes from chefs about the many ways to prepare ramps. These articles focus on the sophistication of ramps. Ramps are something chefs use, something to be purchased at the Greenmarket in New York City, and something home chefs can prepare with some instruction from the professionals. Ramps are a fashionable food that New Yorkers should try, either in a restaurant or at their local farmer’s market. They signify progress and daring in culinary circles in New York. THE NEW YORK TIMES AND RAMPS IN APPALACHIA Ramps are not often fashionable when set in West Virginia. In fact, ramps signify regression, not progress. The plant, and the people associated with it, tends to take on negative attributes when the geographic focus of the article was in Appalachia. The first article that focused on ramps appeared in 1986 and relied on trenchant stereotypes of Appalachia, including hillbillies who were unintelligent and smelly. Author Marian Burros opens the article with a quote from a West Virginian who stated, “Ramps go with changing the oil or your underwear.” 69 She then went on to relay the West Virginian’s experience at school of teachers sending him home or forcing him to stand in the corner for eating ramps. These comments and experiences clearly mark the West Virginian, and his associated activities, as “other.” The article’s focus on the odor of ramps continued in recounting the time Jim Comstock, publisher of a newspaper in Richwood, added ramp oil to the ink. “The Postmaster General wrote us a letter and said it was beyond the call of duty for any postmaster to have to accept such obnoxious-smelling papers.” 70 The story and the quote, written by an obvious outsider, reinforce negative stereotypes of Appalachia, specifically, hillbilly locals not realizing the offensiveness of their own stench. In addition, the characterization of ramps is in stark contrast to the other more delicate spring foods mentioned in the article: “morels in Michigan, shad in Georgia, sorrel in New York, fiddlehead ferns in Massachusetts, and soft-shell crabs in Maryland.” 71 R.W. Apple, Jr.’s article from 2003 was the longest article in this study and provided a wealth of material for analysis. With a dateline of Richwood, West Virginia, the author begins his article by describing the landscape in a negative way. Phrases like “the redbud trees were already wearing their gaudy magenta cloaks” and “but for Richwood, a hardbitten little town” communicate that the author was certainly not anywhere near New York City. 72 Apple continues and states that ramps “announce the arrival of spring as boldly and brassily as front-row trombones herald the arrival of a marching band.” 73 Gaudy and brassily are adjectives often associated with people who are unrefined and socially

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clueless. In the first two paragraphs, Apple has reinforced negative stereotypes of Appalachia: culturally unaware and loud. Like early travel writers of the 1600s, he uses the landscape and the plants as an extension of the people. Apple describes ramps as “sharp and garlicky in flavor, they can be off-puttingly smelly when raw, but in these parts, people have been avidly consuming them since pioneer days.” 74 Later in the article, he asserts that “eating lots of raw ramps would give any man or woman an industrial-strength case of halitosis, beyond the power of Listerine to cure.” 75 Apple argues that he found the ramps “not much more evil-smelling than a ripe Limburger or Maroilles.” 76 Apple then cites a chef who prepares ramps in such a way that they do not cause the diner undue breath worries. Was Apple arguing that his sophistication enabled him to see culinary value of ramps? And did he include the chef’s solution to possible bad breath to illustrate that Appalachians simply do not know how to enjoy ramps in a civilized manner? We need only wait until the end of the article to find out. After partaking in the low brow ramp festival in Richwood, he travels to one of the fanciest resorts in West Virginia, complete with an Irish chef. At the Greenbrier, Apple dined on: “succulent hot-smoked trout with asparagus, perched on a hill of ramp-studded grits.” 77 This is in stark contrast to the meal offered at the Richwood Ramp Festival: for ten dollars, each diner got a plastic foam box with a tangle of graygreen cooked ramps, a hunk of cornbread, several strips of bacon, a slab of country ham, a mound of baked beans (decanted from the tin and fortified with ham and bacon drippings), spicy potato wedges and a piece of cake. 78

Apple then goes on to describe the cooking process for ramps at the festival. It is certainly not a delicate process: “a ladle of bacon grease went in first, then sixty to seventy pounds of ramps. . . . Each batch cooked, tightly covered, for fifty minutes over low heat.” 79 It is clear that Apple aligns himself more with the chef at the Greenbrier than with the people at the Richwood ramp festival, and he invites his readers to do the same. The final line in the article quotes the Irish chef, “They’re well worth eating, from a culinary perspective, with a unique flavor, even if raw ramps can make the kitchen smell like a bus in Rome on a hot summer afternoon.” 80 This quotation reinforces the negative attributes of ramps and can easily, and often is, transferred to Appalachian people as unwashed and ignorant. If only the people organizing the ramp festivals in West Virginia would learn to: (1) prepare ramps so they don’t smell so much, (2) use a more refined manner of serving ramps, less bacon grease, more olive oil, and (3) stop overharvesting the ramps so they will be available for the fancier restaurants and resorts in the area and beyond.

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Three years later, in 2006, Rich Beattie wrote an article about spring foods and mentioned ramps as part of the group. The article began with a narrative of the Maple Tree Inn, located in upstate New York, which serves pancakes and maple syrup to visitors for only eight weeks each year to coincide with the process of maple sugaring. Another maple syrup-themed restaurant described by the article was located in Canada. The third restaurant mentioned was in North Carolina and focused on herring. Next came ramp dinners throughout Appalachia. “Sometimes there’s no restaurant to serve springtime specialties, so it becomes the task of an entire community.” 81 He continues stating that even though ramps can cause bad breath, “that won’t stop residents from tiny Richwood, W. Va. . . . They’ll cook up 2,000 pounds of ramps in bacon grease and serve them with ham, fried potatoes, and homemade cornbread.” 82 In this case, ramps are used to contrast the delicate preparations of pancakes and fish earlier in the article. Ramps, and the festivals surrounding them in West Virginia, are not the least bit appetizing when described in such a way and this serves to reinforce negative stereotypes of Appalachia. The implication is that only ignorant slovenly people would sit and eat “bacon grease” and a vegetable that “lingers on the breath.” 83 Alice Feiring’s 2006 article was primarily about harvesting ramps in upstate New York but she did provide facts about ramps elsewhere and mentioned that they grow in and are celebrated in West Virginia and Appalachia. She states, “Indians made tonics; Southerners cured scurvy with them, built festivals around them and foraged them so thoroughly they nearly disappeared.” Is she alluding to the 2004 ban on commercial harvesting of ramps in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee? 84 Aside from the Canadian province of Quebec, there were no other bans in place. 85 However, there is widespread concern about overharvesting and it is not just in the south. 86 This article, aside from Apple’s 2003 mention of the harvest ban in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, is one of the first to mention sustainability but it is clearly contextualized as an issue for southerners, not northerners. Indrani Sen’s article of 2011 echoes Feiring’s mention of sustainability. In her article, we see a very negative view of West Virginia. The article begins by recounting the experience of West Virginian and botanist for the Nature Conservancy, Ashton Berdine. After years of harvesting plentiful ramps in the woods near Elkins, he has had much more trouble finding them recently. Sen explains: Mr. Berdine has seen areas where every single ramp has been scraped up, he said, as if by “wild hogs rooting in the forest.” Earlier this month, he caught a glimpse of one of those hogs. “I pulled up behind a truck at a stoplight . . . and I just saw bags and bags of ramps, piled high in the truck bed. 87

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This likening of people to hogs, especially in West Virginia, echoes the exact stereotypes of nearly 300 years ago. Ledford found a travel article that stated some Appalachians lived like “pigs” in the 1700s in her research. Sen’s article goes on to explain that ramp harvesting was banned in Quebec in 1995 and similarly in the Great Smoky Mountains National Forest in 2004, but points out that ramps, according to experts in New York, are not being overharvested. The article then quotes a farmer in upstate New York who thoughtfully harvests ramps by alternating which patches he uses on a five year rotation. To him, ramps in New York are abundant and it only takes “common sense” to sustainably harvest them. The framing of this issue, the proper harvesting of ramps, reinforces the positive aspects with New York and the negative aspects with West Virginia. It could also be argued that Appalachians need New Yorkers to teach them how to sustainably harvest ramps. As we have seen, articles in the New York Times framed ramps differently depending on where the article was situated. When situated in New York, ramps were a fine wild food to dine on in gourmet restaurants or to purchase at a farmer’s market. It was when ramps were situated in West Virginia that we saw ramps become much more stigmatized. From smelliness of the diners to ladles of bacon grease to a lack of awareness about overharvesting, the people of Appalachia, through ramps, are clearly marked as lower class compared to the more sophisticated and cultured upper class people of New York. TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF ARTICLES IN THE CHARLESTON GAZETTE After reading the twenty-six relevant articles in the Charleston Gazette, several themes emerged, most of which were different than those in the New York Times. First, all articles were set in West Virginia so this group of twenty-six articles reflected more of an insider’s view of the region and the food. Main themes that emerged included: collecting ramps as a traditional rite of spring shared with family and/or community, comical stories about the odor of ramps, the preparation of ramps which varied from plain meals to gourmet, health benefits of the food, and sustainability concerns. Collecting ramps as a traditional rite of spring was mentioned in some way in twenty-two of the twenty-six articles in the Charleston Gazette. Husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, mothers, fathers, children, and friends would gather to harvest and prepare ramps, whether it was for a festival or family dinner. A husband and wife team “spent a week in April digging for ramps and fishing for trout in the Richwood area for the past ten years.” 88 Alyce Faye Bragg recalled, “To me, they are synonymous with our camping trips to Williams River. They grow in abun-

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dance up and down the river there, and to drive up the river at evening time is an experience.” 89 One author wrote about how she and her husband harvest from the ramp patch in her backyard: “Getting our ramps requires digging on hands and knees. I use a dandelion weeder and another single-blade tool with angled handle that my husband crafted.” 90 Another person reported, “We have our own family ramp feed two or three times in the spring.” 91 In an article about Glen Facemire, the ramp farmer, he recalled “boyhood days of spring campouts, when meals featuring bacon, freshly caught trout and new ramps were common.” 92 It seemed to be a powerful and happy memory for many of the people in the articles. Related to those fond memories, ramp festivals were also pointed out as important fundraisers for local fire departments 93 and parent-teacher organizations. 94 The Charleston Gazette announces the dinners throughout the spring season. “Residents and visitors gather at volunteer fire department garages and church fellowship halls. . . . It’s a true small-town gathering” reported one article. 95 An article appearing in mid-April listed fifteen different upcoming ramp dinners throughout the region. 96 The second most prominent theme that emerged addressed the comical nature of the odor of ramps and people who ate them. These articles either relayed funny stories about the smelliness or simply provided warnings to readers about the odor. Often times, stories about being banished from the house or being sent home from school were retold. One article stated, “Some are proud of the smell, and wear it like a badge of honor two or three days after a hefty ramp meal.” 97 For example, John Brown recalls in his 2012 article: The first time I consumed ramps, I was still living with my parents. Home from college for the weekend, I ate a mess of ramps raw and washed them down with several cold ones. For once in my post-adolescent years, my mother allowed me to sleep in (she actually locked me in my room) while she proceeded to fumigate the premises. She was not amused, and when I emerged stealthily from my bedroom window, she was waiting with hose in hand. After de-lousing me, she sent me packing, back to torture my classmates at WVU. 98

While the main focus of Brown’s article was on which wines to pair with ramps, he shared his personal experience of ramps because it connects him to the community as an authentic member. Many of these articles used ramps as a community practice to which all (or most) readers could relate. The articles in the Charleston Gazette did not sugarcoat the strong scent of ramps. One representative from the Richwood Ramp Festival described the smell of ramps as “a cross between Limberger cheese and ripe tennis shoes.” 99 Another Richwood Ramp Festival worker acknowledged, “They’re pretty stinky if you’ve never eaten them before. . . . But

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once you get used to them, you’ll love them. I can eat them for breakfast, dinner, and supper.” 100 A third volunteer stated, “I think they smell pretty good, especially when they first come in. . . . On Saturday morning, when they start to cook them, the whole town smells like ramps.” 101 Alyce Faye Bragg’s 2007 article informs readers of some things she has learned: “It does have a distinctive odor that lingers on the breath, but we have found that the early tender ones are not so offensive. We have learned to cook them outside on the grill, and it will keep the house odorfree.” 102 The other popular narrative around smell reflected a type of shared rebellion in the eating of ramps. Some people recalled that they ate ramps in order to get sent home from school. Paul Kelly, author of a cookbook on ramps, said that his first experience with ramps was in his elementary school classroom in 1975 in Tucker County, West Virginia: “I’d never even heard of ramps. It was spring and the kids were all talking about having ramps. What are those,” Kelly wondered. The school principal went from classroom to classroom and warned the students not to eat ramps. “The next day every classroom would reek of ramps. He’d ask who’d had them, but nobody ever admitted it,” Kelly said. 103

There is a sense of togetherness when people in the articles discuss the smell. To outsiders, the smell is unbearable or at least something to avoid. To insiders, the smell, and by extension, ramp eater’s smelliness, is embraced and connects them to one another. Smelling of ramps or getting into trouble for eating ramps was explained in a way that was not condescending or judgmental. Instead, it was framed as a familiar practice for the writer, reader, and members of the community. The third most prominent theme in articles in the Charleston Gazette was that of how ramps were eaten or prepared. Most of the stories relay memories of the ways festivals, grandparents or older relatives prepared ramps. Other articles contrast the more common preparations of ramps with the gourmet practices of chefs. Most families prepared ramps in the spring with ham, potatoes, or eggs. 104 Festivals most often included ramps and “home-baked cornbread and desserts, brown beans, ham, bacon and sassafrass tea.” 105 Even among preparations in West Virginia, there is a distinction between high and low culture: “the delicately blanched ramps in his gnocchi in a creamy ramp sauce bear little resemblance to ramp festival fare. They also lack the lingering olfactory effects that sometimes plague consumers of large quantities of ramps.” 106 Another article chronicled the First Annual Culinary Classic in 2004 which had chefs transform traditional fare into a more gourmet offering. Chefs from the state’s finest restaurants participated including: The Greenbrier, Tamarack, Glasshouse Grille, Creative Gourmet, and Deer Park Country Inn. 107 A sample

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of the meal included, “shellfish appetizers with accompanying sauces . . . tuna, oysters on the half shell, mussels with ramp mignonette sauce, crab claws, with green tomato remoulade, paddle fish roe and chive creme fraiche, smoked trout mousse on cucumbers, and a crab with caper salad on endive petals.” 108 An earlier article in 1996 illustrated that the chef at the Greenbrier was very fond of ramps. He said it was his wife, who was from Webster Springs in West Virginia, who introduced him to the food. 109 “Diners at The Greenbrier can hone down on such fare as a crayfish-ramp ragout, prepared with West Virginia shiitake mushrooms, heavy cream and Virginia ham.” 110 Clear class distinctions are evidenced in the ways ramps are prepared and shared. But this class distinction takes place within West Virginia, not between West Virginia and New York City. Somehow these social class differences are not as negative or as stark as it was when West Virginia was compared to New York City in the articles in the New York Times. Those articles imply that high culture resides in New York and low culture resides in West Virginia. The Charleston Gazette articles demonstrate a much more diverse and less simplistic cross-section of West Virginia. Some people eat ramps at ramp festivals, others eat at home, and still others eat at fancy restaurants. Some residents dine at all three. Health benefits comprised the next prominent theme in articles in the Charleston Gazette. Many articles referred to ramps as a spring tonic or as “a wonderfully potent spring tonic.” 111 Others see ramps similarly, “I believe that a big mess of ramps, along with a pot full of sassafras tea, would cure the winter doldrums and get us ready for the planting season.” 112 Ramps were reported to have selenium, flavonoids, and Vitamin C. 113 They can also treat hypertension and cholesterol. 114 “Turns out, ramps are an excellent source of vitamin C. In fact, ounce for ounce, ramps contain more vitamin C than oranges.” 115 Perhaps the article with the most interesting information about ramps as curative appeared in 2002. In the article, we learn about a study conducted at Oregon State University. “Rats that had been given a carcinogen, then fed a diet of selenium-enriched ramp bulbs, had their rates of tumor incidence reduced by 43 percent. Selenium did not accumulate in the body tissue of the ramp-eating rats, reducing the prospects of selenium toxicity.” 116 The final prominent theme addressed in articles about ramps in the Charleston Gazette was that of sustainability. Although only four articles touched on the topic, it is important for discussion. First, Glen Facemire, a ramp farmer in Richwood, West Virginia, recommended ramp seeds be collected and sprinkled in people’s favorite coves to ensure they are available for future generations. 117 “You just have to make a scratch in the ground and put a few leaves over them.” 118 Then in 2007, an article for the Associated Press that appeared in the Charleston Gazette, stated that the increase in demand from “celebrity chefs, avant-garde restaurateurs, and avid foodies has some experts worried” about the sustainabil-

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ity of ramps in Appalachia. 119 The problem is that ramps most often grow without cultivation, they are wild, the article stated. There are some ramp farms but not many and the possibility of creating community gardens in urban areas is unlikely due to the fragile nature of the plant. 120 “Many foragers who find ramps growing wild in March or April don’t return to sow new seeds in September or October.” 121 In the article, others argued that ramps were still plentiful but located deeper in the forest because other foragers have already harvested the ramps close to the road. 122 In another article, published in 2010, the author remarked that ramps were abundant in her backyard: “A deer path leads by three patches of ramps transplanted to the area more than a quarter-century ago by the previous owner of this property. Every year there seem to be more ramps.” 123 Two years later, the sustainability of ramps seemed more pressing based on this account: When collecting or purchasing ramps, it is important to be mindful of the negative ecological ramifications caused by irresponsible harvesting. Ramps are a part of West Virginia’s heritage, but it is our responsibility to be sure that sustainable foraging practices are followed, so that ramps do not become endangered. 124

In the same article, the author explained “ramp collectors interested only in the monetary value will often rip the entire bulb from the ground, which is an unsustainable practice.” 125 She warns: The locavore food movement is supposed to be an effort to provide sustainable, environmentally friendly food, but its commercialization is causing serious ecological damage. New, inexperienced commercial collectors see ramp collecting as a quick way to make money and they care little about the consequences when digging wild plants. 126

This article holds both outsiders and ill-informed insiders accountable for careless ramp harvesting. One might expect the blame be placed on outsiders only but this self-reflective stance and a willingness to reveal vulnerability was more common in the Charleston Gazette than the New York Times. The main themes addressed in articles in the Charleston Gazette reflect a much more complex collection of ideas and viewpoints about ramps. From ramps as a cultural practice to the comical odor of ramps to the varying styles of ramp preparation to the health benefits and the sustainability of ramps, many people from West Virginia were quoted and many shared their own personal experiences. This was much different than the framing of ramps in the New York Times.

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CONCLUSION Ramps, also known as wild leeks, were selected for this study because they have been historically framed as unique to Appalachia and West Virginia. Recently, ramps have been framed differently since Martha Stewart and Better Homes and Gardens featured the vegetable in the 1990s. 127 They are now framed in some circles as a wild food prized by chefs throughout the country. This duality of framing provides a starting point for discussion of food and social class. Botanically, the plant is the same whether it grows in West Virginia, Quebec, Michigan, or even upstate New York. It is the differences in the framing of ramps in popular culture that reveal clues as to how this food operates politically to either separate people or join people together. Overall, when ramps were mentioned in the New York Times, they were described differently than other places associated with the spring food. When ramps in West Virginia or other Appalachian states were mentioned, negative details were included (the smell of ramps and the likelihood of bad breath). Conversely, when ramps were mentioned without reference to West Virginia, negative details were often excluded and the article focused more on the basic facts surrounding the plant and the more sophisticated ways chefs prepared ramps. Other themes that emerged in the textual analysis of New York Times articles that mentioned West Virginia or Appalachia included: a distaste for the seemingly indelicate and plain manner in which the prized vegetables were prepared at ramp dinners; an implied lack of understanding regarding how to prepare ramps so one’s breath is not an issue; and a discussion of the overharvesting of ramps in Appalachia and concerns about sustainability. Chad Berry argued that when MTV created Buckwild, they were seeking “to attract a non-Appalachian audience by reinforcing stereotypes of Appalachia that make the urban audience feel better about itself—more orderly, more ambitious, more sophisticated, more cosmopolitan.” 128 This phenomenon also occurred when the New York Times reporters wrote articles about ramps. The implied disapproval of the ways ramps were prepared at ramp festivals in the New York Times marginalizes Appalachia to readers. It would appear that Appalachians need to be taught how to properly prepare ramps so diners don’t smell after eating them and to make the best use of limited quantities of the vegetable. The political function of smells operates as a clear class marker and separates those who eat ramps and risk smelling from those who will eat ramps that do not smell. Less affluent people will eat ramps at festivals for ten dollars per person while upper class people will attend ramp dinners at 120 dollars per person in Manhattan. The question of who has a right to ramps is implied when discussing overharvesting and sustainability. Ramps most often grow in the wild

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and foragers travel the hillsides to harvest them. When collected in state parks, ramps are part of an official community resource. When harvested in the woods of absent landowners, like coal companies, the ramps are an “unofficial” shared resource. The distinction between official and unofficial shared resources reflects the complicated relationship West Virginians have with the land. 129 Again, who has a right to harvest or even overharvest the plant? After reading articles in the New York Times, one might suspect that Appalachians are unaware or unwilling to practice sustainable harvesting techniques. New Yorkers seem to understand how to harvest sustainably by using “common sense” as stated in Sen’s 2011 article. This scenario is parallel in many ways to the arguments made by travel writer John Fox, Jr. and others before and after his time: Appalachians are unsuited to manage their natural resources and should therefore be relieved of their claims to the land so capitalists can use it more productively. Perhaps the argument would be that Appalachians should not be collecting ramps for community dinners and family traditions but instead use it as a commodity to produce capital. In some ways the paternalistic tendency of outsiders to teach Appalachians how to manage their resources remains as problematic today as it was over 300 years ago. When ramps were mentioned in the Charleston Gazette, negative details as well as positive details were included, but the overall tone was much different than in the New York Times. Overall, ramps functioned to join people in West Virginia together. This supports the work of previous researchers regarding the cultural significance of ramps in Appalachia. 130 Rivers, Oliver, and Resler found that the themes of personal or community benefit, family, and memory arose when people discussed ramps. 131 These same themes arose in articles about ramps that appeared in the Charleston Gazette. Perhaps the element that makes ramps so divisive to outsiders is the odor. Throughout articles in the Charleston Gazette, people reported their own experiences smelling like ramps and that served to create a community of insiders. One article stated that some people wore the odor as a badge of honor. Again, this is in stark contrast to the discussion of odors in Appalachia in the New York Times. In those articles, odor was used to mark a clear separation between upper class people (those who could discipline their consumption of ramps) and lower class people (those who could not). Class distinctions were also made visible in articles in the Charleston Gazette. Not only did the articles include details about community ramp festivals with simple preparations of ramps, but details about the gourmet preparations of chefs throughout West Virginia were also included. These class distinctions illustrate the complexity and diversity of people in West Virginia and local newspapers are uniquely suited to provide that space. As Algeo illustrated in her study, local newspapers enabled local people to reject stereotypes placed upon Appalachians by outsid-

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ers. 132 This is precisely why the Charleston Gazette was included for this analysis. Like the travel magazines from the 1800s, the New York Times paints the region with a broad and inaccurate brush. As we saw, the New York Times articles framed ramps in West Virginia in a much more simplistic manner: ramps meant ramp festivals, with few mentions of gourmet options. To access the finer preparations of ramps, New York Times readers would surmise that gourmet preparations of ramps exist only in New York, not in Appalachia. These differences in describing ramps provides examples of the ways evaluative language and the framing of some foods highlight class differences and invoke stereotypes of marginalized groups. The limitations of this study include the imperfect search terms of ramps and wild leeks. A preliminary search of articles in the New York Times for the term ramps yielded over 16,000 articles. Sifting through those articles to find ones relevant to ramps seemed wholly inefficient. After reviewing the Ramps entry in the Encyclopedia of Appalachia, it appeared reasonable to search for articles that contained both of the terms ramps and wild leeks. However, this may have limited the results too much. It is possible that the articles that used only the term “ramps” were substantively different than the articles that also included the term “wild leeks.” A second limitation is that only the text of the articles was analyzed because the images were not available. Any photos that accompanied the original articles were omitted and could have provided additional clues to the ways ramps were framed in both the New York Times and the Charleston Gazette. Future studies of the framing of ramps could focus on the two highest circulated newspapers in the country, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. Voice could also be documented to determine who is an expert on ramps in several different newspapers. Is it a chef who is quoted most often? A festival worker? A seasoned food forager? Answers to these questions would enable a deeper analysis of power surrounding the framing of ramps. A related study could analyze the framing of ramps in the most popular cooking magazines or cooking television programs over time. Lastly, it might be useful to interview reporters and writers about their thoughts regarding ramps and the areas in which ramps grow. This might help us to understand the intentions of the reporters and writers and provide another area of discussion. NOTES 1. Barbara G. Shortridge, “Apple Stack Cake for Dessert: Appalachian Regional Foods,” Journal of Geography, 104 (2005): 65.

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2. Shortridge, “The Apple Stack Cake for Dessert: Appalachian Regional Foods,” 65–73; Mary Hufford, “Tending the Commons: Ramp Suppers, Biodiversity, and the Integrity of ‘The Mountains,’” Folklife Center News, (1998): 1–11; Bridgette Rivers, Robert Oliver and Lynn Resler, “Pungent Provisions: The Ramp and Appalachian Identity,” Material Culture, 46 (2014): 1–25. 3. Rivers, Oliver, and Resler, “Pungent Provisions: The Ramp and Appalachian Identity,” 1–25. 4. Shortridge, “Apple Stack Cake for Dessert: Appalachian Regional Foods,” 65–73; Hufford, “Tending the Commons: Ramp Suppers, Biodiversity, and the Integrity of ‘The Mountains,’” 1–11; Rivers, Oliver, and Resler, “Pungent Provisions: The Ramp and Appalachian Identity,” 1–25. 5. ibid. 6. Fred Sauceman, “A Smelly Business but Good” in CrossRoads: A Southern Culture Annual, ed. T. Olson (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2005), 39–49. 7. John Boback, “Ramps,” in Encyclopedia of Appalachia, ed. Rudy Abramson and Jean Haskell (Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 2011), 953. 8. Glen Facemire, Having Your Ramps and Eating Them Too (Parsons, WV: McClain Printing Company, 2009) and Glen Facemire, Ramps From the Seed to the Weed (Parsons, WV: McClain Printing Company, 1991). 9. Brian Cool, How to Take a Leek in the Woods (Self-published: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013). 10. Paul Kelly, Ramps the Cookbook: Cooking with the Best Kept Secret of the Appalachian Trail (Pittsburgh: St. Lynn’s Press, 2012). 11. Shortridge, “Apple Stack Cake for Dessert: Appalachian Regional Foods,” 65–73; Hufford, “Tending the Commons: Ramp Suppers, Biodiversity, and the Integrity of ‘The Mountains,’” 1–11; Rivers, Oliver, and Resler, “Pungent Provisions: The Ramp and Appalachian Identity,” 1–25. 12. Hufford, “Tending the Commons: Ramp Suppers, Biodiversity, and the Integrity of ‘The Mountains,’” 1–11. 13. Hufford, “Tending the Commons: Ramp Suppers, Biodiversity, and the Integrity of ‘The Mountains,’” 2. 14. Hufford, “Tending the Commons: Ramp Suppers, Biodiversity, and the Integrity of ‘The Mountains,’” 3. 15. Ibid. 16. Hufford, “Tending the Commons: Ramp Suppers, Biodiversity, and the Integrity of ‘The Mountains,’” 10. 17. Rivers, Oliver, & Resler, “Pungent Provisions: The Ramp and Appalachian Identity,” 5. 18. Rivers, Oliver, & Resler, “Pungent Provisions: The Ramp and Appalachian Identity,” 17. 19. Rivers, Oliver, & Resler, “Pungent Provisions: The Ramp and Appalachian Identity,” 15 20. Rivers, Oliver, & Resler, “Pungent Provisions: The Ramp and Appalachian Identity,” 10. 21. Rivers, Oliver, & Resler, “Pungent Provisions: The Ramp and Appalachian Identity,” 20. 22. Chad Berry, “Buckwild or Hollow? Representing West Virginia through the Incommensurable Lens of Justice and Care,” Journal of Appalachian Studies, 19 (2013): 229. 23. Dwight B. Billings, Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford, Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999). 24. Darlene Wilson, “A Judicious Combination of Incident and Psychology: John Fox, Jr. and the Southern Mountaineer Motif,” in Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes, ed. Dwight B. Billings, Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999), 104. 25. Ibid.

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26. Wilson, “A Judicious Combination of Incident and Psychology: John Fox, Jr. and the Southern Mountaineer Motif,” 106. 27. Ibid. 28. Wilson, “A Judicious Combination of Incident and Psychology: John Fox, Jr. and the Southern Mountaineer Motif”; Katherine Ledford, “A Landscape and a People Set Apart: Narratives of Exploration and Travel in Early Appalachia,” in Backtalk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes, ed. Dwight B. Billings, Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999), 46–66. 29. Ledford, “A Landscape and a People Set Apart: Narratives of Exploration and Travel in Early Appalachia,” 64. 30. Ronald L. Lewis, “Beyond Isolation and Homogeneity: Diversity and the History of Appalachia,” in Back Talk from Appalachia: confronting Stereotypes, ed. Dwight B. Billings, Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999), 21. 31. Ibid. 32. Ledford, “A Landscape and a People Set Apart: Narratives of Exploration and Travel in Early Appalachia,” 64. 33. Ledford, “A Landscape and a People Set Apart: Narratives of Exploration and Travel in Early Appalachia.” 34. Ledford, “A Landscape and a People Set Apart: Narratives of Exploration and Travel in Early Appalachia,” 59. 35. Ibid. 36. Ledford, “A Landscape and a People Set Apart: Narratives of Exploration and Travel in Early Appalachia,” 49. 37. Katie Algeo, “Locals on Local Color: Imagining Identity in Appalachia,” Southern Cultures 9 (2003): 27–54. 38. David L. Martinson, “Images of West Virginia–A Study of National Magazines, 1965–76,” Appalachian Heritage, 6 (1978): 33–39. 39. Eileen R. Hoover, “American Magazine Coverage of Appalachian Socio-economic Conditions: 1959–1972” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Association of Educators of Journalism and Mass Communication Magazine Division, 1985), 1–37. 40. Hoover, “American Magazine Coverage of Appalachian Socio-economic Conditions,” 26. 41. Honey L. Comer, 2006, “Portrayals of Appalachia in America’s major Metropolitan Newspapers” (Master’s thesis, East Tennessee State University, 2006). 42. Rita Colistra, “The Rumble and the Dark: Regional Newspaper Framing of the Buffalo Creek Mine Disaster of 1972,” Journal of Appalachian Studies, 16 (2003): 79–100. 43. These different time frames for the New York Times and the Charleston Gazette were used based on the electronic availability of articles to the researcher. 44. Matthew Ferrence, “You are and You Ain’t: Story and Literature as Redneck Resistance,” Journal of Appalachian Studies, 18 (2012): 113–130. 45. Ferrence, “You are and You Ain’t: Story and Literature as Redneck Resistance,” 117. 46. This keyword combination was selected after much trial and error to find articles about ramps. Simple searches on the term “ramps” resulted in over 16,000 articles due to the many uses of the term ramp (exit ramp, ramp up production, etc.). Combining “wild leeks” and “ramps,” as it is listed in the Encyclopedia of Appalachia, resulted in the highest percentage of relevant articles for this study though it is not without its limitations. 47. “Average Circulation at the Top 5 US Newspapers Reporting Monday-Friday Averages.” Accessed October 16, 2014, http://www.journalism.org/media-indicators/ average-circulation-at-the-top-5-u-s-newspapers-reporting-monday-friday-averages/. 48. Florence Fabricant, “Calendar,” New York Times, April 6, 2011. 49. “About Us,” Charleston Gazette. Accessed October 16, 2014, http://www. cnpapers.com/pdf/Marketing percent20Book.pdf#page=8.

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50. R. W. Apple, Jr., “Ah, the Sweet Smell of Spring,” New York Times, April 30, 2003. 51. Julie Robinson, “Table Talk, Relishing Ramps,” Charleston Gazette, March 21, 2012; Scott Shalaway, “The Wild Side,” Charleston Gazette, April 18, 2010; Martha Bryson Hodel, “Appalachia’s Ramp Finally Getting its Due,” Charleston Gazette, April 20, 2003. 52. Indrani Sen, “Digging for Ramps, Too Deep?,” New York Times, April 20, 2011; Alice Feiring, “Into the Woods, on the Trail of the Wild Leek,” New York Times, April 14, 2006. 53. Bryan Miller, “Diner’s Journal,” New York Times, May 25, 1984. 54. Nancy Jenkins, “Wild Greens,” New York Times, May 30, 1984. 55. Molly O’Neill, “The Wild Bunch,” New York Times, June 4, 1995. 56. Molly O’Neill, “Tramping for Ramps” New York Times, May 5, 1999. 57. O’Neill, “The Wild Bunch.” 58. O’Neill, “Tramping for Ramps.” 59. Joan Lee Faust, “Beating a Vast Underground Conspiracy,” New York Times, April 2, 2000. 60. Marian Burros, “Fish Jumping, Chef’s Hearts Thumping,” New York Times, April 3, 2002. 61. Andrea Strong, “A Gibson with Rural Character,” New York Times, June 26, 2002. 62. Ibid. 63. Julia Moskin, “Is it Nature or Nurture that Makes Spring Menus Sing?,” New York Times, April 2, 2003. 64. Feiring, “Into the Woods on the Trail of the Wild Leek.” 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid. 68. Alice Gabriel, “The Season When Local Chefs Go Wild,” New York Times, April 28, 2013. 69. Marian Burros, “The Culinary Signs of Spring Across the Land,” New York Times, April 30, 1986. 70. Burros, “The Culinary Signs of Spring Across the Land.” 71. Burros, “The Culinary Signs of Spring Across the Land.” 72. Apple, Jr., “Ah, the Sweet Smell of Spring.” 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid. 81. Rich Beattie, “An End-of-Winter Appetite,” New York Times, March 10, 2006. 82. ibid. 83. ibid. 84. Barry Edgar, Hannah Brubaker, and Kelsey Tuminelli, “Plugging the Leak on Wild Leeks: The Threat of Over-harvesting Wild Leek Populations in Northern New York,” (Canton, NY: St. Lawrence University, 2012): 1-57. 85. Ibid. 86. Ibid. 87. Sen, “Digging for Ramps: Too Deep?” 88. Rick Steelhammer, “Bodaciously Odiferous Ramps are in Season; Let the Dinners Begin,” Charleston Gazette, April 14, 2005. 89. Alyce Faye Bragg, “Ramps are Harbingers of Springtime,” Charleston Gazette, February 22, 2014.

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90. Evanda Bartlett, “On Retirement; Ramps are Flavorful Substitute in Recipe,” Charleston Gazette, April 28, 2010. 91. Alyce Faye Bragg, “Appreciating Every Moment of the Springtime Showcase,” Charleston Gazette, April 4, 2009. 92. Rick Steelhammer, “A Time for Ramps: While You May Not Have Been Noticing, the Ramp Has Gotten Hip,” Charleston Gazette, April 14, 2002. 93. Rick Steelhammer, “Whether or Not They’re Fashionable in NYC, Ramps are Good Eatin’,” Charleston Gazette, April 17, 2011. 94. Ben Calwell, “Edison Preparing Ramp Dinner Saturday,” Charleston Gazette, April 26, 1995. 95. “In Search of the Wild Leek,” Charleston Gazette, February 13, 2005. 96. “It’s Springtime; Ramp Dinners are Sprouting Everywhere,” Charleston Gazette, April 18, 2009. 97. “In Search of the Wild Leek,” Charleston Gazette, February 13, 2005. 98. John Brown, “Vines and Vittles: The Wines that Ramp Up Ramps,” Charleston Gazette, May 13, 2012. 99. Rick Steelhammer, “Fragrant Delecto Earthy, Rich Ramp Aroma Permeates Richwood VFD,” Charleston Gazette, April 19, 1996. 100. Ibid. 101. Steelhammer, “Bodaciously Odiferous Ramps are in Season.” 102. Alyce Faye Bragg, “Springtime Treats to Banish Winter Doldrums,” Charleston Gazette, April 14, 2007. 103. Julie Robinson, “Table Talk,” Charleston Gazette, March 21, 2012. 104. “Ramp Feasts: West Virginia Spring Food Tradition is Spreading,” Charleston Gazette, April 16, 2011. 105. Steelhammer, “Bodaciously Odiferous Ramps are in Season.” 106. Robinson, “Table Talk: Fungi Fare for the Table,” Charleston Gazette, April 28, 2010. 107. Maureen Crockett, “Mountain Menus, Dining Royally with West Virginia’s Top Chefs,” Charleston Gazette, April 4, 2004. 108. Ibid. 109. Steelhammer, “It’s a Shame We’re Going to Run Out,” Charleston Gazette, May 5, 1996. 110. Ibid. 111. “Rock n’ Roll with Ramps: 16th Annual Festival Celebrates the Stinky but Tasty Appalachian Herb,” February 5, 2006, Charleston Gazette. 112. Bragg, “Springtime Treats to Banish Winter Doldrums.” 113. Bartlett, “On Retirement; Ramps are Flavorful Substitute in Recipe.” 114. Ibid. 115. Scott Shalaway, “The Wild Side: Mid-April is Ramp Season,” Charleston Gazette, April 18, 2010. 116. Steelhammer, “A Time for Ramps.” 117. Ibid. 118. Ibid. 119. Shaya Tayefe Mohajer, “Are Ramps Under Threat?: Chefs, Big-city Connoisseurs Create an Increase in Demand,” Charleston Gazette, April 11, 2007. 120. See this document for a discussion regarding the fragility of the plant: Edgar, Brubaker, and Tuminelli, “Plugging the Leak on Wild Leeks.” 121. Mohajer, “Are Ramps Under Threat?” 122. Ibid. 123. Bartlett, “On Retirement; Ramps are Flavorful Substitute in Recipe.” 124. Susan Maslowski, “The Farmer’s Table: Ramp it Up with a Plateful of Ramp Biscuits,” Charleston Gazette, April 4, 2012. 125. Ibid. 126. Ibid.

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127. Rivers, Oliver, and Resler, “Pungent Provisions: The Ramp and Appalachian Identity,” 15. 128. Berry, “Buckwild or Hollow?,” 229, para. 2. 129. Hufford, “Tending the Commons: Ramp Suppers, Biodiversity, and the Integrity of ‘The Mountains.’” 130. Hufford, “Tending the Commons: Ramp Suppers, Biodiversity, and the Integrity of ‘The Mountains’”; Rivers, Oliver, and Resler, “Pungent Provisions: The Ramp and Appalachian Identity.” 131. Rivers, Oliver and Resler, “Pungent Provisions: The Ramp and Appalachian Identity.” 132. Algeo, “Locals on Local Color: Imagining Identity in Appalachia.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY Algeo, Katie, “Locals on Local Color: Imagining Identity in Appalachia.” Southern Cultures 9 (2003): 27–54. Apple, Jr., R.W. “Ah, the Sweet Smell of Spring.” New York Times, April 30, 2003. Bartlett, Evanda. “On Retirement; Ramps are Flavorful Substitute in Recipe.” Charleston Gazette, April 28, 2010. Beattie, Rich. “An End-of-Winter Appetite.” New York Times, March 10, 2006. Berry, Chad. “Buckwild or Hollow? Representing West Virginia Through the Incommensurable Lens of Justice and Care.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 19: (2013): 222–242. Billings, Dwight B., Gurney Norman and Katherine Ledford. Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999. Boback, John, “Ramps,” in Encyclopedia of Appalachia, edited by Rudy Abramson and Jean Haskell, 953–954. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2011. Bragg, Alyce Faye. “Appreciating Every Moment of the Springtime Showcase.” Charleston Gazette, April 4, 2009. Bragg, Alyce Faye. “Ramps are Harbingers of Springtime.” Charleston Gazette, February 22, 2014. Brown, John. “Vines and Vittles: The Wines that Ramp Up Ramps.” Charleston Gazette, May 13, 2012. Burros, Marian. “Fish Jumping, Chef’s Hearts Thumping.” New York Times, April 3, 2002. Burros, Marian. “The Culinary Signs of Spring Across the Land.” New York Times, April 30, 1986. Calwell, Ben. “Edison Preparing Ramp Dinner Saturday.” Charleston Gazette, April 26, 1995. Charleston Gazette. “About Us.” Accessed October 16, 2014, http://www.cnpapers.com/ pdf/Marketing percent20Book.pdf#page=8. Colistra, Rita. “The Rumble and the Dark: Regional Newspaper Framing of the Buffalo Creek Mine Disaster of 1972.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 16 (2003): 79–100. Comer, Honey L. “Portrayals of Appalachia in America’s major Metropolitan Newspapers.” Master’s thesis, East Tennessee State University, 2006. Cool, Brian. How to Take a Leek in the Woods, Self-published. Printed by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013. Crockett, Maureen. “Mountain Menus, Dining Royally with West Virginia’s Top Chefs.” Charleston Gazette, April 4, 2004. Edgar, Barry, Hannah Brubaker, and Kelsey Tuminelli. “Plugging the Leak on Wild Leeks: The Threat of Over-harvesting Wild Leek Populations in Northern New York.” Canton, NY: St. Lawrence University, 2012. Fabricant, Florence. “Calendar,” New York Times, April 6, 2011. Facemire, Glen. Having Your Ramps and Eating Them Too. Parsons, WV: McClain Printing Company, 2009.

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Facemire, Glen. Ramps: From the Seed to the Weed. Parsons, WV: McClain Printing Company, 1991. Faust, Joan Lee. “Beating a Vast Underground Conspiracy.” New York Times, April 2, 2000. Feiring, Alice. “Into the Woods, on the Trail of the Wild Leek.” New York Times, April 14, 2006. Ferrence, Matthew. “You are and You Ain’t: Story and Literature as Redneck Resistance.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 18 (2012): 113–130. Gabriel, Alice. “The Season When Local Chefs Go Wild.” New York Times, April 28, 2013. Hodel, Martha Bryson. “Appalachia’s Ramp Finally Getting its Due.” Charleston Gazette, April 20, 2003. Hoover, Eileen, R. “American Magazine Coverage of Appalachian Socio-economic Conditions: 1959–1972.” Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Magazine Division, 1985. Hufford, Mary. “Tending the Commons: Ramp Suppers, Biodiversity, and the Integrity of ‘The Mountains,’” Folklife Center News (1998): 1–11. “In Search of the Wild Leek.” Charleston Gazette, February 13, 2005. “It’s Springtime; Ramp Dinners are Sprouting Everywhere.” Charleston Gazette, April 18, 2009. Jenkins, Mary. “Wild Greens.” New York Times, May 30, 1984. Journalism.org. “Average Circulation at the Top 5 US Newspapers Reporting Monday-Friday Averages.” Accessed October 16, 2014. http://www.journalism.org/ media-indicators/average-circulation-at-the-top-5-u-s-newspapers-reportingmonday-friday-averages/. Kelly, Paul. Ramps the Cookbook: Cooking with the Best Kept Secret of the Appalachian Trail. Pittsburgh: St. Lynn’s Press, 2012. Ledford, Katherine. “A Landscape and a People Set Apart: Narratives of Exploration and Travel in Early Appalachia,” in Backtalk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes, edited by Dwight B. Billings, Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford, 47–66. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999. Lewis, Ronald L. “Beyond Isolation and Homogeneity: Diversity and the History of Appalachia,” in Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes, edited by Dwight B. Billings, Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford, 21–43. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999. Martinson, David L. “Images of West Virginia—A Study of National Magazines, 1965–76,” Appalachian Heritage 6 (1978): 33–39. Maslowski, Susan. “The Farmer’s Table: Ramp it Up with a Plateful of Ramp Biscuits.” Charleston Gazette, April 4, 2012. Miller, Bryan. “Diner’s Journal.” New York Times, May 25, 1984. Mohajer, Shaya Tayefe. “Are Ramps Under Threat?: Chefs, Big-city Connoisseurs Create an Increase in Demand.” Charleston Gazette, April 11, 2007. Moskin, Julia. “Is it Nature or Nurture that Makes Spring Menus Sing?” New York Times, April 2, 2003. O’Neill, Molly. “The Wild Bunch.” New York Times, June 4, 1995. O’Neill, Molly. “Tramping for Ramps.” New York Times, May 5, 1999. “Ramp Feasts: West Virginia Spring Food Tradition is Spreading.” Charleston Gazette, April 16, 2011. Rivers, Bridgette, Robert Oliver and Lynn Resler. “Pungent Provisions: The Ramp and Appalachian Identity,” Material Culture 46 (2014): 1–25. Robinson, Julie. “Table Talk, Relishing Ramps.” Charleston Gazette, March 21, 2012. “Rock n’ Roll with Ramps: 16th Annual Festival Celebrates the Stinky but Tasty Appalachian Herb.” February 5, 2006, Charleston Gazette. Sauceman, Fred. “A Smelly Business but Good” in CrossRoads: A Southern Culture Annual, edited by T. Olson, 39–49. Macon: Mercer University Press, 2005. Sen, Indrani. “Digging for Ramps, Too Deep?” New York Times, April 20, 2011.

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Shalaway, Scott. “The Wild Side: Mid-April is Ramp Season.” Charleston Gazette, April 18, 2010. Shortridge, Barbara G. “Apple Stack Cake for Dessert: Appalachian Regional Foods,” Journal of Geography 104 (2005): 65–73. Steelhammer, Rick. “A Time for Ramps: While You May Not Have Been Noticing, the Ramp Has Gotten Hip.” Charleston Gazette, April 14, 2002. Steelhammer, Rick. “Bodaciously Odiferous Ramps are in Season; Let the Dinners Begin.” Charleston Gazette, April 14, 2005. Steelhammer, Rick. “Fragrant Delecto Earthy, Rich Ramp Aroma Permeates Richwood VFD.” Charleston Gazette, April 19, 1996. Steelhammer, Rick. “It’s a Shame We’re Going to Run Out.” Charleston Gazette, May 5, 1996. Steelhammer, Rick. “Whether or Not They’re Fashionable in NYC, Ramps are Good Eatin.’” Charleston Gazette, April 17, 2011. Strong, Andrea. “A Gibson with Rural Character.” New York Times, June 26, 2002. Wilson, Darlene. “A Judicious Combination of Incident and Psychology: John Fox, Jr. and the Southern Mountaineer Motif,” in Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes, edited by Dwight B. Billings, Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford, 98–118. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999.

SIX Constructing Taste and Waste as Habitus Food and Matters of Access and In/Security Leda Cooks

In the past decade or so matters of food taste and food waste have proliferated in popular media and public culture. These concerns seem to occupy opposite sides of the same coin of our moral consciousness. That is, taste and waste are interlinked in terms of their relative morality. Both are moving targets of cultural capital (what once was tasteful now is wasteful) and both are defined in both literal and figurative terms (One can demonstrate good taste in bathroom décor, one can taste the brininess of seaweed; one can “waste” one’s life away or one can dispose of waste). The purpose of this paper is to look at the ways taste and waste in the United States are connected matters of lifestyle in the formations of identities. To do so, I look at the symbolic construction of taste and waste in two community food maps as it is framed by research on food access and insecurity, and also food recovery and rescue. I then turn then to two studies of people identified as food insecure about the role of food in their life, formerly and currently. Taste, in its figurative sense, is seen as a socially and culturally “good” thing to possess. “Taste” may indicate awareness of, compliance with and sometimes playing creatively with cultural boundaries. In its more literal permutations taste refers to one of the lower senses, more primal than sight or hearing, and until recently was seen as not worth studying as a basis for knowledge or perception. Nonetheless, cultural studies of taste have shown both its important evolutionary (determining what was 123

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edible or poisonous) as well as its role in cultural inclusion and exclusion by setting the boundaries of difference and disgust in terms of what and how we (versus they) eat. Likewise, food and taste were tools of colonization that still are evident in many national cuisines and the chefs who do/ not cook them. The discursive power of taste may be measured in its cultural deployment: its application to food is weighed more or less heavily in contexts of social and economic capital. In institutional contexts (prisons, schools, cafeterias, hospitals), and situations of food insecurity, quantity, standardization or occasionally nutritional content of foods is emphasized over concerns for taste; in for instance, fine dining restaurants or magazines devoted to foodies, taste is of paramount concern. Of course these are the ends of the spectrum: in between we can find recipes in all forms of media for the middle class cook (primarily female), and schools and universities with a middle to higher class clientele that are increasingly concerned with taste, etc. Strong notes the “slipperiness” of taste and its usages in domains other than the gustatory. In the arts, design, architecture, fashion, and in countless other forms of visual and verbal communication, ideas and particularly judgments may be couched in terms of taste. Such expressions and assessments as “good taste,” “bad taste,” “tasteful,” and “in poor taste” may be applied to matters as diverse as wallpaper, gardens, remarks, movies, the layout of a store, advertising, the wording of an invitation, wristwatches, timing in general, furniture, jokes, and flower arrangements.” 1 Taste is ultimately a matter of choice in a consumer society and is reflected in the cultivation and display of social and cultural capital. In other words taste may be equally reflected in one’s political and moral discourse/identity as in the choices of what to wear and to buy, but increasingly the two areas overlap. In the area of food culture and politics in the era of “you are what you eat” the two are virtually inseparable. Although marketers and popular cultural discourses might suggest otherwise, ultimately, taste cannot be defined apart from the bodies that perform it, and presents a conundrum for researchers and scholars in food studies and the researchers, policy makers and activists involved in food justice. While this may seem an abstract and insignificant statement when hunger and food systems are the stakes, I hope to demonstrate in this paper the ways the embodiment of taste and its cultural capital impact the cultural and policy studies of food. Waste occupies the other end of the moral spectrum with regard to the material and symbolic matters of food, culture and identity. Although waste is a natural byproduct of existence, it also forms the basis for surplus and value (over use) exchange in capitalism, and is its (increasingly) necessary byproduct. Where once goods were produced to be used and used up, now we buy goods (including food) less for their use than for

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their perceived value as a commodity. Food, like other goods, has been fetishized through industrial and commercial production, and the conditions of its production obscured from the consumer. The fact that there is waste (of animals, of food, of fuel, of labor) in the production and distribution and well as in the consumption of food as commodity until recently has not been recognized by the majority in the United States, including those involved in cooking and serving food. 2 Waste was not always recognized as something to be hidden away from view. In fact, as Mennell, 3 Elias, 4 and other food historians have noted, waste (human or otherwise) was once a visible part of the social geography of life. There was no place apart from others where waste was produced or stored. It was part of social life. With the advent of medical science came social hygiene, industrialization and the move from a more rural to industrial society, concentrated means of food production, storing and packaging, and the increased separation (at first by class and race and then in mass) of humans from their byproducts. Now, waste is constructed culturally as that which is refused (literally refuse), rejected, or unnecessary for consumption. Much like my characterization of taste, waste functions figuratively and metaphorically as a measure of that which is palatable and that which is not. In addition to its reference to objects, waste can refer to something that was meant for use but, with regret, was not (wasted time, energy or effort), or something or someone that is of no use to anyone. However, the saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” does not quite capture the ways what is considered inedible or unpalatable to some segments of society may become central to the diets of others. In the realm of food and diet, in the United States, food that was considered animal waste (neckbones, feet, organ meat) or unpalatable (possum, raccoon) was central to the diet of slaves. 5 Throughout the world, the intestines of animals, hearts, livers, etc. have been central to the diets of people who could and cannot afford the “better” parts of the animal. In the past decade or so, Michelin starred chefs and foodies have reclaimed these parts, first as part of their forays into “adventurous eating” 6 and more recently as part of a larger concern about needless waste in the food system. Whether this new-ish culinary movement is seen as appropriation or sustainability, is less relevant to this paper than assumptions about who eats what, where, when and how. Food and status have been interlinked throughout history, 7 and this is reflected both in the control over one’s diet (choice and autonomy) and in the ways what one eats determines who one is. 8 Similarly, efforts among those involved in food justice and sustainability have been aimed at reclaiming food waste and renaming it alternatively as food rescue, food salvage, or food recovery. This renaming and re-sourcing hopes to dis-place (literally a “trash to table” movement)

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the symbolic and moral centers of consumption. While it addresses issues of sustainability and efficiency in distribution of unwanted food, the effectiveness of such a movement toward equity in the food system, and among those marginalized and under-resourced is dubious and will be addressed later in the paper. Suffice to say that connections can be made and distinctions drawn between those audiences and targets to whom stories and research on food, taste and culture, and food, insecurity and waste are directed. The moral and ethical frame for this alternative food discourse also belies a class distinction worth exploring but beyond the scope of this paper. 9 In accordance with this notion, people who are food insecure also fall into the constellation of categories that place them as “at risk” or “in need” of intervention. Such labels, while useful for purposes of providing aid in large numbers, also come with social geographies (food deserts, high risk neighborhoods) and embodiments (needy, under nourished, impoverished, Black, Latino, American Indian, etc.). In the United States, many maps of food deserts such as the one described below depict the abundance of fast food and convenience stores and the lack of supermarkets as indicative of an area where nutritious food is hard to obtain. These reports, combined with the plethora of research on food access cite the high incidence of obesity and diabetes as the obvious outcome of life in a community with little access to fresh and healthy food. 10 While this observation may indeed be accurate, contradictions and paradoxes present themselves when we see how the people who live in these areas are characterized (uneducated in general and about nutrition in particular) as well as in the solutions often proposed from those outside of the communities themselves (gardens, nutritional education, farmers markets, partnerships to bring fresh fruit and vegetables to liquor stores and bodegas). Slocum, Guthman, Goodman and DuPuis and others have criticized the parochial, and often racist and classist attitudes of some of these programs, 11 while also noting that even those programs built from within the community may have difficulty sustaining themselves 12 for many reasons, among them differences in how people experience their food and diet. In short, the taste of their food matters, as not just matter but as a matter of identity. Food and identity are intimately linked, and created and performed through the embodiment of words and/as matter. 13 Language hails us and thus names us into being (Althusser), and given the primacy of taste in ordering society, it would logically follow that the ways taste is described or included in research about food or not, is significant. Korsmeyer observes that, because of its close connection to and incorporation of outside objects (food, drink) into the body, taste is considered ultimately private and idiosyncratic, and has been dismissed as less objective and thus not worthy of theoretical and philosophical thought. 14 Nonetheless, Korsmeyer acknowledges, “eating is an activity we freight with signifi-

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cance considerably beyond either the pleasures it affords or the nutritional sustenance it provides.” 15 In its figurative deployment, taste describes the higher order aesthetic of sight (a painting or even a decorative plate of food may be described as beautiful/tasteful), and thus may be possessed or embodied but not incorporated. Indeed, though they are intimately connected, it is more the possession of an aesthetic/abstracted sense of taste and less the primal/ incorporated sense of taste that figures as status and capital. Waste, too, figures into the constitution of identity-as-food. Hailing or naming of people as subjects or objects with corresponding diets (someone who is a waste to society eats junk food) is another arbitrary articulation 16 that brings identities into being as food insecure, on SNAP, or living in a food wasteland. While not denying the many positive shifts in perspective on the food system and sustainability that such research has accomplished, I merely hope to bring attention to the linkages where they resonate with other wider understandings of food, poverty, status and taste. Concern for waste or being wasteful, while not without its moral, logical and scientific rationale, is often class based, race based and geographically located. The geographies of waste, its classifications and cultural understandings are fascinating and important, but in this chapter my focus is on waste as it offers context for concepts and practices of taste and identity: where wasteful food practices have often ordered status (e.g., chefs that only used one tiny cut of meat from a large animal and threw the rest out), a new morality of waste consciousness frames and organizes gourmet menus. Where waste consciousness takes shape in food rescue operations, we see “first order” food and its remains consistently separating the food secure and insecure. BOURDIEU, TASTE AND HABITUS Bourdieu’s concept of habitus links a “person’s social and economic position with corresponding position in ‘the universe of lifestyles’ and ‘makes it possible to account both for classifiable practices and products and for the judgments, themselves classified, which make these practices and works into a system of distinctive signs.” 17 Habitus is thus made up of judgments about self and others and suggests that the stories one tells about oneself and others order and classify identities based on practices of public and private life. Taste, according to Bourdieu, involves the motivation and ability to appropriate (materially or symbolically): a given class of classified, classifying objects or practices, is the generative formula of life-style, a unitary set of distinctive preferences which express the same expressive intention in the specific logic of each of the symbolic sub-spaces, furniture, clothing, language or body. 18

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Bourdieu, then views the habitus as made up of a set of practices which constitute lifestyles as reflective of (primarily class) identities. Where studies of food, culture and identity equate taste with “the ordering of society,” 19 the food access and security research substitute “taste” for nutrition and healthy food. While I do not intend to suggest that people who are homeless or living in low income areas do not want healthy food, I do argue that the fact that taste appears as a measure of identity in food secure studies but not in food insecure research is significant. If we adopt Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, we might ask which practices constitute “tasteful” rather than “wasteful” identities and in what contexts and to which bodies are meanings attached? Given the above definitions and discursive deployments of “taste” and “waste,” this paper is divided into two sections which reflect the frameworks set up in Bourdieu’s definition of habitus, which looks both rhetorically at classification and at actions and practices which manifest (or are in constant negotiation with) that classification. In the matter of food, taste overlaps with capital in the degree to which one is positioned as food insecure or a “foodie,”or living in a food desert or oasis. Or on a continuum perhaps, where most are living in between but influenced by these polarities nonetheless. If, as noted, food access, food deserts, food procurement, food insecurity and food policy research almost universally leave matters of taste out of the equation, food studies of culture almost universally recognize taste as a primary marker of culture and identity 20 Likewise, popular media and cultural discourse around foodies is obsessively fixated on the invention of new tastes or the sophistication of the palate, while news features and documentaries on hunger and the hungry (whether in the land of plenty or in other parts of the world) either focus on “bad” taste (i.e. calorie dense or “junk” food) or nutrition or nutrient density. The point of foregoing arguments and the subsequent analysis of this paper is less to understand the ways taste is experienced, than to ask how its construction shapes identities as food in/secure, (you are what you eat) and perhaps limits our understanding of the ways all people experience their connection to food. In what follows I look at several reports and research on food insecurity for the ways they map not only geographies of land but those of identities. After that, my exploration turns to research on the ways people identified as food insecure experience food and its taste, symbolic and otherwise. FOOD AS NUTRITION: FOOD INSECURITY, PROCUREMENT AND FOOD PROVISION Perhaps because much of the research on food insecurity in the United States comes from those concerned with obesity, nutrition and food poli-

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cy, matters of taste go largely undiscussed. In recent years, across the country there has been widespread effort to locate food deserts and the environments that contribute to food insecurity. In Western Massachusetts, where I live, a food access and food mapping project described a local under-resourced community thusly: The North End is one of the most socioeconomic disadvantaged neighborhoods in Massachusetts . . . there are many health problems facing the community, including high rates of HIV/Aids, intravenous drug use, asthma, lead poisoning, obesity and diabetes. . . . Lacking any major food outlet or fresh food source and with an abundance of convenience and liquor stores, the North End can be considered a food desert.” 21

Throughout the report, the North End (of Springfield, MA) is painted as a high risk community: one defined by crime, limited food resources, and unemployment. There are many references to health and living in an unhealthy environment. I cite this report because it is where one of the pantries discussed later in the paper is located and also because it is typical of reports by academics and policy makers that attempt to map the deficits and dangers of “high risk” communities in order to make policies and develop programs that might address these health and well being issues. This discourse works well to tell the story of food insecurity. Food insecurity is a term used to characterize the limited or uncertain availability and ability to acquire nutritious, safe food. 22 Food insecurity has also been characterized by a change in eating patterns in a household; when, for instance, a parent goes without a meal so a child can eat, or a child goes to school without breakfast because there is no food due to a lack of financial or other material resources. 23 People who obtain foods in socially unacceptable ways, such as acquiring food through scavenging or buying expired foods that may pose a physical health risk as well as getting foods in illegal ways, are also considered food insecure. 24 Research on food insecure households focuses on food procurement, diet, and health. Researchers describe the meals of those who are identified as food insecure as made up of high energy-dense food that contributes mostly carbohydrates. Many reasons are cited as contributing to this trend, including the high numbers of fast food restaurants in low income neighborhoods, lack of vegetables or fruit and other nutritious food options, lack of supermarkets and prevalence of corner bodegas that sell liquor and packaged food with long shelf life, and little time to cook healthy meals. Overconsumption of carbohydrates is associated with obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, etc. All of these characteristics contribute to the definition of the North End as a food desert where its high risk inhabitants lack nutrients necessary for a healthy lifestyle.

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Another food map report, produced for a nearby city (Northampton), and located via a link on the town web site, also focused on health and well being, although this time using terms like “local,” “fresh,” “connection with source,” etc. that point to the taste preferences of the town’s inhabitants. Rather than starting with a characterization of the high-risk neighborhood, this report notes immediately that almost 70 percent of residents purchase food from farmers markets and prefer local food: Residents shop at large supermarkets, small grocers, food co-ops, natural food stores, farmers’ markets, farm stands, and farms offering CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) shares.. . . While a large majority of respondents prepare and eat most of their meals at home, and report almost never eating at fast food restaurants, over two-thirds eat at a local restaurant once a week or more. Moreover, over 88 percent of those surveyed said that it is ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ important that local restaurants serve local food. 25

How these reports frame taste versus security also frames the participants and indeed even the community. The “food desert” described in the North End is devoid of supermarkets or big box stores and replete with fast food restaurants and liquor stores; residents wish for a large scale market like Walmart where they can buy a variety of goods quickly and cheaply. The community described in the second food survey might be called a food oasis, where residents have many options for food procurement and have great disdain for stores like Walmart and other big box stores. They prefer small-scale local outlets where they may be closer to the producer of their food, and where they know where it comes from. The expressed wish for local food in the food oasis of Northampton versus the ascription of poor health, high crime and lack of fresh food in the desert of the North End of Springfield tells the tale of two cities: one in which the inhabitants take great interest in the variety and quality of their diet and another in which quantity and nutrients are the focus. The presence or absence of words that describe the health of the community, the lack or wealth of access to outlets for fresh food, the socioeconomic status of the area and means of transportation contribute to a narrative of lifestyle and identity in which taste is connected to resources and cultural capital. Acknowledging that the above are snapshots of much larger studies, my purpose here is to show how identities and lifestyles are effects of discourse, dis/connected to food taste, nutrition and knowledge thereof. WASTE AND THE DISCOURSE OF DONATION Possible avenues to resolution of the problems of food security and access may be found in research and activism connected to sustainability of the food system and the reuse and redistribution of food waste. In recent

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years, in the United States, the government has endorsed this movement. The USDA and EPA have posted and distributed models for food recovery and re-distribution. The EPA’s food recovery hierarchy places feeding hungry people using available leftover food second only to source reduction as actions to “prevent and divert wasted food.” 26 The EPA and the USDA, in its “Guidelines for gleaning” 27 both point to donation to local food pantries and soup kitchens as important locations to give away “recovered” food. Apart from the plethora of research indicating that food pantries do not resolve problems of food insecurity, a problem whose indicators are described as unstable housing conditions, high costs of housing, mental illness and unemployment among others, 28 the priority in the food hierarchy and in the gleaning guidelines is on reducing food waste, and not on the quality or desirability of the food itself. Once again, we can see the separation of those for whom the taste of food should be important from those for whom “wasted” food would be welcomed. Food banks accept for distribution to its agency facilities, discarded non-marketable or saleable goods from food producers, retailers, and industry as well as donations through public collection appeals. The sorting process that takes place in food banks once donations have been delivered includes separating, cleaning, cutting and preparing accepted foods. The condition of “fresh” produce is never really fresh and requires either extra work to make it appear fresh, or otherwise is likely thrown out. 29 The recipients of corporate citizenship, food banks sometimes find themselves accepting food that requires too much manpower to sort, prepare and distribute and as a result is deemed unusable. Regardless, the organizations accept the donations in order to have a good relationship with the corporate entity donating the food due to an eye on future usable donations from them. Packaged food seems much easier to manage all the way through the system. Tarasuk and Eakin’s ethnographic study uncovered a dissociation of food distribution and client’s needs. 30 Workers often restricted frequency, amount and selection of foods clients received on any one occasion due to supply limitations. Workers often expressed the view that if people were really hungry, they would take whatever they were offered without complaint; that even accepting subpar goods, was a determinant of a client’s need. Furthermore, this study found that some workers would grant a request for more food, but that it was at the discretion of the particular worker if such a request was granted. The structure and function of food bank operations are complicated, including the handling of industry donations of unsalable products which become labor-intensive, and the neediness of clients, along with their lack of rights in the system. Food bank workers and clients all seemed to be negotiating their identities in relation to ideas of use, value, taste and waste with assumptions being made on both sides. Challenging the constructions of these

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differences means investigating the stakes in and connections to ascriptions of taste and waste. Toward this goal, in the last section of this paper, I look at the ways food pantry clients and homeless female veterans characterize the qualities of the food they want to eat. Notable in these responses are the links between how people associate the food they eat with who they are, and the ways food procurement and preparation relate to a sense of self in community. FOOD AS IDENTITY, TASTE, AUTONOMY, HEALING Two studies, both conducted between January and May 2014 with assistance from undergrad honors students, provide an understanding of the ways food is contextualized in the practices of food insecure populations. The data discussed below was collected as part of two thesis projects on food and nutrition in a community based food research Honors class. Both my students and I collaborated in the design of the study and collection of the data. One study was survey only, distributed in six food pantries across five cities in Western Massachusetts. The surveys (in Spanish and English) asked for information about how often clients visited the pantry, what other assistance they might receive, what foods they obtained from the pantries and what other services were offered. At the end of the survey were qualitative questions about food likes, dislikes, needs and desires. 124 surveys were completed by clients of the various food pantries, and analyzed as part of a student thesis on nutrition and nutritional education in food pantries. From the data collected, I include a list of what clients wished for that was lacking in the food provided and what was important to them about the pantry/soup kitchen context. Many of the clients wished for labels, or clearer information about the ingredients of the food provided. I summarize this study to illustrate not only that taste is important, but that food provided to pantries is often based on what is leftover or recovered from other sources, and therefore is often not fresh or tasty. Much of the food is canned or packaged to preserve shelf life. This food often replicates the very diets they don’t wish to have, or are foods they cannot eat. Food pantry clients mentioned the following foods were lacking or missing altogether: protein, such as meat and seafood (especially fish); fresh food, such as fresh vegetables and fresh fruits; whole grain products (including cereals); dairy, like milk, butter, yogurt; gluten free products; fruit juices and coffee; condiments, seasoning and flavoring, such as salt, tomato sauces, cooking oils; legumes (beans); flour and baking mixes; latin food, and organic foods. It was important to many that items necessary to those who cannot eat gluten or who preferred organic food were missing to from the pantries surveyed. While many clients appre-

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ciated the community they found at the pantry and the pantry staff, several felt that food labeling was important and that pantries often did not provide information about preservatives, gluten, or whether food was organic. In short, while clients appreciated the ability to access free food when they had no money for groceries, they also were concerned with the taste and quality of the food they ate, in addition to its health effects. The second study is comprised of interviews with the women who resided in a program for homeless female veterans in transition, known as “Soldier On.” The interviews took place in their communal kitchen, in one of two Cape style old houses located on the grounds of the Veterans Administration (VA) hospital. Twelve women participate in the program on an ongoing basis, and live in the two adjacent houses. The six women interviewed had been in the program between a few months and two years. The women were familiar with me/the author through a community Breadhouse program I co-run and in which they participated. Questions of like and dislike, why eat the foods they eat, food memories and trajectories were explored over the course of two and sometimes three interviews with each woman. From the stories I found two themes that appeared over and over again and include some of the narratives below to illustrate not only the complexities of taste, but also the interrelationships between biology, affect, memory, past and present relationships, and the composition of the narrative in the moment of telling the story. EATING CLEAN, BECOMING SELF-CONSCIOUS Several of the women described the need to eat clean as part of the process of healing and becoming more self-conscious. One woman described the difficulty of both listening to her body and connecting spiritually to a higher being through fasting: I was fasting for spiritual reasons. And that felt really good. I actually felt my best when I was fasting, and I only stopped because my dad was eating chips at the house. He was eatin’ chips and salsa, and I don’t know why, but it stuck. I didn’t eat any at the house, I was like, “Oh that smells good.” And I was like, “Oh my God.” I was like, “Should I be having some salt or something?” ‘Cause then I was like craving salt. I was trying to listen to my body too, ‘cause like, I didn’t want to be psycho about it. So I was like, well maybe that’s God’s way of telling me I needed something.

Another woman compared simplifying her diet to simplifying her life and eating clean: And, I mean, I always ate meat. And I’m an O positive blood type. And like, protein is like really important for me. So I always ate tons of meat. I grew up that way. Like steak, and chicken. Tons of meat. But

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Many of the women’s stories also involved negative events in their pasts that, while sometimes not explicitly tied to food in the past, still affected current appetites and concerns about diet: When I was with my second husband, we were homeless for a while, and in one of the places that we stayed during one of the times we were homeless was in Oregon. And, um, it just so happened, that at this particular time, we were sleeping under a bridge in the woods. And, there was bats underneath the bridge. Well, there wasn’t any water, so we drank some of the river water. And I ended up with a major case of diarrhea for about three days because of it. But, um, what Diana and I are gonna do is, um, she has a natural concoction that she makes that kind of gets rids of the parasites in your body. So she said, once you do this, you’ll be like a newborn. So I’m gonna try it. Because, you know, I don’t know what’s inside of me. So I’m gonna be doing that soon. . . . So once I order it, I’m gonna do that and follow whatever diet it says to follow during the time you’re doing it. And then, um, I think after I do that, I won’t eat anymore dairy.

HOME GROWN TASTES (KNOWING WHERE YOUR FOOD COMES FROM) Other women pointed to the difference between a former time in their life when they knew the source of their food, and a later time when they were disconnected from that space/knowledge and food was less tasty, or meaningful. One woman who had grown up on a farm in Puerto Rico made the distinction between the tastes of food from the farm and fast food: I’m not really big on McDonald’s. Like, once again, I actually came here and then all my little cousins are like “McDonald’s, McDonald’s, McDonald’s.” Eat out, eat out, eat out. Back home, my grandfather, he had acres of land. So, basically, he grew his own food. Uhhh . . . he had cows, bulls, so it was all there. There was no need to buy food. So I was a lot healthier. I was like, freakin’ all-star. I was like, even I could tell, like, you get here, and everything was different. So, once again, if you get it from . . . if you grow it, yeah, it tastes a lot better. Twenty. Times. Better. And, I don’t know, there? They actually grow their own stuff. So, you’ll find better meats, better carbs.

Another woman of American Indian descent reminisced about hunting for her food:

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Yeah, we ate a lot of fish. Not on the farm, but out in Montana. You know, ‘cause salmon come up the river, you know, I mean, biiiig ones. We’d go, and you know, they do snagging. They have the hooks that come up like this and they’re real big ones, you just throw ‘em out and pull em back in and they’re all coming up to spawn, and you’d just grab one. And you’d get whatever you want, and put it in your freezer. So we ate a lot of fish, a lot of deer meat, you know, not any processed meat too much.

In both of the women’s stories above, the nostalgia for a former time when they knew their food also seems to indicate a wish for control over their diet. In the residences, much like the food pantries, food is provided (for the most part) by donations to the shelter. Thus, while the women can, and often do, pool and share their resources, they are still reliant on others for their food. Because the women in the Soldier On program were in recovery (from addiction, experiences of abuse, and/or other traumas) control and autonomy over their diet were important themes in their stories. Also important, and often addressed in food and cultural studies rather than in food access or insecurity research, is the impact of memory on appetite and the emotional links between taste, place and diet. The connections to the past, whether nostalgia for the family farm, or hunting and fishing for food, or concerns for health and wellness based on past food or drug related illness, become manifest physically in bodily responses to food and tastes for or avoidance of food. These embodiments of taste, smell, touch and sight are connected too to the present narratives of self as well as how that self is projected into sensual imaginings of food. If, as Bourdieu posits, habitus is formed through the classification of judgments about practice, lifestyle and identity, then the food pantry clients as well as the women of Soldier On seem to resist the food insecure habitus as it relates to practices of taste, autonomy and preferred lifestyle. The food preferences expressed by the food pantry clients indicated a more educated and specialized diet than is generally available, and definitely not a diet conducive to rescued or recovered food. In the Soldier On women’s stories we see an identification with practices that are otherwise ascribed to those (foodies and others) concerned with the moral implications of what they eat. Their stories also locate them in the places and spaces where their food grew or lived, rather than distanced through the alienation of labor and food supply. In similar fashion the narratives of coming clean through diet assign value to knowing one’s self through the body, through the thoughtful embodiment of food. These are practices not generally associated with the food insecure. How do we reconcile these stories with the habitus created through lifestyles associated with “taste” and those associated

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with what is wasted or, more to the point, not necessary for social and economic capital? CONCLUSION This chapter has been concerned with the ways discourses in popular culture, research and activism on taste, waste and food insecurity and hunger are constitutive of (classed, raced, etc., identities). Taste, while a biological necessity for survival is also activated as a concept in accordance with cultural practices of propriety. 31 Taste, like food, gains its symbolic force through socialization and is embodied in the various identifications with race, class, gender, ethnicity, as much as these intersect in the texts that classify and judge the bodies that are the agents and targets of food donation, food recovery in spaces identified as food oases or food deserts. Where Bourdieu identified taste with habitus, in this chapter I have applied his observations on social capital to the recent discourse on food waste and food recovery. A society where some are identified through their taste in food, and others through their need for food for survival ignores the ways “taste” and quality stand for recognition of the unique self as well as an identity positioned by race, class, gender, ethnicity, as well as family, community and culture. The connection, between food waste, food rescue and hungry or “needy” people while filling an immediate need, reinforces the identifications of certain bodies and foods with taste and others with that which is not needed or literally “refuse/d.” In this way, efforts to promote sustainability and better efficiency in the food system are often aimed at those also refused the spoils of capitalism. SOME QUALIFICATIONS I want to make clear that in drawing attention to the ways that even progressive and alternative food discourses implicate certain divisions among those with taste and those without, I am not dismissing these food movements or the discourses wholesale. A number of community based food justice organizations that eschew outsider programs and adopt an anti capitalist stance utilize the discourse of food deserts, healthy food and food insecurity, thus complicating the neat separations indicated in this paper. Discourses of sustainability and food waste, too, often work in tandem with capital. Notably, companies such as Smithfield Meats, 32 publicize their sustainability through the various ways they capitalize on every part of the animal, meat, bones, blood, fat, etc., distributing these once wasted parts as ingredients in the production of other edible and inedible goods.

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Still, I believe that the intersections of text and performance offer opportunities to perform otherwise, and in ways that don’t make “common sense.” 33 In the particular case of efforts at food mapping, I think that the efforts to draw attention to needs and deficiencies in a community can be balanced with a look at food resources and assets, whether knowledge of cultural heritage through recipes, cooking, time for tending gardens, etc. The pragmatic practices of under-resourced communities are generally better versed in sustainability than those who dwell in communities where resources are often seen as disposable. Still, I am not endorsing or prescribing a particular kind of discourse targeted to certain populations, whether of health and wellness or some essentializing notion of taste. I hope merely to reassert the importance of taste in matters of identity, and thus across all matters of food, whether provisioning or wasting. In the end, if we imagine practices of producing and eating food to be practices of autonomy, reciprocity and of interdependence, then the oft quoted Brillat-Savarin saying, “Tell me what you eat: I will tell you what you are” can hold true. Until that time, those whose diets are literally and figuratively controlled through dominant discourses of taste, commodity fetishism, and waste might practice resistance through refusal, but the necessity for food makes this practically impossible. One symbolically and performatively powerful route of resistance is to eat communally, to produce, rescue, recover, and donate food as an everyday practice for all diets. These are radical practices only in their refusal of making social distinctions based on taste, while not refusing the vital or sensual in what is our food. NOTES 1. Strong, Jeremy. “Introduction.” In Educated Tastes: Food, Drink, and Connoisseur Culture, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), ix. 2. Alkon, Alison Hope. Cultivating Food Justice Race, Class, and Sustainability. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011). 3. Mennell, Stephen. All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1985. 4. Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process. New York: Urizen Books, 1978. 5. Harris, Jessica B. High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011. 6. See Bourdain, Anthony. The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (New York: Bloomsbury Pub. 2006); Goodyear, Dana. Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture. 7. Higman, B. W. How Food Made History. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. 8. Cooks, Leda. “You Are What You (Don’t) Eat? Food, Identity, and Resistance.” Text and Performance Quarterly, 2009, 94–110. 9. See critiques: Guthman, Julie “‘ If They Only Knew’: Color Blindness and Universalism in California Alternative Food Institutions.” The Professional Geographer:

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387–397; Julier, Alice P., Eating Together: Food, Friendship, and Inequality, (Bloomington: University of Illinois Press, 2013). 10. See, for example: “Hunger in America: 2014 United States Hunger and Poverty Facts.” Hunger in America: 2014 United States Hunger and Poverty Facts. January 1, 2014. Accessed October 20, 2014. United States. Food Access Research Atlas. (Washington, D.C.): U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, 2011. 11. Guthman, J. “Bringing Good Food to Others: Investigating the Subjects of Alternative Food Practice.” Cultural Geographies, 2008, 431–47. DuPuis, E. Melanie, and David Goodman. “Should We Go ‘home’ To Eat?: Toward A Reflexive Politics of Localism.” Journal of Rural Studies, 2005, 359–71. Slocum, Rachel B. Geographies of Race and Food Fields, Bodies, Markets. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2013. 12. For an in-depth analysis see Broad, Garrett. More than Just Food (Oakland, UC Press, in press 2015). 13. Counihan, Carole, and Penny Van Esterlik. Food and Culture: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 1997). Frye, Joshua, and Michael Bruner. The Rhetoric of Food Discourse, Materiality, and Power (New York: Routledge, 2013). Probyn, Elspeth. Carnal Appetites: Foodsexidentities (London: Routledge, 2000). 14. Korsmeyer, Carolyn. The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink. English ed. (Oxford: Berg, 2005). 15. Ibid., 3. 16. I use “articulation” in Hall’s sense of term, as a non-necessary correlation of identities, objects, and symbols that gains social force through its repeated usage. 17. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), 170. 18. Ibid.,173 19. Strong, Educated Tastes. 20. See, for example, Julier, Eating Together. Montanari, Massimo, and Beth A. Brombert. Let the Meatballs Rest and Other Stories About Food and Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). Strong, Educated Tastes. 21. “An Assessment of the North End Food Environment.” January 1, 2008. Accessed November 30, 2014. http://web.mit.edu/course/11/11.403/www/docs/Food Environment Final Report.pdf. 8, 12. 22. Bloom, Jonathan. American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do about It). (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2010). 23. “Hunger in America: 2014 United States Hunger and Poverty Facts.” Hunger in America: 2014 United States Hunger and Poverty Facts. January 1, 2014. Accessed December 1, 2014. http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.htm. 8, 12. 24. Companion, Michele. “Constriction in the Variety of Urban Food Pantry Donations by Private Individuals.” Journal of Urban Affairs 32, no. 5 (2013): 633–46. 25. “Northampton Residents Food Survey Report.” December 1, 2013. Accessed December 1, 2014. http://www.northamptonma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/2107. 1. 26. “Resource Conservation—Food Waste.” EPA. January 1, 2014. Accessed December 1, 2014. http://www.epa.gov/foodrecovery/. 27. “Let’s Glean!” Accessed December 1, 2014. http://www.usda.gov/documents/ usda_gleaning_toolkit.pdf. 28. Hoisington, Anne, Jill Armstrong Shultz, and Sue Butkus. “Coping Strategies and Nutrition Education Needs Among Food Pantry Users.” Journal of Nutrition Education & Behavior 34 vol. 6 (2002): 326. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 Dec. 2013. 29. Tarasuk, Valerie, and Joan M. Eakin. “Food Assistance Through ‘surplus’ Food: Insights From an Ethnographic Study of Food Bank Work.” Agriculture and Human Values 22, no. 2 (2005): 177–86. 30. Ibid. 31. Certeau, Michel De., and Steven Rendall. The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).

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32. “Sustainability at Smithfield Foods.” A Global Packaged Meats Company Committed to Producing Good Food Responsibly. Accessed December 1, 2014. http:// www.smithfieldfoods.com/our-commitments/. 33. As in what is expected, and also in William James’ sense as the place where values and experience are conjoined in instrumental fashion, as truth. James, William. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Auckland, N.Z. (Floating Press, 2010).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alkon, Alison Hope, and Julian Agyeman. Cultivating Food Justice Race, Class, and Sustainability. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011. Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972. “An Assessment of the North End Food Environment.” January 1, 2008. Accessed November 30, 2014. http://web.mit.edu/course/11/11.403/www/docs/Food Environment Final Report.pdf. Belasco, Warren James. Food the Key Concepts. English ed. Oxford: Berg, 2008. Bloom, Jonathan. American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do about It). Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2010. Bourdain, Anthony. The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones. New York: Bloomsbury Pub., 2006. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984, 170. Broad, Garrett. More than Just Food (Oakland, UC Press, in press 2015). Certeau, Michel De., and Steven Rendall. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Companion, Michele. “Constriction in the Variety of Urban Food Pantry Donations by Private Individuals.” Journal of Urban Affairs 32, no. 5 (2013): 633–46. Cooks, Leda. “You Are What You (Don’t) Eat? Food, Identity, and Resistance.” Text and Performance Quarterly, 2009, 94–110. Counihan, Carole, and Penny Van Esterlik. Food and Culture: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 1997. DuPuis, E. Melanie, and David Goodman. “Should We Go ‘home’ To Eat?: Toward a Reflexive Politics of Localism.” Journal of Rural Studies, 2005, 359–71. Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process. New York: Urizen Books, 1978. Food Access Research Atlas. [Washington, D.C.]: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, 2011. Frye, Joshua, and Michael Bruner. The Rhetoric of Food Discourse, Materiality, and Power. New York: Routledge, 2013. Goodyear, Dana. Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture. New York: Riverhead Books, 2013. Guthman, J. “Bringing Good Food to Others: Investigating the Subjects of Alternative Food Practice.” Cultural Geographies, 2008, 431–47. Harris, Jessica B. High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011. Higman, B. W. How Food Made History. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Hoisington, Anne, Jill Armstrong Shultz, and Sue Butkus. “Coping Strategies and Nutrition Education Needs Among Food Pantry Users.” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 34 vol. 6 (2002): 326. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 Dec. 2013. “Hunger in America: 2014 United States Hunger and Poverty Facts.” Hunger in America: 2014 United States Hunger and Poverty Facts. January 1, 2014. Accessed October 20, 2014. United States.

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James, William. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Auckland, N.Z. (Floating Press, 2010). Korsmeyer, Carolyn. The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink. English ed. (Oxford: Berg, 2005). “Let’s Glean!” Accessed December 1, 2014. http://www.usda.gov/documents/usda_ gleaning_toolkit.pdf. Mennell, Stephen. All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1985. Montanari, Massimo, and Beth A. Brombert. Let the Meatballs Rest and Other Stories About Food and Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). “Northampton Residents Food Survey Report.” December 1, 2013. Accessed December 1, 2014. http://www.northamptonma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/2107. Probyn, Elspeth. Carnal Appetites: Foodsexidentities (London: Routledge, 2000). “Resource Conservation—Food Waste.” EPA. January 1, 2014. Accessed December 1, 2014. http://www.epa.gov/foodrecovery/. Slocum, Rachel B. Geographies of Race and Food Fields, Bodies, Markets. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2013. Strong, Jeremy. “Introduction.” In Educated Tastes: Food, Drink, and Connoisseur Culture, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. “Sustainability at Smithfield Foods.” A Global Packaged Meats Company Committed to Producing Good Food. Responsibly. Accessed December 1, 2014. http:// www.smithfieldfoods.com/our-commitments/. Tarasuk, Valerie, and Joan M. Eakin. “Food Assistance Through ‘surplus’ Food: Insights From an Ethnographic Study of Food Bank Work.” Agriculture and Human Values 22, no. 2 (2005): 177–186.

SEVEN Tying the Knot How Industry and Animal Advocacy Organizations Market Language as Humane Joseph L. Abisaid

For many people, deciding what to eat represents a relatively trivial part of the day. Usually the choice is based on some aspect of convenience, or possibly expense, and even then there is little regret if the decision is not correct, since the same decision will have to be made again in a few hours. For an increasing number of people, however, deciding what to eat is a more serious endeavor that carriers political, ethical, social, and economic consequence. 1 The last few decades have witnessed a type of grassroots movement of food “conscientious consumers” that have demanded greater transparency in the food production process. 2 Concern stems from the takeover of small family oriented farms by large corporate industrial farms—colloquially known as factory farms—who have fundamentally altered the way in which food is produced and marketed towards consumers. 3 Originally, factory farms were conceived as a way to maximize production in the most economically efficient way possible. 4 Compared with education, housing, and automobiles whose prices have soared exponentially since the development of factory farms, animal products produced in factory farms cost less than ever before once inflation is taken into account. 5 Marcus notes that the price for eggs and chickens have barely doubled in the past sixty years. 6 Besides cheap prices for consumers, factory farms have produced sensational financial returns for their investors. 7 In his essay on the impact of factory farms in a consumer society, 141

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Lavin writes that factory farms experienced some pushback in their formative years by farmers over their moral and economic impact on their livelihood. 8 Such criticism, however, is increasingly rare as nearly all small family farms have either consolidated or adopted similar practices to stay financially viable coupled with the massive migration of the majority of the population to urban areas detached from farm life. Theoretically speaking, economic efficiency is preferred in the marketplace over economic inefficiency. 9 Economically efficient practices are more likely to be adopted by industry because they are able to pass down the costs to consumers in a way that inefficient practices are unable to. Large factory farms have a tremendous advantage over small family farms in available capital as well as technological innovations that they can take risks on without worrying about bankruptcy. 10 Hence, the dwindling number of small family farms are not necessarily the result of an inferior product but rather because the product can be sold at a significantly lower rate to consumers. With more than three hundred million food consumers eating multiple meals every day, feeding that many people might be considered a modern day miracle. As the population continues to rapidly increase, land for raising animals becomes scarcer and raising animals on small family farms becomes more economically inefficient and more unrealistic as a model for feeding an entire nation compared with raising animals on factory farms. The situation with raising animals for food presents a unique ethical situation that is absent in most markets. 11 There are many ethical dilemmas present in the current food system that consumers must reconcile including ecological degradation, mistreatment of laborers, overuse of antibiotics and other chemicals in feedlots, the spread of disease, and displacement of small independent farmers. 12 However, the most glaring ethical dilemma is the product itself—the animals that become part of the system. 13 Almost all farm animals on factory farms are raised in appallingly harsh conditions of confinement devoid of any social contact or enrichment. 14 Most of the nearly 10 billion land animals raised and slaughtered for food in the United States live in such crowded and cramped quarters that they are unable to turn around or engage in any normal behaviors and almost all will never see the sun in their lifetime. 15 In the current food production system, animals are thought of as machines whose economic value precedes any moral obligation or concern producers may have about their welfare or even their most basic right to live. 16 Writing as a religious compassionate conservative, Matthew Scully assigns the blame squarely on the shoulders of unfettered capitalism and describes factory farms as “not the worst evil we can do, but it is the worst evil we can do to [animals].” 17 While information about how animals are raised is readily available for those who seek it out, most people would prefer not to know. According to food writer and critic Michael Pollan, there is a strong desire to suppress the exact details of how food

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arrives at our plate lest we become too uncomfortable. As he notes, “eating industrial meat takes an almost heroic act of not knowing, or, now, forgetting.” 18 Knowing that “forgetting” is critical for maintaining financial sales, the animal agriculture industry relies on round-the-clock advertising, public relations campaigns, and aggressive lobbying efforts to convince us not to worry about the origins of our food. Yet, the conditions are so bad that factory farm proprietors have initiated legislation that would make it a crime to secretly videotape animals on their farms. 19 As Jonathan Safer Foer eloquently writes “it’s become hard to imagine who, besides those who profit from it, would defend factory farming.” 20 Even with this ostensible vulnerability, coordinated efforts by animal advocacy groups to repudiate the influence of the animal agriculture industry and shine a light on the difficult lives that farm animals experience have gone largely unreported by the mainstream media. Using a textual analysis methodology, Carrie PackwoodFreeman examined over a hundred different print and broadcast news items to discover what were the dominant discursive representations of animals in the news media. 21 Although she found some notable exceptions, the overwhelming number of news stories tended to commodify animals as objects, ignore their emotional lives, and fail to describe them as inherently valuable beings. Although animals are treated poorly within the current food system, people report a strong visceral aversion to seeing animals harmed in factory farms 22 and almost all people when surveyed support initiatives to improve the welfare and rights of animals. 23 Very few people would permit companion animals like dogs or cats to be treated in a similar manner. While some will point out that companion animals are inherently different from farm animals bred specifically for food, such differences can only be explained by social differences rather than ethical differences between and among animals. That people profess concern for the welfare of animals but continue to knowingly consume them from sources that impose tremendous harm on them requires an explanation. Psychologist Melanie Joy theorizes that there exists a belief system, she labels “carnism,” that encourages us to emotionally disconnect ourselves from the suffering of farm animals. 24 She considers this a type of irrational belief system since we are only drawn to eating very specific animals while being disgusted at the thought of eating others. For example, many Americans express revulsion at the idea of consuming dogs while in other parts of the globe, consuming dogs is considered perfectly normal. According to Joy, by way of cultural indoctrination and reinforcement by the media, we are told to eat animals because it is natural, normal, and nutritious even though science has suggested otherwise. Legal scholar and philosopher Gary Francione goes one step further and suggests that our behaviors towards animals can only be explained as a

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type of “moral schizophrenia” where we express disgust at the idea of animals being harmed but participate in the very activity where billions of animals are routinely harmed for our palatable pleasure. 25 In his historical review of the animal movement, Norm Phelps notes that with the exception of animals used for religious sacrifice and animals used for work in fields, the situation for animals has become much worse than at any point in human history. 26 With the global population expanding and more people adopting meat based diets, 27 factory farms appear to be a permanent fixture. A return to the husbandry methods that once dominated the food production process seems extraordinarily improbable if not entirely impossible. One possibility to mitigate the effects of large scale industrial farms would be to convince people to no longer consume animal products and adopt vegetarian or strict vegetarian diets (i.e. vegan). Practically speaking though, it would seem almost hopeless to convince hundreds of millions of people to avoid animal products altogether. Another more realistic possibility would be to convince consumers to purchase animal foods sourced from local suppliers who maintain higher standards of animal welfare and ethics in how they raise animals. A number of writers have pointed out the ethical and ecological benefits of consuming humanely raised meat as an alternative to absolutist vegetarian diets. 28, 29 Singer and Mason identify this group of individuals as “conscientious omnivores.” 30 Research has yet to fully conceptualize or even clearly define this burgeoning category of food consumers, but demand for humanely raised products is on the rise. The idea of “conscientious omnivores,” creates an interesting framework about farming practices, but more specifically about animal advocacy and how euphemistic labels serve as an important cue for consumers to make judgments about how their food was raised. Given this very new but real phenomenon of individuals expressing a desire for more humanely raised animal products, animal advocacy organizations must articulate a position on where they stand on the issue. To date, many animal advocacy organizations have validated the movement for more humane foods as a positive development in the quest for social justice for animals and have even lent their stamp of approval on such products, both figuratively and literally. 31 While concern for farm animals is an important first step, this chapter argues that this rhetorical response of embracing humane language to describe where food comes from is only marginally better for the treatment of animals and that this response does nothing to address the more pressing long-term ethical consideration of consuming animals thereby regressing the true goals of the animal movement. This chapter begins by reviewing the nature of the “conscientious omnivore” euphemism and its derivatives and then considers the effects

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of the adoption of such language for the animal movement and its consequences. EUPHEMISMS AS A POLITICAL TOOL In his essay on politics and the English language, George Orwell writes that “political language has to consist largely of euphemisms, questionbegging, and sheer vagueness.” 32 He reasons that language functions as much to conceal as it does to express thought since people are motivated to avoid communicative discomfort. Scholars have characterized euphemisms as a type of linguistic strategy that allows speakers to directly avoid addressing unpleasant topics that evoke negative feelings among message recipients and audiences. 33 Euphemisms are intentionally ambiguous so as to disguise the true nature of the phenomenon. According to linguistic William Lutz, inventor of the term doublespeak, euphemisms are “language that only pretends to communicate, that makes the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant attractive, or at least tolerable.” 34 The most effective euphemisms are those that are able to completely disassociate the euphemism from its original meaning. At the same time, euphemisms allow message sources to maintain a positive self-presentation style and to continue the interaction without threat or discomfort. Some scholars consider euphemisms to be morally acceptable when they are used as a type of courtesy that result in no objectionable harm onto others. 35 For instance, the phrase “she is getting up there in age” to describe the natural process of aging is an innocuous way of avoiding the unpleasant topic of getting old and eventually dying. Potentially problematic though are euphemisms that are used to shape political, social, cultural, or economic perceptions of realities that do not exist. Those in power have the ability to mislead others into believing that certain situations are not worthy of serious attention or discussion which could lead to apathy and inaction. Research has shown that in times of military conflict, euphemisms are used prominently as a way to manage public support for war since true descriptions of the realities of war are likely to be too unpleasant for people to tolerate. 36 Like war, the raising of farm animals for food involves the unpleasant activity of death. The term “slaughter” is often used as the default euphemism to redirect attention away from the more blunt language of murder, a serious crime under the law. Although slaughter is the inevitable end for all animals raised for food, the new political language of food seeks to deemphasize that aspect of the process and instead bolster the positive experiences that animals have while alive. Euphemisms, now found on packaging labels, such as “organic,” “natural,” “naturally raised,” “free-range,” “cage-free,” “certified humane,” “wild caught,”

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“enriched cage,” “crate free,” “animal-welfare approved” and many others have now entered the supermarket lexicon, all implying more humane treatment of animals. Such labels are deliberately phrased to create a certain effect so as to minimize concern over the ethically questionable behavior of consuming animals and most importantly create a healthy conscience on the part of the consumer. Moreover, humane food labeling has the added benefit of making consumers feel good without asking too much of them. In his influential essay, “An Animal’s Place,” Michael Pollan rationalizes that the “good life” for animals intersects with their ability to be consumed by humans. 37 The argument centers on the belief that domesticated animals have enjoyed food and protection from predators by humans and in exchange humans have been able to consume their milk, eggs, and flesh. Though Pollan is very critical of the current methods used to raise animals, his shrewd argument appeals to people’s basic instinct that they have an infallible right to consume animals as food. Pollan is able to reconcile the two contradictory impulses of our “obligation” to eat animals and the current food production system in which animals are cruelly reared by emphasizing that consumers should be concerned about the “suffering, not the killing.” Hence, euphemistic food labels provide an important cue about the nature of suffering since the killing aspect is already evident. Research has examined how food consumers think about food labels. A study by Schroder and McEachern found that Scottish meat eaters expressed positive attitudes towards animal welfare as a concept but expressed contradictory statements such that as citizens they believed animals were entitled to live “good lives” but avoided any cognitive connection with the live animals when they were asked to think of themselves as consumers. 38 Humane food labels serve an important purpose in that they are able to bring the issue of animal mistreatment in the food system to the forefront. The absence of such labels makes the issue both politically and socially invisible. Their presence, however, helps to make people aware of the nature of the food they are consuming. Relying on focus group data, Miele and Evans found that labels carrying welfare claims created two distinct outcomes among Italian respondents. The first effect was that it created an “ethically competent consumer” while the second effect had the opposite effect of creating an “ethically noncompetent consumer.” 39 From an industry standpoint, humane food labels make perfect sense in being able to assuage consumers’ ethical concerns over how animals are raised. But do they make sense from an animal advocacy standpoint? Do industry interests and animal organization interests overlap or should they remain mutually exclusive?

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ANIMAL ADVOCACY Concern for animals is not a new phenomenon. 40 In ancient times, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras is said to have advocated against the inhumane use of animals and advised his followers to avoid consuming the flesh of animals. 41 In order to justify the current human-animal divide, several defenses have been put forth including cognitive superiority, 42 religious beliefs, 43 and human exceptionalism. 44 Several scholars have criticized these defenses of the human-animal divide as a type of speciesism, where a morally arbitrary criteria is used to justify domination of one group over another. 45 Contemporary times have witnessed the growth of several animal advocacy organizations around the globe that are devoted to improving the lives of animals through various means. 46 Through educational and legal initiatives, modest gains have been made towards that end but animals remain firmly enveloped within a property paradigm where they are accorded no rights by humans and therefore no legal status to challenge how they are used. 47 Among animal advocacy groups, there is unanimous agreement that animals deserve protection but what concessions the public should make in improving the lives of animals is the subject of much debate. Animal advocacy groups tend to adopt either an animal welfare or animal rights approach as the overarching philosophical framework that guides their advocacy. Welfare based animal advocacy groups emphasize treatment whereas rights based groups emphasize use. While not entirely mutually exclusive of one another, the processes and outcomes are dramatically different between the two. To the extent that legislation exists protecting animals from unnecessary harm, it is almost always framed in the language of animal welfare. Almost all large animal advocacy groups operate from a welfare-based policy approach even though organizational rhetoric may imply otherwise. Although animal welfare dominates modern animal advocacy, it is not without criticism. Gary Francione has criticized this approach as being disingenuous since animal welfare does nothing meaningful to improve the lives of animals. 48 His belief is that any improvements the industry makes is likely to be made due to economic inefficiencies in the way in which animals are raised, not because of any direct political pressure from animal organizations or for ethical concerns by industry. In turn, these improvements are given catchy euphemistic labels as a way to communicate with the public a type of (morally) significant change in the way animals are raised for food.

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The Animal Advocacy Dilemma Throughout their histories, animal advocacy groups have made the campaign for vegetarianism the central feature of their advocacy. 49 There can be little doubt that animals in the current food system live unpleasant and terrifying lives. It is true that there are many issues that animal organizations deal with, but no other issue commands as much attention due to the sheer number of animals that are used for food. The Animal Welfare Institute estimates that animals used for food compromise about 98 percent of all animals used by humans in various industries. 50 In many ways, animal advocacy organizations have constructed their collective identities around their efforts to convince people to avoid animal foods. Practically speaking, the campaign for vegetarian diets has existed for centuries and little progress has been made in creating meaningful social change in that regard. The futility of this campaign has created a situation where animal advocacy organizations must decide whether continuing to campaign for vegetarian diets is a meaningful long-term strategy or whether improving the current treatment of animals within the system would be a better use of organizational resources. Because most animal advocacy organizations operate within the context of animal welfare, the decision appears to have been made to shift advocacy efforts around improving the current treatment of animals that are used in the food production process as opposed to the more traditional goal of avoiding animal foods altogether. For example, the Humane Society of the United States—the largest animal advocacy organization—devotes an entire section on their webpage encouraging consumers to “eat with a conscience” and to avoid products from the “worst production systems.” 51 Other animal advocacy groups have adopted similar initiatives such as “Meatless Monday” and welfare-conscious purchasing guidelines for consumers. 52 Animal welfare as a framework for advocacy offers a type of compromise where animal organizations can continue to offer opposition to industries using animals in the most negative ways possible while making a more modest request on consumers to modify certain enduring habits, especially as it relates to food choices. In turn, animal organizations work directly with industry to improve the conditions of farm animals. As many animal organizations have discovered, asking consumers to avoid animal foods is much more difficult since many traditions and experiences are built around consuming animal foods. Moreover, requests to avoid animal foods permanently is likely to attract less members and volunteers and have a negative impact on the financial well-being for animal advocacy organizations.

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The Ineffectuality of Euphemistic Language in Animal Advocacy If animals are part of the moral community as all animal organizations profess, then how you use them has political and ethical significance. Rather than provide resistance to companies that are using farm animals as a means to an end, many animal organizations appear to have shifted their communication strategies by endorsing humane animal food products, or products that are sometimes referred to colloquially as “happy meat.” This I believe is a problem for animal advocacy organizations. To begin, the intellectual and social foundation of animal advocacy can be traced to organized campaign efforts to convince people to adopt vegetarian diets. For more than a century, outreach efforts have primarily focused on showcasing animals that are part of the food supply to be in distress. Campaigns have focused on creating a compassionate society where animals are not thought of as things to be consumed but rather beings with interests. By advocating for humane animal foods as a viable choice preference, animal organizations are essentially negating the work that has shaped their collective identity and informed their movement strategy. In many ways, animal organizations no longer have any real identity when they collaborate with animal agriculture industries to promote animal foods, even if such foods are more humanely produced. Next, animal advocacy organizations are the primary mediators of information about animal issues. Since the media rarely gives animal issues much attention, animal organizations occupy an important role in providing information about animal issues to the general public. Studies show that when controversial animal issues arise, individuals tend to assign higher levels of credibility to the animal organization for whom they trust to report accurate information. 53 This is in large part because for profit organizations that use animals are seen as more likely to promote their financial interests whereas animal organizations are more likely to be advocating for animals based on altruistic purposes, not for financial gain. The consequences of advocating for humane animal foods creates a type of confusion among the general public. The issue of consuming animal products has always been controversial, even dissonance provoking for some people given their contradictory attitudes towards animals. When the general public sees that animal organizations are telling people that it is acceptable to consume animal foods so long as it has been raised humanely, this signals that the primary ethical responsibility that consumers have towards farm animals is to seek out more humane options. An additional concern for animal organizations promoting humanely sourced animal foods as an ethically acceptable alternative is the economic consideration both in terms of production and for consumers. The reality is that only a very small percentage of consumers seek out humanely sourced foods. Given the impressive efficiency of factory farm-

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ing, humanely raised animal foods can only be produced if consumers are willing to absorb the additional costs. Ethical vegetarians will always avoid animal foods irrespective of the costs associated with meat production. Those who indicate a preference for humanely sourced animal foods are under no such ethical obligation and instead must consider monetary factors. Hank Rothgerber writes that the conscientious omnivore movement has created a new marketplace for animal welfare products that make people feel good about their food choice. Survey data collected by Rothberger from self-identified ethical meat eaters, vegetarians, and vegans found that conscientious omnivores reported violating their diet more and feeling less guilty about it, were less disgusted with factory farming, and believed less in animal rights than vegetarians and vegans. In other words, those who did seek out ethically sourced animal foods were inconsistent in their attitudes, behaviors, and motivation for seeking them out. 54 A more practical concern is whether there are any meaningful differences between animals raised with higher animal welfare standards than those that have been raised in corporate industrial farms. Are euphemistic labels promoting humane treatment simply window dressing to make people feel better about the foods they eat? The immediate answer is that they are a minor upgrade compared to the alternative but their greatest effects seem to be more political than substance. As Francione argues, anti-cruelty laws requiring the humane treatment of animals are prevalent across the country but these laws only ensure a minimal standard of treatment and nothing beyond. 55 Because animals are part of the property paradigm, their interests can never be truly balanced with the interest of property owners whose financial interests trump everything else. Property owners are under no obligation to provide any additional treatment than what the law mandates. In this regard, the conditions that animals are raised in represents only a marginal upgrade, based only on the standard set forth by the label, but the political effects of the euphemism used to create a certain image are likely to carry a more significant effect. CONCLUSION The goal of this chapter was to consider the adoption of food label euphemisms by animal advocacy organizations and what potential effects they may have for consumers and for the animal movement as a whole. It was argued that the current food system, dominated by intensive factory farming, has created such misery for animals that individuals have been forced to confront the ethical implications of consuming products produced in factory farms. The use of animals for food has generally not been considered a serious moral issue throughout the course of human

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history, but the emergence of factory farming has called into question what ethical obligations humans have towards raising animals for food. As a way to alleviate individual moral concern, a small but growing number of food consumers are turning to farms that produce animal foods in a more humane and sustainable manner. There exist many examples of food label euphemisms. Virtually all food label euphemisms share the same goal of communicating the positive conditions and experiences animals have while alive. In unpleasant situations such as the killing of animals for food, euphemisms serve an important function of reassuring consumers that they did not contribute to the suffering of animals. Food label euphemisms help to convey awareness of the issue in a way that traditional packaging of foods are unable to. And even if they are unable to directly change consumer behavior, food label euphemisms may be the instrument by way in which public discussion of sensitive issues are initiated. The rise of “conscientious omnivores” has presented a significant tactical challenge for animal advocacy groups. The concern is the result of conscientious omnivores taking positive steps towards helping animals by seeking out more humane food products, but steps that regardless of how well meaning are inconsistent with the traditional goals of animal advocacy. Yet, animal advocacy groups are keenly aware that their campaign to convince people to adopt vegetarian diets has been met with little success. The dilemma is in whether to continue to advocate for what many would consider to be the unrealistic goal of convincing the masses to adopt vegetarian diets or working within the system to ensure that animals are treated better than they currently are. For various reasons, this chapter has argued that the use of food label euphemisms should be rejected as a movement strategy by animal advocacy organizations. While it may seem reasonable to acknowledge the efforts to produce more humane sources of food, there remains definitional ambiguity as to what constitutes “humane” as well as practical impediments associated with the costs of such products for most people. By collaborating with the animal agricultural industry, animal advocacy organizations run the risk of losing their identity as a resistance group working towards social justice for animals. Although animals remain well outside the peripheral of society, one does not have to look too far back into American history to find several examples of marginalized groups now achieving full societal inclusion. However, that can never happen for animals if the groups advocating for them embrace the new political language of food.

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NOTES 1. Peter Singer and Jim Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter (Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2006), 81–91. 2. Michael Mikulak, The Politics of the Pantry: Stories, Food, and Social Change (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013). 3. David Cassuto, “Bread Meat: The Cultural Foundations of the Factory Farm,” Law and Contemporary Problems 70, no. 1 (2007): 62–70. 4. Deborah Kay Fitzgerald, Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 10–32. 5. Erik Marcus, Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, & Money (Boston: Brio Press, 2005), 7. 6. Ibid. 7. Marcus, Meat Market, 5. 8. Chad Lavin, “Factory Farms in a Consumer Society,” American Studies 50, no. 1/2 (2009): 75–78. 9. Norris A. Brisco, Economics of Efficiency (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1917). 10. Catherine Morrison Paul, Richard Nehring, David Banker, and Agapi Somwaru, “Scale Economies and Efficiency in U.S. Agriculture: Are Traditional Farms History?” Journal of Productivity Analysis 22, no. 3 (2004): 186–187. 11. John Rossi and Samual A. Garner, “Industrial Farm Animal Protection: A Comprehensive Moral Critique,” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 27, no. 3 (2014): 507–514. 12. Richard Oppenlander, Comfortably Unaware: What we Choose to Eat is Killing us and our Planet (New York: Beaufort Books, 2012), 9–14. 13. Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009), 181–188. 14. Gail A. Eiznitz, Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006), 35. 15. Marcus, Meat Market, 15–48. 16. Ruth Harrison and Marian Stamp Dawkins, Animal Machines (London: CABI, 2013). 17. Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin), 289. 18. Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin, 2006), 84. 19. Jeff Zalesin, “An Overview of Ag-gag Laws,” News Media & The Law 37, no. 3 (2012): 22. 20. Safran Foer, Eating Animals, 196. 21. Carrie Packwood Freeman, “This Little Piggy Went to Press: The American News Media’s Construction of Animals in Agriculture,” The Communication Review 12, no. 12 (2009). 22. Joseph N. Scudder and Carol Bishop Mills, “The Credibility of Shock Advocacy: Animal Rights Attack Messages,” Public Relations Review 35, no. 2 (2009). 23. Frank Newport, “Post-Derby Tragedy, 38 percent Support Banning Animal Racing,” accessed on November 16, 2014, www.gallup.com/poll/107293/PostDerbyTragedy-38-Support-Banning-animal-Racing.aspx. 24. Melanie Joy, Why we Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism (San Francisco, Conari Press, 2011), 23–36. 25. Gary Francione, Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), 1–30. 26. Norm Phelps, The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA (New York: Lantern Books, 2007), 1–15.

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27. Christopher L. Delgado, “Rising Consumption of Meat and Milk in Developing Countries Has Created a New Food Revolution,” The Journal of Nutrition 133, no. 11 (2003). 28. Eric Scholosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All American Meal (Boston: Harper Perennial, 2001), 133–148. 29. Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What we Eat, 135–150. 30. Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What we Eat, 81–91. 31. Gary L. Francione, “Abolitionist Approach,” accessed on November 16, 2014, http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/media/links/p3218/endorsed.pdf. 32. George Orwell, Politics and the English Language and Other Essays (London, Benediction Books, 2010) 5–24. 33. Matthew S. McGlone, Gary Beck, and Abigail Pfiester, “Contamination and Camouflage in Euphemisms,” Communication Monographs 73, no. 3 (2006). 34. William Lutz, “Nothing in Life is Certain Except Negative Patient Care Outcome and Revenue Enhancement,” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 44, no. 3 (2000): 230. 35. George Albert Gladney and Terri L. Rittenburg, “Euphemistic Text Affects Attitudes, Behavior,” Newspaper Research Journal 25, no. 1 (2005). 36. John Collins and Ross Glover, Collateral Language: A User’s Guide to America’s New War (New York: New York University Press, 2002). 37. Michael Pollan, “An Animal’s Place,” accessed on November 16, 2014, http:// www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/magazine/an-animal-s-place.html. 38. Monika J.A. Schöder and Morven G. McEachern, “Consumer Value Conflicts Surrounding Ethical Food Purchase Decisions: A Focus on Animal Welfare,” International Journal of Consumer Studies 28, no. 2 (2004). 39. Mara Miele and Adrian Evans, “When Foods Become Animals: Rumination of Ethics and Responsibility in Care-full Practices of Consumption,” Ethics, Place, & Environment: A Journal of Philosophy & Geography 13, no. 2 (2010). 40. Diane L. Beers, For the Prevention of Cruelty: The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United States (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2006). 41. Phelps, The Longest Struggle, 1–15. 42. Jonathan Balcombe, Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 43. Andrew Linzy, Animal Theology (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 1–25. 44. Wesley J. Smith, A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement (New York: Encounter Books, 2010). 45. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: New York Review Press, 1975). 46. Bernard E. Rollins, “Animal Rights as a Mainstream Phenomenon,” Animals 1, no. 1 (2011). 47. Gary L. Francione, Animals, Property, and the Law (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 3–49. 48. Ibid. 49. Phelp, The Longest Struggle, 148–220. 50. “On the Farm,” Animal Welfare Institute accessed on November 16, 2014, https:/ /awionline.org/content/farm. 51. “Humane Eating,” Humane Society of America, accessed on November 16, 2014, http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/eating/. 52. “Welfare-Conscious Choices,” ASPCA, accessed on November 16, 2014 https:// www.aspca.org/fight-cruelty/farm-animal-cruelty/welfare-conscious-choices. 53. Scudder and Mills, “Shock Advocacy,” 163. 54. Hank Rothberger, “Can you Have your Meat and Eat it Too?” Appetite 84, no. 1 (2015): 199–201. 55. Francione, Animals, Property, and the Law, 15–32.

EIGHT Corn Allergy Public Policy, Private Devastation Kathy Brady

Corn is one of the most highly subsidized crops, with U.S. government support totaling 84.4 billion dollars from 1998–2012. 1 Roughly 75 percent of those subsidies have gone to 3.8 percent of U.S. farmers, 2 making corn a big business for big farms, leaving small independent farmers largely out of the corn windfall. Although the 2014 Farm Bill eliminated direct subsidy payments to farmers, it does offer significantly lower premiums on crop insurance, and offers lower levels of payout for some benefits than previously set. This will shift much of the financial risk from farmers to the federal government if crop prices fall precipitously or if natural disaster hits farm land and its crops. 3 Shortly after the passing of the 2014 Farm Bill, Lisa Desjardins noted on CNN: The farm bill decides which crops the U.S. government wants to encourage or protect. It gives incentives to grow more of them. The most subsidized crops in this (and in most farm bills of the past) are the socalled “row crops,” things like wheat, soy, and the king of American agriculture, corn. These subsidies are one reason corn will remain one of the country’s most reliable sources of food, from cattle feed to soda sweetener. The green and yellow vegetable will be a major part of your life for the foreseeable future. 4

For those with corn allergy, the thought that corn “will be a major part of your life for the foreseeable future,” is devastating. Few understand how pervasive corn is in the everyday life of the average American—and how 155

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disruptive and dangerous an allergy to that substance can be. When Business Insider published an article that explained “how strong corn’s grip is on the American diet and economy,” they were surprised by a reader email they received from Christine Doiron, a bookseller in Juneau, Alaska: As a corn allergic person, I take issue with the statement “Corn is found in 3 out of 4 supermarket products.” This is grossly understated. . . . I’m guessing your statistic is only looking at the center aisles of the grocery stores (where all the processed crap is) and that it’s only looking at obvious things, like corn syrup, corn starch, citric acid, and white vinegar. See here for an incomplete list of corn derivatives. http:// www.cornallergens.com/list/corn-allergen-list.php. 5 . . . As a person trying to find enough to eat in this country that isn’t coated in or processed with or derived from corn at some point to just survive, I so wish I could eat 1 out of 4 things in the grocery store. 6

Christine Doiron speaks of the public space of the grocery store and how it affords the corn allergic very little in terms of safe food to purchase. But this problem really starts in a public space much smaller than our grocery store aisles: the public space of our food labels. There is a political component to what the United States government requires to be included on a food label and what is not. But the justification that some words on a label not have meaning while requiring other words on the label to have a very specific meaning goes beyond politics. It has to do with our relationship to language and how we use it. According to Robyn Carston, “The concept expressed by the use of a word in a context often diverges from its lexically encoded context-independent meaning; it may be more specific or more general (or a combination of both) than the lexical meaning.” 7 This chapter will take a look at how corn is allowed to be a hidden ingredient in the vast majority of foods on our grocery store shelves— from prepackaged foods like cereal and crackers, to dairy—and even seemingly pure farm-raised produce. Given the United States government’s strong annual support of the corn crop through a variety of subsidies, it’s not surprising that it downplays corn allergy as an issue. On the U. S Food and Drug Administration page, “Food Allergies: What You Need to Know,” the agency states: While more than 160 foods can cause allergic reactions in people with food allergies, the law identifies the eight most common allergenic foods. These foods account for 90 percent of food allergic reactions, and are the food sources from which many other ingredients are derived. The eight foods identified by the law are: Milk Eggs Fish (e.g. bass, flounder, cod) Crustacean shellfish (e.g. crab, lobster, shrimp)

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Tree nuts (e.g. almonds, walnuts, pecans) Peanuts Wheat Soybeans 8

The page also explains what the passing of The Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Law (FALCPA) means for identification of those top eight allergens on food labels. “Now, the law requires that labels must clearly identify the food source names of all ingredients that are—or contain any protein derived from—the eight most common food allergens, which FALCPA defines as “ major food allergens.” 9 Not expressly spelled out in this law—but what results from it—is that food allergens besides those “big eight” as they are commonly referred to, are not required by law “to be identified by the food source names of all ingredients that are—or contain any protein derived from” those allergens. Those with corn allergy (and allergies to any food other than one of the “big eight”) find themselves in the position of being able to use labels to identify food that is not safe for them to consume, but the labels cannot be used to ascertain if a food is safe to eat without calling the company. When consumers do call, the FDA policy is sometimes quoted back to them that they do not have an obligation according to the FDA to monitor corn in their food. Therefore, they do not have accurate information to provide. Despite this focus on the “big eight,” the FDA website acknowledges the dangers of food allergies in general: Each year, millions of Americans have allergic reactions to food. Although most food allergies cause relatively mild and minor symptoms, some food allergies can cause severe reactions, and may even be lifethreatening. There is no cure for food allergies. Strict avoidance of food allergens— and early recognition and management of allergic reactions to food— are important measures to prevent serious health consequences. 10

This sentiment is echoed in Middleton’s Allergy Principles and Practice, a best-selling textbook aimed at medical students: Food allergy is common and potentially fatal. Successful management requires avoidance of the offending food and preparation to treat allergic reactions and anaphylaxis. . . . The daily burden of managing food allergies seriously impacts quality of life. 11 In the past two decades, food allergy has emerged as an important public health problem affecting people of all ages in societies with a Western lifestyle, such as the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and Western Europe. The overall prevalence of food allergy in American children increased by 18 percent from 1997 to 2007. 12

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Kathy Brady Food induced anaphylaxis also appears to have increased. In the United States, data from one geographic region in Minnesota from 1983 to 1987 and 1993 to 1997 show a 71 percent to 100 percent increase. 13

So it has been established that food allergies are increasing, that they pose a risk—even of death—for those who suffer, and the only weapon for avoiding risk is avoidance of the offending substance itself. The lax labeling regulations in regard to any ingredient other than the “big eight” leaves those with corn and other non-recognized allergies nearly defenseless. On the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology website, Dr. Phil Lieberman stated “Unfortunately, there is no definitive information located in one place which lists all products containing corn. There are lay websites which deal to some extent with the issue. . . . Other than using such a lay website and reading labels, there is no other way to deal with the issue.” 14 The problems with food labeling have already been outlined. For people with corn allergy, there is no recognized official source to which to turn for assistance. The FDA doesn’t even have a listing for corn allergy on their site, although they do post adverse events, including one in which a corn-allergic patient reacted to Salter Labs Nasal Cannula Tubing because it was coated with cornstarch, which was not indicated on the package. 15 The advice from Middleton’s Allergy Principles and Practice suggests that “patients and caregivers must understand food-labeling laws, prevention of cross contact of safe foods with allergens, and means of acquiring safe meals in settings such as restaurants and schools.” 16 For the corn allergic, food labeling laws do not apply as manufacturers are not obligated to fully disclose the presence of corn in their products. Preventing cross contamination through identifying safe foods is extremely difficult. And “acquiring safe meals in settings such as restaurants and schools” is nearly impossible due to the ubiquitous nature of corn. It can be present in everything from the plastic tableware or the dishwasher detergent residue on the glass plates the food is served on to the spice blends and iodized salt used for seasoning. The presence of corn in any of these places is not on any label because it is not required to be. The restaurant would likely identify their food as “corn free” because, to their knowledge, it is. It does not mean the food is any less dangerous for the corn allergic, however; it merely means they have no way of confirming this fact. According to “A Typical American Day” on the AllergyKids website, 17 the average American would likely encounter corn roughly twenty-five times in day-to-day living—many of those encounters being unlabeled. Examples given include toothpaste, shampoo, allergy medicine (both pill form and spray), yogurt, and dill pickle, just to name a few.

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Most of these encounters would be undetectable from reading the label— as the corn-containing ingredients give no indication that that is what they are (examples: sorbitol, sodium saccharin, citric acid, and magnesium stearate). The article could have gone much further than it did, listing other troublesome items such as tampons, contact solution, tap water, and some blends of polyester clothing. Or to put American corn usage in other terms, the National Corn Growers Association proudly announced in their 2014 report, that the average American consumes twenty-five pounds of corn annually. One of allergists’ most common tools, the skin test, has been shown not to have clinical significance for most of the corn allergy patients studied. Reported in the 2002 journal, Allergy, and posted on AllergyAdvisor: Traditionally, skin-specific and serum-specific IgE tests to maize [corn] are used to diagnose maize allergy. It is generally assumed that a negative result indicates the absence of maize allergy. However, it was recently shown that a negative skin-specific IgE and serum-specific IgE to maize flour had no clinical significance for most of the patients studied and that food allergy to maize has to be proven by double-blind placebo-controlled food challenge studies. 18

The organization FARE (Food Allergy Research and Education) states on their website, “Allergic reactions to corn are rare and a relatively small number of case reports can be found in medical literature. However, the reports do indicate that reactions to corn can be severe. Reactions to corn can occur from both raw and cooked corn. Individuals who are allergic to corn should receive individualized expert guidance from their allergists.” The irony in this statement is twofold. First, the “rareness” of the allergy. An article in the September 2007 issue of School Nurse News states, “Corn is one of the fastest growing food allergies in children, although one of the most unrecognized and underreported.” 19 This viewpoint is backed up in an article on AllergyAdvisor: “A true allergy to maize (corn) has been said to be uncommon, but recent studies have shown that diagnostic methods used in the past may not have been accurate, so that maize allergy was underdiagnosed.” 20 The case can also be made that with corn not being labeled on products, most allergic reactions caused by corn are likely mysteries that go unsolved by medical practitioners who know little or nothing about this “rare” allergy, which makes the recommendation by FARE that people seek “expert guidance from their allergist” ironic. A question/answer response posted on the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology provides a good example of lack of allergist expertise in recognizing corn reactions. An allergist wrote in, explaining that a patient complained of itching of the mouth after eating Doritos brand corn chips and an unidentified beef jerky. Neither the doctor writ-

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ing in nor the “expert” could find any common ingredients in both products. Clearly they had never heard of corn allergy. A Google search brings up ingredients in a general Teriyaki beef jerky: Ingredients: beef, sugar, water, soy sauce solids (wheat, soybeans, salt), salt, natural spices and flavoring, hydrolyzed soy protein, monosodium glutamate, garlic powder, guar gum.

Every ingredient, with the possible exception of the water, can—and frequently does—contain corn or is cross contaminated with it. Beef is often washed with white vinegar or lactic acid. Both are usually derived from corn and either wash can cause reactions in corn-sensitive individuals. Blended spices are not safe, as they often contain corn-based anti-caking agents that are not required to be listed on the label. Natural flavorings of all kinds usually have some kind of corn derivative in them. Monosodium glutamate appears on the corn allergen list from Corn Allergens.com. Garlic powder is a seasoning that is often cross contaminated through anti-caking agents or other means. Guar gum, while derived from legumes, is also often cross-contaminated and causes reactions in the more corn-sensitive. A patient could have been alerted to a corn allergy had the labeling on the beef jerky been more clear. If the company had been required to put “derived from corn” or “processed with corn” after the ingredients in question, the allergists would have been able to come to the conclusion that they were dealing with a corn allergy. A common example of where corn commonly hides on food labels is the term “citric acid.” Its lexical meaning, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, is “an acid compound found in citrus fruits.” 21 However, according to Ray Sahelian, M.D., “Citric and lactic acids are produced by fermentation which utilized a carbohydrate source such as corn-based starch and sugar beet molasses.” 22 So rather than being extracted as a naturally occurring acid found in citrus fruit, citric acid is manufactured in a multi-step process involving corn. However, any reasonable person reading the term “citric acid” on a food label would logically assume that the product comes from citrus. There is no reason to believe otherwise. In their 1962 classic book, A Study of Thinking, Jerome S. Bruner, Jacqueline J. Goodnow and George A. Austin explore how humans use language in a way that provides explanation of the gross inconsistencies in how foods are labeled. Consider only the linguistic task of acquiring a vocabulary fully adequate to cope with the world of color differences! The resolution of this seeming paradox—the existence of discrimination capacities, which, if fully used, would make us slaves to the particular—is achieved by man’s capacity to categorize. To categorize is to render discriminably different things equivalent, to group the objects and events and people

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around us in to classes, and to respond to them in terms of their class membership rather than their uniqueness. Our refined discrimination activity is reserved for only those segments of the environment with which we are specially concerned. For the rest, we respond by rather crude forms of categorical placement. 23

Likely, the reason the FDA’s labeling laws focus only on the “big eight” is to assure that the country and its food manufacturers didn’t become “slaves to the particular.” Americans who have no food allergies may not care that the dextrose, malic acid, citric acid, and a myriad of other ingredients on their food labels are derived from corn. Companies would most assuredly see their manufacturing costs rise as each time they purchased individual ingredients from new suppliers, they would need to research the origins of that product (example: What is our new citric acid derived from?) and make adjustments to the label. From even a practical package design standpoint, food labels would be much longer if the source of every ingredient needed to be listed. The redesign of those product labels would also add to a company’s cost to get their product to the grocery store shelves. For these reasons, society has proven that it is not interested in all the particular details spelled out on their labels. As a society, we were not interested in becoming “slaves to the particular.” Yet, the Food and Drug Administration knew that there were issues with severe food allergy reactions because of inferior labeling laws, so those allergens with the most known reactions (“the Big Eight”) were categorized together and treated far differently than lower ranking allergens. Despite society’s seeming disinterest in knowing where every ingredient in their food comes from, it is easy to understand the frustrations of those with corn allergy. “Our refined discrimination activity is reserved for only those segments of the environment with which we are specially concerned.” 24 Their health, perhaps even their life, depends upon being able to determine what is in their food. The reference in the allergy textbook that those with food allergies “must understand food-labeling laws” represents an ironic categorization on the part of the authors: that food-labeling laws are meant to help all people with food allergies. Therefore, all people with food allergies must understand the laws and keep them in mind. Corn allergics are largely very aware of these laws— and that they are not designed to help them. The reason for the allergy labeling rules can clearly be explained by Bruner et. al. When recourse to an ultimate criterion for defining a category is of grave consequence, the culture may take it upon itself to invent labels or signs by which exemplars of the category can be spotted in sufficient time for appropriate avoidance. The custom of putting a red skull and crossbones on bottles of poison, the use of red color on dangerous industrial machinery, stop signs at dangerous intersections—all of these are examples of the artificial creation of anticipatory defining

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The problem is the categorization of that danger clearly applies to food allergy sufferers both inside and outside the “big eight.” The defense for not including corn allergens in the labeling law is that corn allergy is “rare.” According to the Corn Refiners Association, “The prevalence of corn allergy in the U.S. is exceedingly low—estimated to affect no more than 0.016 percent of the general population.” 26 However, this statistic comes from a 1950 study in the Journal of Allergy—decades before corn became present in a great majority of the food chain, as well as most household and personal care products. According to the Corn Growers of America, the amount of corn in cereal and food has increased from 60 million bushels in 1982 to 202 million bushels in 2014—an increase of 336.7 percent. 27 There is no accurate estimate of how many corn allergics there are in the United States. Logic dictates it is likely far more than the 0.016 percent cited by the Corn Refiners Association. But what if it is not? Do the societal protections Bruner et al. outlined above apply to everyone? Or simply to a majority? There are other instances of mandated labeling that impacts a very small percentage of the population. Diet soda carries a warning that the aspartame in the product is dangerous for consumption by those with Phenylketonuria. 28 According to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Phenylketonuria occurs in one out of every 10,000 or 15,000 births, percentages of .01 percent or .0067 percent of the population, respectively. The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America provides instructions for parents on how to conduct an elimination diet to identify food allergies. They state: “Because milk, soybeans, eggs, wheat, peanuts, nuts, shellfish and corn are the main culprits for more than 80 percent of people who have food allergies, these foods are usually not included in the starting diet.” 29 While there is no definitive data on exactly how many people have corn allergies, there is evidence that points to it being a real problem. It would seem reasonable to expect that corn would be included in the U. S. food allergy labeling requirements. METHODOLOGY As part of this study, a survey was distributed to the members of a closed Facebook forum called Corn Allergy and Intolerance via their Facebook page through a link with an open invitation for members to complete the survey. The forum has members located in the United States, Canada and parts of Europe and Australia. There were 97 respondents to this survey,

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which included 12 questions about living with corn allergy. The age distribution is shown in Table 8.1. The community is overwhelmingly female (96.88 percent of respondents [N-93]). The average respondent was diagnosed five years ago. The shortest time since diagnosis was eight months; the longest was twentyseven years. Q: Please describe a time when the packaging on a product lead you to believe that the product was free of corn, when it really wasn’t. This question brought out many responses highlighting the struggles with both food packaging and the labeling laws that provide no protection for those with corn allergy. “I can think of several when I was first diagnosed . . . some broad examples that I can think of are canola oil, brown rice, packaging itself!” “Chicken packaging and processing is not corn free.” “I reacted to organic half and half, only to find the corn was in the packaging.”

Corn starch was a common complaint in terms of packaging. “I got badly sick from generic freezer bags that used corn starch as a processing agent.” “I bought these tortilla wraps that said on the package the only ingredients were coconut and water. After having terrible reactions to them, I found out later that the company dusted them with corn starch to prevent sticking. This was not on the label.” “Shredded cheese has no corn derived listed ingredients. Instead the problem lies with the processing and packaging—cornstarch mixed with the cheese to keep it from clumping.” “Several brands [of block cheese] look safe, but they can have unlabeled corn starch in the package to prevent sticking. Since it is not an ingredient in the actual cheese, it does not need to be labeled.”

Table 8.1. Age Distribution of Corn Allergy Respondents Age Range

No. of Respondents

Percentage of Respondents

18–24

6

6.19 percent

25–34

23

23.71 percent

35–44

32

32.99 percent

45–54

22

22.68 percent

55–64

12

12.37 percent

65–74

2

2.06 percent

75 or older

0

0.0 percent

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The problems go far beyond the packages themselves, however. Respondents reported a wide variety of reactions from ingredients not being accounted for on the label. Many of these products were supposed to be single ingredient only. “I trialed rice with my children and the only ingredient was rice. Both had huge reactions. This happens with almost every food.” “Organic produce which caused a ridiculous reaction. The seller suggested it was because much fresh produce is treated with zein, a corn product or other preservative compounds. Because corn is ‘organic,’ it does not have to be declared on organic produce.” “I bought pumpkin in a can that had only one ingredient [and I reacted]. “Milk is labeled as just ‘milk,’ even though it says it has added vitamins. Nowhere on the label does it tell you how the vitamins are derived, nor how it was put into the milk. It turns out it is suspended in corn oil, but that isn’t mentioned anywhere on the product.” “Powered sugar. Ingredients: Sugar. Nope. It is full of corn starch, which is not labeled.” “Water. Most kinds of bottled water cause me to have a reaction yet there is no information on the label as to what might be in the bottle of water that is derived from corn.”

Many respondents discussed their reactions to citric acid, which as previously mentioned is usually derived from corn—not citrus fruit, as the name implies. “Before I knew citric acid was derived from corn, I was drinking a lot of ginger ale and wondering why I was feeling so lousy.” “I reacted to the ‘slurry’ of corn-derived citric acid the caught fish was placed in.” “If the package doesn’t say corn, you think it’s corn free. But I now know that there are pages of corn derivatives that could be in food and will make me sick. Like natural flavors and citric acid.” “Many times I come across a label that says corn free yet there is a cornderived ingredient such as citric acid or potassium sorbate.” “Citric acid fooled me for a while. For a while, I consumed foods containing citric acid thinking they were safe.” “When I was first diagnosed and started avoiding corn, I did not realize that ingredients like citric acid and xanthan gum had corn in them. It wasn’t until I found the corn forum about three months [later] that I discovered this, removed those ingredients from my diet, and finally began to stop reacting.” “In the beginning all the time, citric acid, which seems to be in a lot of things, slipped by me.” Some of the reactions to unidentified corn ingredients were extremely serious and could have resulted in death. “I know a product’s clean when my throat doesn’t swell, which is very, very rare.”

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“When we first started suspecting corn, I found some seasoning mix that said ‘corn and soy free.’ Made it for dinner, child in hospital an hour later. Autolyzed yeast [ a corn derivative] was in it.” “Product said ‘corn-free’ but still caused anaphylaxis.” “One great example of this for me is King Arthur flour. The ingredients state wheat and nothing else. It sent me to the ER in cardiac arrest. I am not allergic to wheat.”

Q: Describe a time when a doctor, dentist, pharmacist or other health provider gave you misinformation regarding your corn allergy. (This could be in regard to a prescription, foods you were or were not supposed to eat, or medical treatments that were prescribed.) Much of the food allergy self-help literature online encourages people to consult their physician or allergist for expert advice and guidance on their allergy. Sadly, over 93 percent of the respondents reported difficulties with the medical community, often with the physician’s advice being responsible for a reaction. The weakness in labeling laws for allergens other than “the Big Eight” are responsible for much of this bad advice, as doctors read the labels, see no corn—and then assure their corn-allergic patient that the product is “safe.” Many of the reports from respondents revolve around medications and the prescribing doctor’s lack of knowledge regarding the presence of corn in the drugs in question. “I was on a drug called Endometrin, which is a progesterone supplement to support pregnancy. The ingredients listed seemed fine, but I had increasingly bad abdominal cramping. My cramping got so terrible, I feared I’d miscarry and tried to find the reasoning. My doctor insisted it wasn’t the drug, but when I called the company, I found they compound the medication with cornstarch. Ever since being off the drug, my cramping has completely stopped as well as a good deal of my nausea.” “An allergist prescribed corny steroid for my daughter’s puffed up face from a corn reaction.” “I was given a cholesterol lowering medication that contained a corn derivative and my hands swelled to where I could not get my rings off.” “Doctors do not understand that corn products come under many names, and many products are treated with corn in some way and are, therefore, an allergen. They often look at something, like an IV solution and think it’s safe because it doesn’t say ‘corn’ when often it comes under other names, like dextrose.” “Doctors don’t understand—don’t agree that it is an issue. One doctor jokingly said he could cure my eczema by simply cutting off the arm.” “A large children’s hospital gave my daughter an antibiotic for an infection that was grown on corn, with fillers that contained corn derivatives. She was wearing a medic alert bracelet that said “CORN ALLERGIC.” I told them repeatedly about her allergy. I stopped them before

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Kathy Brady they gave her the medication, and asked them to call their pharmacy. They called and told me it was OK. She had an allergic reaction to the medication.” “I was told by the doctor and pharmacist the prescribed cough syrup was corn free. I had pneumonia and was too sick to think about it. It had citric acid. I was now even sicker. My allergist tried to tell me it would be okay as long as I didn’t eat the whole kernel of corn. I am currently without an allergist.”

Sometimes medical professionals employ what can justly be called direct sabotage in regard to their patients because they refuse to acknowledge the corn allergy. “When I had surgery, the anesthetist told me that if I was allergic to corn, I would already be dead, and insisted that he’d give me dextrose in my IV if he thought it was necessary. I vomited violently for two days, so not sure if he followed through with that or if it was something else.” “An emergency room doctor attempted to give me a dextrose (corn sugar) IV the first time I went into shock. I had been vomiting from the corn reaction and this was his solution. He stated that ‘the corn sugars shouldn’t bother you.’” “My appendix had ruptured earlier in the day and I was in the ER of a fairly large hospital, waiting to be transferred to the surgical ward. The nurse said she was going to hang a dextrose IV. I told her no—that I was allergic to corn and that dextrose was a corn product. She seemed surprised, told me she didn’t know that, and she agreed to my request for a plain saline IV. About 10 minutes later, I told my mom that I wasn’t breathing very well and would she please check the IV bag. Sure enough, the nurse had hung a dextrose IV after specifically being told not to. We pressed the call button and got a different nurse. We told her what had happened and she very quickly began swapping out the IVs. When I told her that I wanted to speak to the first nurse, she said, ‘Oh, she’s gone home for the day.’ I know that nurse thought she was going to pull a fast one on me and prove that I was wrong. To this day, I regret that I didn’t file a formal complaint against her.”

Perhaps the biggest frustration is simply that the medical “experts” know less about corn allergy than the patient themselves. This puts a strain on the relationship as the patient ends up educating the one they are paying to see. “Every doctor/allergist has just said to avoid foods with corn listed in the ingredients. They are just as clueless as the rest of the world.” “My doctor has no understanding of being allergic to corn , and asked what I meant when I mentioned it, so I repeated the word ‘corn’ to which they said, ‘What? Like sweet corn?’ So I tried to explain but I really did not see how the doctor would be able to help me when I already had more information about it than they did.”

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“Most of the time I am informing the health professionals who have no clue.” “I was actually told that my reactions were panic attacks. At least my doctor apologized when the blood test came back positive for corn.” “I have never had a medical professional who had any clue what we were dealing with regarding a severe corn allergy. Got lots of ‘Good job, Mom!’ and ‘Wow! She looks great!’ But other than that, the ‘professionals’ have no idea what to do with her.” “I went to a dietician with hope of getting help. When I went in, she first told me how she knew nothing and had to research. Three of the four information packets she gave me I already had and the fourth said that I only needed to cut out items with the protein and the rest would be safe. Then as we were going over my diet, she would recommend something like eggs or milk, and in both cases I said, ‘I already have such and such problem with that, and I don’t know if it’s because of the corn or something else.’ And her response was, ‘Well, we don’t want you to limit your diet anymore, so you should eat it.’ She continued with telling me to eat all sorts of pre-packed and processed foods, and I now know those are almost all corny. And to answer my questions, she kept going to her computer, Googling it, and then accepting answers from unreliable sources like Yahoo Answers. I cried the whole way home.”

There is also the great protein debate. It is the official position of the medical community that allergies are caused by the proteins in the offending food. Remove said protein and that food is safe for people with food allergies to consume. According to the authors of Food Allergy: Adverse Reactions to Food and Food Additives (2nd ed.), “Corn oil is not listed as a food to avoid. Because the allergenic portion (protein) is removed in the processing of corn oil, it is considered safe for corn-sensitive patients. A small study challenging documented corn allergic patients with corn oil, corn sugar, and corn syrup provoked no reactions, whereas blinded challenge with cornstarch did provoke one reaction. In the John Hopkins series, one corn-allergic patient also reacted to cornstarch.” 30 The problem with this theory is that it does not bear out in the practical day-to-day life of the corn allergic. A posting on the website of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology by Dr. Steven Taylor, Ph.D. of Food Allergy Research and Research Program (FARRP), which works to provide the food industry with scientifically based information on food allergies) takes this much further: Corn syrup (also known as glucose syrup), corn syrup solids, glucose, dextrose, maltodextrin, corn oil, and high fructose corn syrup (note I have added a few ingredients) have no detectable corn protein residues and should be quite safe for someone with IgE-mediated allergy to corn. Corn starch can contain up to 40 ppm (ug/g) of corn protein but that is a small amount in most applications of corn starch and is probably tolerated by most individuals with corn allergy. 31

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Interestingly, the FDA website states in regard to Theophylline in 5 percent Dextrose injection “Solutions containing dextrose may be contraindicated in patients with known allergy to corn or corn products.” 32 A similar warning also appears on the listing for Lactated Ringers with 5 percent Dextrose. For many of the respondents of this survey, the medical community’s insistence that protein must be present to create a reaction is nothing more than a myth, simply because they have had reactions—sometimes very serious ones—to the very products that the medical community adamantly declares safe for use by them. “I have seen two allergists who both told me that I could eat corn starch, corn oil, etc. because the protein had been removed in the process.” “When I hear someone say that corn starch is perfectly safe, I just laugh. It is, for me, the deadliest substance on earth. It is my kryptonite.” “The doctor said corn oil and high-fructose corn syrup were okay, but I have reacted to both. My understanding from the doctor was to avoid corn on the cob because the protein was there.” “Our pediatrician said it was impossible to react to derivatives. They can only react to the protein. Hugely false statement.” “I was told after diagnosis that I should avoid “corn proteins” with a short list of corn proteins like corn starch. 33 No doctor has ever understood all of the hidden places corn can be like iodized salt, citric acid, and even dusted on the gloves they touch me with. They also prescribe medication with corn as a regular or hidden inactive ingredient and don’t know what to do when I tell them I’m allergic to the medication.” “My allergist insists that ingredients like corn starch and corn oil are okay because they don’t have corn proteins. I react to them. I have also had a doctor tell me that the small amount of corn ingredients in medications shouldn’t be enough to bother me.” “They have no idea how pervasive corn is in our lives. This includes doctors, nurses, nutritionists, dieticians, dentists, allergists, pharmacists, and more. So many do not take it seriously or think that the corn protein has been completely processed out and so it shouldn’t be a problem. It must be all in the patient’s head.” “I was told by my allergist that I can’t possibly react to citric acid because there’s no protein in it. It’s now near the top of my list of ingredients to avoid.”

Some are told that they aren’t allergic to corn despite symptoms or positive test results, or that corn allergy itself does not exist. “One allergist told me [corn allergy] was not possible, even after I had a reaction to the prick test.” “I had nine doctors tell me that I couldn’t be having problems with the corn starch ingredients in my medicines.” “They just brush me off, thinking I’ve gone loopy.”

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“My personal favorite: a person can’t be allergic to corn.” “An allergist told me that I did not have an allergy to corn because I had never had an anaphylactic reaction.”

Q: What is most frustrating about corn allergy? With few exceptions, respondent answers to this question were quite succinct and fell into several categories. Nearly a quarter of the respondents (24) said that lack of labeling was the most frustrating aspect of this allergy. “Companies claiming their product is corn-free when it is clearly not.” “Labeling and companies saying the ingredients are proprietary.” “When people are unwilling to share information about their product and try to say it’s safe but it’s not and they were too concerned about their secret formula to care about your health and then you end up sick because of it.” “Labeling processes that make foods appear safe are very frustrating.” “The lack of proper labeling and the exemptions for the manufacturing process and that the manufacturer doesn’t always know what’s in the food.”

Fifteen respondents complained about the lack of safe, pre-packaged food. A joke that was posted to the corn allergy Facebook community in this study is that grocery stores are where corn allergics go to buy garbage bags. Sadly, for many allergic to corn, this isn’t that much of an exaggeration. “I can walk down any aisle of the grocery store and MAYBE find something without corn. Most times not. There are THOUSANDS of items in an aisle, and every bit of it has corn somehow. How is that even possible? It is crazy!” “There are so few prepacked, safe foods. It would be nice to have a few shelf stable safe foods for my son to leave at school as backups.” “Lack of safe foods in mainstream stores. I grow everything I eat myself to ensure my health and safety.” “Over 98 percent of the store is off limits to me. I am also gluten free, as I am sensitive to that as well. As you know, most of the gluten-free replacement products are made of mostly corn, corn starch, or use items that were grown on corn.” “Even fresh produce isn’t as safe as it should be! Ridiculous how even going to Walmart to get something quick is pretty much next to impossible!” “That we can’t eat meat or eggs or anything fed corn.” “Not being able to eat out—not just from a restaurant but from a grocery store.” “I can no longer eat produce from the grocery store, conventional or organic, due to all the corny washes, sprays, gasses and pest management chemicals.”

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A logical result of this inability to purchase foods through normal retail channels is that for the corn allergic, life can quickly resemble the 1930s— or the 1830s. Corn allergics find themselves making things from scratch that the rest of society gave up on decades—or even centuries—ago. “I make all my cleaning products, almost all my toiletries and cosmetics, get medications compounded, make almost all of my food from scratch, wear masks and gloves in 100 degree heat, and I still come in contact with corn.” “Not having a convenient life. Everything needs to be made at home from scratch.” “Can’t eat anything since I’m more sensitive than most unless I grow it.” “It is in everything and requires so much time and effort to avoid.” “Having to make every darn thing I eat from scratch.” “That it’s in toilet paper.”

Perhaps the most devastating frustration is the lack of a social life. The U.S. social scene revolves around food, whether people celebrate a birthday or simply the weekend in a restaurant or order up a large popcorn at the local movie theater. Corn allergy can leave people isolated. Biggest areas of difficulty were listed as travel and inability to find something to eat, inability to eat out, and difficulty explaining corn allergy to friends and family so they would understand. “I can’t eat in restaurants, and other people at work can’t eat what they want because of me.” “Unable to find safe food when dining out or visiting friends or any other social activities.” “I have to leave house with food, so travel, going to my daughter’s birthday parties, and even eating at school as she is now school age is challenging.” “The lack of awareness and support mixed with the pervasiveness of the corn in food. It instantly isolates you from everyone and everything. There is no way for it not to completely overhaul your life.” “The most frustrating thing about corn allergy is that I am not even sure I can live safely, be medically treated, or enjoy many of the things I want to do with my family.” “While in the hospital, the dietician was concerned about how they were going to feed me. They fed me fresh fruit and two hard-boiled eggs three times a day. I haven’t traveled out of my country for over ten years, due to my concern with ‘eating on the road.’ Eating at restaurants is out of the question, and the only thing I could take with me would be bottled water and pure applesauce cups.” “People don’t get it. It is very hard to explain to family that you can’t eat the (fill in the blank) that they cooked for you because you are allergic to corn. They look at the ingredients and say ‘Nope. No corn.’ I know better.”

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“Not being able to eat out and not being able to explain corn to anyone else.”

Q: For respondents with multiple food allergies only: Out of all your food allergies, which one is most difficult? Why? Of the eighty respondents who answered this question, seventy-eight (97.5 percent) said corn was their most difficult allergy. Labeling—or lack thereof—plays a big role in these difficulties. “I am allergic to MANY foods and products; however, corn is the worst due to the FDA not recognizing corn as an allergen. Since corn is contained in so many foods/products, it is becoming increasingly difficult to nourish myself. . . . My additional allergies to soy, yeast, etc. are nothing compared to my corn allergy.” “It is used in everything so it is hard to come up with things to use that don’t contain corn. Secondly, no one understands it as an allergy. The gluten was very difficult but is getting much easier to deal with since it is a recognized allergy, but since the corn isn’t a popular allergy, it is hard to find products that cater to the disorder. The worst part is that the medical world seriously believes that a person can only be allergic to the protein in the corn, and therefore, can’t possibly have problems with anything other than corn, cornstarch and corn syrup, which is certainly not the case with most people who have this particular allergy.” “Corn. It’s an insidious bastard.”

One respondent who didn’t select corn has two major allergies. The response outlines the fact that FDA labeling laws that would include corn may not solve all problems. “Corn and soy are equally difficult because they are ubiquitous. Soy is especially insidious in the labeling practices that have been adopted because soy oil and soy derivatives are not considered allergens by the FDA. So, like corn, you are left researching ingredients, which is usually not easy given the reluctance of manufacturers to disclose information, and usually are ultimately forced to find an allergen-free ‘DIY’ solution. For example, I have started growing my own vegetables and now buy meat direct from a farmer that does not feed his cows grains.”

Q: If you saw a product package that said “corn-free,” what would you think about consuming this product? Safe? Unsafe? Explain. Seventy-seven percent of the respondents (n=75) believed a product labeled “corn-free” would be unsafe for them to use. “Companies do not understand this allergy. Minute amounts can cause a month-long reaction for me. While in the case of chocolate chips that were corn-free, the company dusted the inside of the bag with corn starch. I no longer trust labeling at all. My health depends upon it.”

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Kathy Brady “We would not buy it. We cannot take the risk. Even a microscopic amount of cross contamination can mean an ER trip.” “I would run in fear. Anyone who knows what is corn-free would never put that on a label. Only those who have no clue would do that. Which means it’s likely corny as all hell and companies often then CYA because it’s corn-free on the label.”

For two respondents, only corn allergics have enough understanding to make a corn-free claim on a product. “Wouldn’t even attempt it. At this point, my daughter can eat very few pre-packaged processed products. Unless someone who made the product was severely corn allergic, I would not assume they could possibly understand all the points of contamination involved in food production and processing.” “If it said corn-free, I would not believe it for a minute, unless it came from a company run or owned by a corn-allergic person.”

Seventeen respondents (17.5 percent) believed they would view the product as safer because of the designation. “I would feel better about it than something that wasn’t labeled cornfree, but wonder if they got all the hidden corn.” “I would first examine the product’s ingredients and place of production. Possibly do some research on it. Then I would have to wait for a day where I didn’t have anything important like work or tests, for two days following and then trial it.” “We are new to this allergy . . . I would ‘hope’ it would be safe. But as the days wear on, we are finding trust in man-made items waning.”

Only three respondents (3.09 percent) believed the product would be safe. “I would assume it’s safe, depending on the manufacturer.” “I would consider it safe for myself, despite knowing that it isn’t free of cross contamination, etc. I have resigned to giving myself things with small amounts of corn, and anything labeled corn free should be safely within that realm.” “Safe. It should have strict standards just like gluten-free and dairyfree.” 34

Q: If you have a question regarding your corn allergy, where would you go to seek answers? The lack of sound labeling practices regarding corn puts corn allergics in the role of daily researchers. While other Americans can simply shop for products in their grocery stores or online and consult labels to get the answers they need, corn allergics must become detectives, calling companies and seeking out advice from others. It is important to remember that for these people, food labels can only be used to confirm the presence of corn—not to verify its absence. Overwhelmingly, respondents said their

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Facebook corn allergy forum was their primary source of information (n=86; 89.5 percent) “There’s a Facebook page for people like us. I’d never go to a doctor— they are under informed. The people in this Facebook group live the allergy every single day. They understand what is and is not safe for us to consume or use. This Easter I had a huge reaction to Ecos laundry detergent and nothing was open, in terms of stores. My skin was on fire and busted open in huge hives. I still have scarring. I posted on Facebook, asking what to do and what household item I could use to help with the reaction and within 20 seconds I had a response that worked. It saved me pain, time, energy and probably money. They’re seriously some of the most informed people I’ve ever met when it comes to food issues.”

Other information sources included another corn allergic (1); my own research (5); a specific website (1); someone who understands (1); other corn allergy moms (1); doctor doing alternative food allergy treatments (1). Q: Since you (or your loved one’s diagnosis), has your attitude toward product labeling changed? If so, how? Over 73 percent of respondents say they don’t trust labeling. “Yes, I think labels are a joke. I used to think they listed everything used to make product. I used to think produce was washed in pure water. I used to think meat was washed in pure water. I used to think something labeled as pure oil was actually pure oil.” “I thought it was okay before my diagnosis. I thought it was reasonably accurate. Now I know it’s full of crap, just like the rest of the system. There is no truth in labeling. Sure, it’s close, but that doesn’t help those of us who are very sensitive.” “I feel that honesty in labeling is really important. Accurate labeling can be the difference between life and death.” “Anything more than 2–3 ingredients long is guaranteed to have some crap that isn’t healthy for you, regardless of allergy. There’s so much hidden from the labels and so much information on them (even unintentional), that they can’t be trusted.” “The labels are very vague and I no longer trust them. Only ‘ingredients’ are listed. Well, as far as I am concerned, anything added to your food is an ingredient. This means corn starch in the cinnamon and powdered sugar. The corn oil used to put vitamins into the milk. The alcohol (usually derived from corn) to extract vanilla. The wax rubbed on the apple. The gas used on bananas. We have to research every piece of food we eat because the information is not readily available.” “I believe the industrialization of all manufacturing processes has created a disconnection we have developed between ourselves, our bodies, our food supply, so that knowledge and how and with what our most common products are made and/or grown has been forgotten

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Some respondents provided their process for reading labels. “We read every label. We don’t buy anything that has more than one ingredient. If we cannot pronounce the ingredients, we don’t buy the product. Because of cross contamination, you cannot trust the label.” “Product labeling is not truthful. I have learned to recognize cornderived ingredients. As I read a label, I actually count the number of ingredients. If there are more than six ingredients, I stop, and I return the product to the shelf. Product labeling is deceptive and self-serving to the manufacturers.” “Before this allergy, the only thing I looked for in labeling was fat, sugar, calories, etc. Now, with this allergy, it’s important for me to know what’s in the food I’m about to eat. I now also look for GMO free, organic, no hormones or growth anything. This allergy has really forced me to take a look at what I eat.” “If it has a label, we don’t buy. (Few exceptions based on the recommendations of others with severe corn allergy.)” “Mostly I just wing it with new products. I take what I know about the ingredients, packaging, and brand and weigh the risks. Then I trial it with antihistamine on hand should things go badly, and 911 on speed dial.”

Other respondents express their wish list for changes in how food is labeled. “Simple language and complete disclosure.” “I think corn allergy warnings should be taken as seriously as peanuts.” “We really need full disclosure of anything that comes in contact with our food.” “I think the FDA should require labeling if corn is present in any way.” “Product labeling needs a complete overhaul. Needs to be easier to understand, with straightforward labeling that the lay person can easily understand. Words like ‘natural flavoring’ really tell you nothing; you learn the hard way it’s just another way to say ‘corn.’” “I’m skeptical of everything and wish companies had to provide the complete history of the food, chemicals, and packaging on every product. That might make them [manufacturers] reconsider the sheer number of ingredients they use. Organic, non-GMO, corn-free products and produce seem to last just as long if not longer on the shelf, so why bother?” “I wish there could be a trusted labeling system for corn-free foods. More so, I wish corn would be removed as such a large component of our food sources today.” “I think manufacturers should have to list, on line at least, the sources and manufacturers of the derivatives they use. Tracking technology

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has improved to the point that the public has a right and a responsibility to know what they are consuming.” “All foods should be labeled with anything that was used to make the product the way that it is. I would love to see labels marked with other ingredients used in the area it is made and with what equipment it is cleaned, but that is wishful thinking.” “I believe all children should be skin-scratch tested prior to entering school. I’m sure the FDA would probably be very surprised to see just how many people are allergic to corn. But it is only after the FDA is provided with the statistics that corn will finally be classified as an allergen.”

Sadly, there are those who, although they favor changes in the FDA labeling laws, don’t believe that those changes would truly make a difference. “Labels are meaningless. Even if corn ‘had’ to be labeled, I am convinced there would be so many errors that it would be useless.” “Corn definitely needs to be one of the ones labeled for allergy, but I do not see how they could do it because it is literally in every aspect of food production.” “I’m not sure if labeling would help, since the accepted (but very limited) definition of ‘allergy’ is that it is a reaction to proteins. I react to much more than just corn proteins, and so unless labeling contained all variations and derivatives of corn it wouldn’t be helpful. Plus, in the end, I’m afraid it would still mean I cannot buy anything commercially produced anyway! There was a restaurant in Florida that created menus for every allergy, to list safe things for a customer to eat. The corn allergic menu had only one thing on it: water. Of course, for the most sensitive of us, even tap or bottled water is usually off limits!”

Discussion “It is known that people can use language resources to reveal inner and outer experience around the world. Language is an important way to convey what happens around them and inside them.” 35 This quote applies quite aptly to corn allergics in the United States because they find themselves using language “to convey what happens around them and inside them.” They report symptoms caused from a variety of products to each other via the Internet, to manufacturers, and to their physicians, pharmacists, and other health care providers. Sadly, most of the time, the only receptive audience they find are other corn allergics. Often, official channels deny their corn allergy reports because “corn allergy is rare,” the protein has been processed out, so that couldn’t be a reaction” or “no one can be allergic to corn.” When one’s physical experiences contradict with scientific theory, what wins out? The hives, the wheezing, the migraines, the anaphylaxis,

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the gastrointestinal distress, the violent mood swings—whatever symptoms corn provokes in that particular person override the language of any allergy statement by any physician or government entity. The corn allergic knows that this substance makes them ill or uncomfortable consistently with each exposure. There are many questions surrounding corn allergy. How much influence does the U.S. government’s heavy financial backing of the annual corn crop have on scientific reporting related to corn allergy? What agenda is behind statements from FARE (Food Allergy Research and Education) that “corn allergy is rare and a relatively small number of cases can be found in medical literature”? Could corn allergics be stuck in a world of circular logic? This is to say, is corn allergy rare because few cases of it are written up in medical literature? Are few cases of corn allergy written up in medical literature because researchers are discouraged from studying this “rare” phenomenon within the U.S. food chain? The classification decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sealed the fate of corn allergics in multiple ways. Because corn allergy was not documented heavily in the medical literature, it was not included in the “big eight.” Because it is not included in the “big eight,” food manufacturers are able to use corn, a very cheap and plentiful commodity in the U.S. in every aspect of food processing without accounting for it on the label. Yes, they do document corn syrup and corn starch. But with over 160 different names of potential corn ingredients currently in use (see endnote 5), there are ample ways for manufacturers to stay within the letter of the law while not allowing the public to know how much corn is actually in their products. Furthermore, because corn is not part of the “big eight,” manufacturers feel emboldened to not share ingredients with potential customers when they call. Several respondents to the survey mentioned “proprietary information” as a reason they were not given clear-cut answers about the presence or absence of corn in a product. Other manufacturers may genuinely want to provide accurate information to their customers, but they do not have that information accurately provided to them by the suppliers of their ingredients. Regardless of corporate motive, it is the corn allergics who are put at danger by simply attempting to use what should be harmless products. Corn’s exclusion from this government program also provides the public with a false sense of corn’s safety as an allergen. Public Law 108282, which was put into law on August 2, 2004 states, in part, that each year “roughly 30,000 individuals require emergency room treatment and 150 individuals die because of allergic reactions to food.” It also states that the “big eight” are responsible for 90 percent of those reactions. The inaccurate labeling of corn ingredients—and other ingredients not included in the big eight—call the accuracy of these emergency room figures into question. If the offending product does not indicate it has corn

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in it, the likelihood of that emergency room visit being attributed to corn is exceedingly rare. This study found nearly as many anaphylactic reactions to corn from its ninety-seven respondents as the author found in all the documented research sources used for this project. But assuming that the statistics provided by the FDA are correct, they would indicate that each year 3,000 people are treated for food allergies caused by non-”big eight” food ingredients—and that fifteen of those individuals will die of anaphylaxis each year from their reaction to a non”big eight” ingredient. Given these numbers, are these allergies so rare? Should they be so easily dismissed? Because corn is not included in the “big eight,” it is virtually excluded from study in medical school allergy programs. Mentioned in passing as “rare,” corn allergy is dismissed by allergists long before they are ever certified. The respondents in this study know that their allergy exists— and through conversations within their online communities, they know it is not rare. But this knowledge is of little use against the giant industries of medical care and manufacturing. The only weapon the corn allergics have are their words. They communicate with each other, reporting suspicious products and reactions. Those that are still seeking medical attention report their symptoms to physicians, dieticians and nutritionists, with varying degrees of results. At least two respondents admitted that they no longer use professional medical care because it is of no use as long as the doctors refuse to acknowledge their corn allergy. The respondents outlined a variety of symptoms throughout their survey answers, all attributed to corn: “Ridiculous . . . terrible . . . huge reactions.” “Badly sick . . . feeling lousy . . . makes me sick.” “Throat swelling . . . anaphylaxis . . . cardiac arrest.” “Edema . . . puffed up face . . . swollen hands.” “Ulcerative colitis . . . vomited violently for two days.” “Breathing difficulty . . . skin on fire . . . busted open in huge hives.” These are not the words of harmless reactions. And this is not an allergy that should be so easily dismissed by medical and governmental officials as “rare.”

For those for whom “the system” is hesitant to identify, there is no accurate population statistics. What is known about corn allergics, however, is although they exist in our present society, they truly live in an America of the past. Victory gardens are alive and well in the yards and apartment rooftops of the corn allergic. Theirs is simply a different kind of war. “Convenience foods” consist of homemade food frozen to be reheated later. Grocery stores offer very little safe fare—even from the produce aisle. Corn allergics make bread, and soup, and soap, while the marketplace largely denies their existence. Hopefully, corn allergics will someday be officially acknowledged, so that they can live in greater comfort and safety.

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NOTES 1. “EWG Farm Subsidies.” Accessed October 1, 2014, http://farm.ewg.org/ progdetail.php?fips=00000&progcode=corn. 2. Pianin,Eric.”How Billions in Tax Dollars Subsidize the Junk Food Industry,” Business Insider, July 25, 2012. Accessed October 1, 2014.http://www.businessinsider. com/billions-in-tax-dollars-subsidize-the-junk-food-industry-2012-7. 3. Desjardins, Lisa “5 Things the Farm Bill will Mean for You,” CNN, Feb. 4, 2014. Accessed October 1, 2014. http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/04/politics/farm-bill/. 4. Ibid. 5. “Corn Allergens.” Last modified July 13, 2014, http://www.cornallergens.com/ list/corn-allergen-list.phpFrom Corn Allergens.com: “The lists of corn products, ingredients and additives that I provide are not intended to be exhaustive, for that would be impossible to compile. There are many additives that are derived from corn that we do not know about, and often the employees of food companies do not know either. Plus, corn derivatives can be found in everything from body powder to shampoo (I’ve reacted to both)! The FDA, at this time, does not regulate corn to the extent that it does, say, peanuts, so we corn allergy sufferers are truly on our own. PLEASE NOTE: In addition to the items on this list not including everything that contains corn, not everything on this list will contain corn. It is that they can contain corn, and therefore may need to be outright avoided or used cautiously. . . . The items identified with an asterisk (*) are the most common items that might not always contain or be derived from corn. Proceed with caution! Corn Allergen List Acetic acid; Alcohol; Alpha tocopherol; Artificial flavorings; Artificial sweeteners; Ascorbates; Ascorbic acid; Aspartame (Artificial sweetener); Astaxanthin; Baking powder; Barley malt* (generally OK, but can be contaminated); Bleached flour*; Blended sugar (sugaridextrose); Brown sugar* (generally OK if no caramel color); Calcium citrate; Calcium fumarate; Calcium gluconate; Calcium lactate; Calcium magnesium acetate (CMA); Calcium stearate; Calcium stearoyl lactylate; Caramel and caramel color; Carbonmethylcellulose sodium; Cellulose microcrystalline; Cellulose, methyl; Cellulose, powdered; Cetearyl glucoside; Choline chloride; Citric acid*; Citrus cloud emulsion (CCS); Coco glycerides (cocoglycerides); Confectioners sugar; Corn alcohol, corn gluten; Corn extract; Corn flour; Corn oil, corn oil margarine; Corn starch; Corn sweetener, corn sugar; Corn syrup, corn syrup solids; Corn, popcorn, cornmeal; Cornstarch, cornflour; Crosscarmellose sodium; Crystalline dextrose; Crystalline fructose; Cyclodextrin; DATUM (a dough conditioner); Decyl glucoside; Decyl polyglucose; Dextrin; Dextrose (also found in IV solutions); Dextrose anything (such as monohydrate or anhydrous); d-Gluconic acid; Distilled white vinegar; Drying agent; Erythorbic acid; Erythritol; Ethanol; Ethocel 20; Ethylcellulose; Ethylene; Ethyl acetate; Ethyl alcohol; Ethyl lactate; Ethyl maltol; Fibersol-2; Flavorings*; Food starch; Fructose*; Fruit juice concentrate*; Fumaric acid; Germ/germ meal; Gluconate; Gluconic acid; Glucono delta-lactone; Gluconolactone; Glucosamin Glucose*; Glucose syrup* (also found in IV solutions); Glutamate; Gluten; Gluten feed/meal; Glycerides; Glycerin*; Glycerol; Golden syrup; Grits; High fructose corn syrup; Hominy; Honey*; Hydrolyzed corn; Hydrolyzed corn protein; Hydrolyzed vegetable protein; Hydroxypropyl methylcellulose; Hydroxypropyl methylcellulose pthalate (HPMCP); Inositol; Invert syrup or sugar; Iodized salt; Lactate; Lactic acid*; Lauryl glucoside; Lecithin; Linoleic acid; Lysine; Magnesium citrate; Magnesium fumarate; Magnesium stearate; Maize; Malic acid; Malonic acid; Malt syrup from corn; Malt, malt extract; Maltitol; Maltodextrin; Maltol; Maltose; Mannitol; Methyl gluceth; Methyl glucose; Methyl glucoside;

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Methylcellulose; Microcrystaline cellulose; Modified cellulose gum; Modified corn starch; Modified food starch; Molasses* (corn syrup may be present; know your product); Mono- and di-glycerides; Monosodium glutamate; MSG; Natural flavorings*; Olestra/Olean; Polenta; Polydextrose; Polylactic acid (PLA); Polysorbates* (e.g. Polysorbate 80); Polyvinyl acetate; Potassium citrate; Potassium fumarate; Potassium gluconate; Powdered sugar; Pregelatinized starch; Propionic acid; Propylene glycol*; Propylene glycol monostearate*; Saccharin; Salt (iodized salt); Semolina (unless from wheat); Simethicone; Sodium carboxymethylcellulose; Sodium citrate; Sodium erythorbate; Sodium fumarate; Sodium lactate; Sodium starch glycolate; Sodium stearoyl fumarate; Sorbate; Sorbic acid; Sorbitan* (anything); Sorbitol; Sorghum* (not all is bad; the syrup and/or grain CAN be mixed with corn); Splenda (Artificial sweetener); Starch (any kind that’s not specified); Stearic acid; Stearoyls; Sucralose (Artificial sweetener); Sucrose; Sugar* (not identified as cane or beet); Threonine; Tocopherol (vitamin E); Treacle (aka golden syrup); Triethyl citrate; Unmodified starch; Vanilla, natural flavoring; Vanilla, pure or extract; Vanillin; Vegetable anything that’s not specific*; Vinegar, distilled white; Vinyl acetate; Vitamin C* and Vitamin E*; Vitamins*; Xanthan gum; Xylitol; Yeast*; Zea mays; Zein 6. Doiron, Christine. “Woman Describes the Nightmare of Being Allergic to Corn in a World Where Corn is in Everything,” Business Insider, July 2012. Accessed September 30, 2014. http://www.businessinsider.com/being-allergic-to-corn-2012-7. 7. Carston, Robyn. “Word Meaning and Concept Expressed.” The Linguistic Review 2012; 29 (4): 607–623. 8. Food and Drug Administration, “Food Allergies: What You Need to Know— Food Facts,” Accessed October 13, 2014. http://www.fda.gov/food/resourcesforyou/ consumers/ucm079311.htm. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Sicherer, S.H., Lack, G., and Jones, S.M. “Food Allergy Management.” In Middleton’s Allergy Principles and Practice, edited by N. Franklin Adkinson et. al, 1365–1383. Philadelphia: Saunders, 2013. 12. Nowak-Wegrzyn, A., Burks, A.W., and Sampson, H.A. “Reactions to Food.” In Middleton’s Allergy Principles and Practice, edited by N. Franklin Adkinson et. al, 1310–1339. Philadelphia: Saunders, 2013. 13. Ibid. 14. Lieberman, Phil. “Avoidance of corn allergen.” American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology website. Accessed September 30, 2014. http://www.aaaai. org/ask-the-expert/avoidance-corn-allergen.aspx. 15. MAUDE Adverse Event Report: Salter Labs Nasal Cannula Tubing. FDA website. Accessed September 5, 2014. http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/ cfmaude/detail.cfm?mdrfoi__id=1514236. 16. Sicherer, S. H., Lack, G., and Jones, S.M. “Food Allergy Management.” In Middleton’s Allergy Principles and Practice, edited by N. Franklin Adkinson et. al, 1365–1383. Philadelphia: Saunders, 2013. 17. Allergy Kids is an organization dedicated to bringing “attention to recent changes to the food supply and the dramatic increases in the rates of allergies, asthma, autism and ADHD in the last twenty years: 400 percent increase in allergies, 300 percent increase in asthma, 400 percent increase in ADHD and an increase of between 1,500 and 6,000 percent in the number of children with autism-spectrum disorders.” 18. Pasini, G., Simonato, N., Curiono, A., Vincenzi, S., Cristaudo, A., Santucci, B., Peruffo, A.D., Glannattasio, M. “IgE-mediated Allergy to Corn: a 50 kDa Protein, Belonging to the Reduced Soluable Proteins, is a Major Allergen.” Allergy. 2002; 57 (10) 900–906. 19. “Asthma and Allergy Watch: Soy and Corn Allergies—Rising in Incidence and Linked with Other Allergies.” School Nurse News. 9. 20. “Case Study.” Allergy Advisor. March 04. 1–9

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21. “Citric Acid.” National Center for Biotechnology Information website. Accessed October 15, 2014. http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/summary/summary.cgi?cid=311. 22. Sahelian, Ray. “Citric Acid.” Accessed October 15, 2014. http://www. raysahelian.com/citric.html. 23. Bruner, J.S., Goodnow, J.J. and Austin, G.A. A Study of Thinking. 1962. New York: Science Editions, Inc. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. “Food Safety Information Papers: Allergens.” Corn Refiners Association website. Accessed October 1, 2014. http://www.corn.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/ allergens.pdf. 27. National Corn Growers Association. “World of Corn. Unlimited Possibilities.” http://www.ncga.com/upload/files/documents/pdf/WOC percent202013.pdf. 28. Grosvenor, M.B. and Smolin, L.A. Visualizing Nutrition: Everyday Choices. Hoboken, New jersey: Wiley Publishing, 2009. 29. Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. “Allergy Testing for Children.” Accessed October 1, 2014. http://www.aafa.org/display.cfm?id=9&sub=19&cont=253. 30. Metcalfe, D.D., Sampson, H.A., Simon, R.A. Food Allergy: Adverse Reactions to Foods and Food Additives (1997). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. 31. Taylor, Steven. “Avoidance of Corn Allergen.” American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology website. Accessed September 30, 2014. http://www.aaaai. org/ask-the-expert/avoidance-corn-allergen.aspx. 32. Food and Drug Administration. Accessed September 30, 2014. http://www.fda. gov/Safety/MedWatch/SafetyInformation/Safety-RelatedDrugLabelingChanges/ ucm133503.htm. 33. Note the inconsistencies on what corn allergics have been told regarding corn starch. Some doctors say it is a protein; others say it is not. 34. This respondent is confusing corn labeling with Big Eight allergen labeling. They are not the same: “corn free” does not have strict standards associated with it. 35. Liu, Ming. “The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2014. Vol. 4, No. 6, pp. 1238–1242.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. “Allergy Testing for Children.” Accessed October 1, 2014. http://www.aafa.org/display.cfm?id=9&sub=19&cont=253. Bruner, J.S., Goodnow, J.J. and Austin, G.A. A Study of Thinking. 1962. New York: Science Editions, Inc. Carston, Robyn. “Word Meaning and Concept Expressed.” The Linguistic Review 2012; 29 (4): 607–623. “Case Study.” Allergy Advisor. March 04. 1–9. “Citric Acid.” National Center for Biotechnology Information website. Accessed October 15, 2014. http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/summary/summary.cgi?cid=311. Desjardins, Lisa “5 Things the Farm Bill will Mean for You,” CNN, Feb. 4, 2014. Accessed October 1, 2014. http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/04/politics/farm-bill/. Doiron, Christine. “Women Describes the Nightmare of Being Allergic to Corn in a World Where Corn is in Everything,” Business Insider, July 2012. Accessed September 30, 2014.http://www.businessinsider.com/being-allergic-to-corn-2012-7. “EWG Farm Subsidies.” Accessed October 1, 2014, http://farm.ewg.org/progdetail. php?fips=00000&progcode=corn. Food and Drug Administration, “Food Allergies: What You Need to Know—Food Facts,” Accessed October 13, 2014. http://www.fda.gov/food/resourcesforyou/ consumers/ucm079311.htm.

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Food and Drug Administration. Accessed September 30, 2014. http://www.fda.gov/ Safety/MedWatch/SafetyInformation/Safety-RelatedDrugLabelingChanges/ ucm133503.htm. “Food Safety Information Papers: Allergens.” Corn Refiners Association website. Accessed October 1, 2014. http://www.corn.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/ allergens.pdf. Lieberman, Phil. “Avoidance of corn allergen.” American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology website. Accessed September 30, 2014. http://www.aaaai.org/ ask-the-expert/avoidance-corn-allergen.aspx. Liu, Ming. “The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2014. Vol. 4, No. 6, pp. 1238–1242. MAUDE Adverse Event Report: Salter Labs Nasal Cannula Tubing. FDA website. Accessed September 5, 2014. http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/ cfmaude/detail.cfm?mdrfoi__id=1514236. Metcalfe, D.D., Sampson, H. A., Simon, R. A. Food Allergy: Adverse Reactions to Foods and Food Additives (1997). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. Nowak-Wegrzyn, A., Burks, A.W., and Sampson, H.A. “Reactions to Food.” In Middleton’s Allergy Principles and Practice, edited by N. Franklin Adkinson et. al, 1310–1339. Philadelphia: Saunders, 2013. Pasini, G., Simonato, N., Curiono, A., Vincenzi, S., Cristaudo, A., Santucci, B., Peruffo, A.D., Glannattasio, M. “IgE-mediated Allergy to Corn: a 50 kDa Protein, Belonging to the Reduced Soluable Proteins, is a Major Allergen.” Allergy. 2002; 57 (10) 900–906. Pianin, Eric. “How Billions in Tax Dollars Subsidize the Junk Food Industry,” Business Insider, July 25, 2012. Accessed October 1, 2014. http://www.businessinsider.com/billions-in-tax-dollars-subsidize-the-junk-foodindustry-2012-7 Sahelian, Ray. “Citric Acid.” Accessed October 15, 2014. http://www.raysahelian.com/ citric.html Sicherer, S.H., Lack, G., and Jones, S.M. “Food Allergy Management.” In Middleton’s Allergy Principles and Practice, edited by N. Franklin Adkinson et. al, 1365–1383. Philadelphia: Saunders, 2013. Taylor, Steven. “Avoidance of Corn Allergen.” American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology website. Accessed September 30, 2014. http://www.aaaai.org/askthe-expert/avoidance-corn-allergen.aspx.

NINE Family Farms with Happy Cows A Narrative Analysis of Horizon Organic Dairy Packaging Labels Jennifer L. Adams

In contemporary American supermarkets, “organic” food products are of growing interest to shoppers who seek healthier, more nutritious or more environmentally-sustainable food choices. Industry trade organizations report significant growth in organic food sales over the past decade in the United States, noting that the sale of organics has surpassed 31.5 billion and now accounts for 4.2 percent of the entire grocery market share. 1 The Organic Trade Association’s research suggests that 78 percent of U.S. families have purchased organic products, and that nearly half of parents surveyed by them reported that their primary reason for purchasing organics was “their belief that organic products are healthier.” 2 Mass market supermarkets, merchandise retailers and warehouse stores account for more than half of all sales of organics, suggesting that organic food has become more widely accessible to more Americans than ever before. 3 Attracted by the growing popularity of organic food products among American shoppers, many national producers of conventional foods desired entry into the traditionally-niche market of organics and during the first decade of the twenty-first century, several successful small organic brands were purchased by larger food brands. For example, Horizon Dairy was purchased by Dean Foods, Kashi cereals by Kraft, and Cascadian Farms and Glen Muir by General Mills. 4 These corporate brands now own and operate some of the most popular organic food brands currently sold in mass market grocery stores. 183

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Yet, consumers are often sold on the idea that these organic foods have been grown by small, regional farmers and produced by artisans. The ethic behind the organic movement is often what organic shoppers are seeking, and this ethic is one of leaving a small footprint on the environment, raising plants and animals using natural means without chemical pesticides or antibiotics, and supporting a local homegrown economy. Indeed, food packaging often depicts traditional images of small farms and healthy animals to encourage this perception, even if the practices of the large food producers do not in fact match this appearance. 5 In this essay, I analyze the product labels that appear on Horizon Organics Dairy products as rhetorical artifacts; doing so provides a concrete example of the complexities of food label marketing that must be navigated by shoppers desiring healthy foods produced humanely. To explore the rhetorical function of these labels, I will focus on the stories told by the product packaging, within the context of federal product label regulation, by using the frame of narrative analysis. In part, I hope to uncover the political and ideological implications of this rhetoric that function in addition to the overt, pragmatic goal of selling the product. I selected Horizon Organic Dairy products for this analysis because the company is one of the largest and most widely known brands of organic food products, but also because this company was instrumental in USDA attempts to regulate terms like “organic” in 2001. 6 However, in acknowledgment that these labels are created in a complex regulatory environment, I first review the history of organic food regulation and labeling in the United States. ORGANIC FOOD: CURRENT FOOD LABELING POLICY AND PRACTICE Although the concept of organic food in England and the United States has a somewhat longer history, the formal regulation of organic food began when the Congress of the United States passed the Organic Food Productions Act, Title 21 of the 1990 Farm Bill. Through this legislation, Congress charged the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) with defining and regulating the organic food market through the creation of a new “National Organic Program” and an advisory body to be called the “National Organics Standards Board” (NOSB). Within two years, the USDA had appointed representatives to the NOSB, but the creation of rules for organic food production proved more difficult. Ultimately, the USDA required twelve years of planning prior to the implementation of a National Organic Program (NOP) that would define the criteria used to certify foods as organic. 7

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Under these rules, one important function of the NOP is to regulate the language used in claims about food ingredients and production standards. Any business who wishes to use the term organic on their food labels must now adhere to certain methods and standards enforced by the NOSB. According to current regulations, agricultural products that are sold, labeled, or represented as organic must be produced and processed in accordance with the NOP standards. Except for operations whose gross income from organic sales totals 5,000 dollars or less, farm and processing operations that grow and process organic agricultural products must be certified by USDA-accredited certifying agents. 8 While this legal definition brought regulation to the market, it did not solve all of the problems of language use and meaning surrounding the term organic. For example, many smaller farms using organic methods find themselves unable to negotiate the confusing and expensive certification process, sometimes leading small producers like those who sell at farmer’s markets to unwittingly label their produce organic when they have no legal right to make that claim. Likewise, larger corporate agriculture business could potentially exploit the rules by potentially sourcing ingredients from very small farms that are not required to seek certification and who may not be using accepted organic practices. So, while the formalization of the term organic as a regulatory term was applauded by many, it has not solved all the problems associated with maximizing profits in a highly competitive market. A significant part of the NOP program is the grading of organic products into four hierarchical classes, regardless of whether the food is whole or processed. The pinnacle of the organic pyramid is “100 percent Organic,” which is reserved for those products that contain 100 percent organic materials, while the term “Organic” is officially reserved for those products which contain at least 95 percent organic materials (not including water and salt, which may not be labeled organic). According to USDA regulations, only products that are either “100 percent Organic” or “Organic” may bear the “USDA Organic” seal on their labels; both categories use the same USDA Organic seal, with no distinction made between products that are 95 percent organic or 100 percent organic. Products that contain at least 70 percent organic ingredients, but that may contain up to 30 percent non-organic ingredients, may be labeled “Made with Organic [specified Ingredient(s) or food group(s)],” while products that contain less than 70 percent organic ingredients may be labeled to include “Some Organic Ingredients.” 9 Neither of these lesser classes of organic may use the USDA Certified seal on their packaging. In addition to providing this certification program for food ingredients, the USDA NOP established a series of organic production and handling regulations that must be followed in order to claim that a product or ingredient is “organic.” There are specific crop standards for produce, livestock standards for dairy and meat, and production standards

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for processed foods. For example, produce labeled organic must have been grown in land that has been free of prohibited substances for at least three years and where soil and nutrient management through tilling and cultivation practices is practiced, among other requirements. 10 Producers of milk who wish to have the “organic” seal on their product labels must use certified organic feed, refrain from giving hormones or antibiotics, and provide access to pasture. 11 Most nutritionists and scholars agree that the USDA Organic Certification Seal is a significant standard for providing realistic assurance that a product was produced according to USDA NOP regulations. In sharing these details, I do not mean to suggest that this program is beyond reproach or even that it is ideal, yet I do not intend to critique the regulations and programs implemented by the USDA NOP in this essay. Instead, I provide this brief overview to contextualize the regulatory environment where the Horizon Diary label was designed, given that the product bears the USDA “Organic” Seal. METHOD In recent decades, many scholars have turned their critical attention toward the rhetoric of food, food production and food marketing. 12 Several studies have emerged that demonstrate the use of rhetorical techniques in the food industry to mask the harsh realities of animal-food production in an effort to deflect consumer focus from these distasteful practices and policies. For example, Joan Dunayer suggests that the constructions of consumable, non-human animals are deceptive, concealing “the cruel conditions and treatment suffered by food-industry captives.” 13 Similarly, Arron Stibbe suggests that language “contributes to the domination, oppression and exploitation of animals by animal product industries” and importantly notes that these constructions ultimately influence the way they are treated by humans. 14 Cathy Glenn identifies corporate strategies used in marketing products derived from factory farms, including the use of “doublespeak” to obscure industry practices and the creation of speaking animals in advertisements to sell the products of factor farms, both problematic constructions of the nonhuman animals and the products taken from them. 15 Even from within the animal production industry, in a journal titled Poultry Science, Croney and Reynells review the critiques of animal production discourse and argue that the industry must be aware that their language is “being scrutinized”; they conclude, “Identifying aspects of our discourse that may be off-putting and contradictory to our stated commitment to animal care and welfare may allow us to better connect with members of the public to whom we may convey unintended messages about our values relative to animals.” 16 For all these scholars, rhetorical choices lead to constitutive understandings of

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animals that lead to their problematic treatment. In other words, taken together, these types of rhetorical messages create human understandings of non-humane animals that partly allow for their use and abuse. These messages allow consumers to avoid the unpleasant realities of modern food production involving animals and encourage consumers to have positive feelings associated with the consumption of animals and animal-products. My essay extends the work of these scholars by focusing specifically on product packaging to consider rhetorical techniques used in marketing animal-products. Although Win Welford has previously considered the function of supermarket semantics to understand the rhetoric of food labeling on various types of produced food, 17 my analysis differs in that it focuses on one specific food label for an organic animal-product. Specifically, I will consider the rhetorical narratives that are implied on the product label of a Horizon Dairy milk carton, utilizing a variation of narrative analysis derived from Walter Fisher. 18 Fisher first argued for a narrative paradigm in the field of rhetoric studies, suggesting that human beings construct their understandings of the world through narratives, and that narrative construction is an inherently human activity. He explains that the narrative paradigm is “a theory of symbolic actions—words and/or deeds—that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, or interpret them.” 19 Fisher proposes his narrative paradigm in contrast to a rational world paradigm, in which beliefs, attitudes, and values are shaped through logic and formal reason exclusively. Fisher rejects this notion, suggesting that not all human beings have been trained to reason through logic, but reminds us that these human beings are not without the ability to consider and evaluate events and situations. He argues, “The narrative paradigm does not deny reason and rationality; it reconstitutes them, making them amenable to all forms of human communication.” 20 In these ways, narrative is an organizing and persuasive form of human communication and understanding that shapes our lived experiences and relationships. Because these stories or narratives are constructed and enacted by human beings as a means to understand, explain and evaluate their lived experience, they are rarely insignificant in terms of rhetorical import because they form the persuasive “good reasons” for human action and belief. 21 Analyzing narratives, then, whether they be true or fiction, can reveal the possible motives, values, and attributions suggested by individual or clusters of stories in a specific context. As such, I set out to explore the packaging of Horizon Organic Dairy products using the narrative elements of character, plot, and setting.

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HORIZON ORGANIC DAIRY By many accounts, Horizon Organic is one of the success stories in the growth of big organics during the decade immediately before and immediately after the millennium. Horizon was founded in 1991 by an independent farmer and grew rapidly into the first national provider of organic dairy products. In 2003, Horizon Organic was purchased for 216 million dollars by Dean Foods, the nation’s largest conventional milk provider. 22 Operated by the Dean subsidiary WhiteWave Foods, Horizon Organic brand grew to capture 35–40 percent of the national organic dairy market by 2012. 23 In 2013, after several class-action suits against Dean Foods involving the Horizon Organic Brand, WhiteWave Foods became its own company through a corporate spin-off that retained all corporate assets and leadership. 24 Today, the company continues its growth in operations, selling products including milk, yogurt, eggs, and other dairy and food products, safely isolated from its controversial parent company. To focus my analysis, I chose to consider one product: a half-gallon carton of Horizon Organic 2 percent Reduced Fat Milk. Because the carton repeatedly directed consumers to the company website, I considered the site to be an extension of the label and also included it in my analysis. I purchased this product in an Indiana Super Walmart grocery store in early September 2014. The product was stamped “Best by 10-20-14,” and the packaging was copyrighted in 2013. While each Horizon Organic product has a slightly different label, they are generally similar in appearance and so in this analysis, I presume that this product is generally representative of their entire line of organic milk products. Like all of their products, this Horizon Organic package features their unique logo: a cartoon dairy cow named “Happy the Cow” who appears to be leaping in front of an image of the earth while holding in her front hooves a flag that reads “organic.” The USDA Organic Certification Seal appears near the lower front right corner of the carton next to a text bubble that reads, “Produced on our farms by cows not given GMOs* or antibiotics.” 25 The asterisk refers to a small statement at the very bottom of the front panel that is required by the USDA: “No Significant difference has been shown between milk form rBST-treated and non rBSTtreated cows.” 26 Rotating the label counter-clockwise, one finds the Nutrition Facts Label, as required by law, below a text box labeled “Transform this carton.” The text box, flanked by a cartoon image of a milk-carton with butterfly wings and antennae reads, “Once the delicious milk inside is gone, this carton can be recycled. We’re working to increase carton recycling across the country. Learn more and find out if cartons are recyclable near you at HorizonOrganic.com.”

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The next panel is labeled, “Our cows are on a diet,” and the explanatory text reads: An organic diet, that is! Horizon cows graze outside on fresh, organic pasture grasses [bold and blue text in the original] and eat wholesome, organic feed made without GMOs. And our cows aren’t treated with growth hormones or antibiotics either. We’re devoted to the idea that nature knows best, and it shows in how we care for our cows every day. Below this appears a photographic representation of two healthy cows, one in profile and the other looking directly toward the viewer. Next to the cows, large blue letters pronounce, “If they’re happy, we’re happy!” The final panel shows a photographic image of a young, white, blondhaired boy pouring milk from a glass pitcher into a glass next to a plate of cookies. A headline, in large bold letters, reads “From our farmers to your table.” The text explains: The delicious Horizon dairy products your family loves come from our partnership with over 600 certified organic family farmers [bold and blue lettering in original]. From sunny California to the rolling hills of upstate New York, local farming families are the heart of Horizon. A large text box appears below the photo of the boy that directs the reader to “Get to know a Horizon family farmer” followed once again by their web address. Taken together, these four panels comprise the entire message sent to shoppers at the point of contact in grocery stores, and later when they use the product in their homes. However, the carton also directs the reader to their website several times, suggesting that Horizon considers their website to be an extension of their packaging. A visit to this website in September 2014 revealed a homepage with six tabs, or sub-pages, including one labeled “Farms.” Once on the “Farms” page, visitors see an interactive map of the United States spotted with cartoonish images of farm scenes and cows, and a center link that reads “Our Horizon family spans the nation with more than 600 [in larger and bold font] Organic Farmers. Meet a few people we are proud to work with!” The cartoon images dotting the map are links to 6 “family farms” and to one corporate farm owned by Horizon Organics in Maryland. There are two additional informational links, and they are accessed by clicking on images of Happy the Cow dressed as a farmer. In one these images, Happy drives a tractor, while in the other, she stands holding a pitchfork near a bale of hay, a cat, and chickens. When one clicks on one of these nine links, a text box with more information opens. For example, a click on Happy the Cow standing with farm animals pulls open a box that reads, “All in the Family: Organic Farming is a business the whole family can take part in, and it ties generations together. A farm is a great place to raise a family. With its focus on sustainability and stewardship, organic farming can offer the next gener-

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ation a way to stay and work on the land they love.” By clicking on the image of Happy driving a tractor, one learns that cows need fresh grass, and that “in accordance with organic regulations,” Horizon cows spend at “least a third of the year grazing on certified organic grass.” Clicking on the link for the Horizon Dairy corporate farm triggers a text box that explains that the company was certified organic in 1998 and includes 500 cows, but not before explaining that only 1 percent of Horizon milk products come from their own dairy, with 99 percent of the milk coming from “family farmers.” Very little interpretation is necessary for a shopper to understand the basic narrative depicted in these materials. Quite clearly, the main characters of the story told by Horizon Organic on this milk package and the accompanying website are the “family farmers.” These farmers live on small farms that are scattered around the United States, suggesting that one might be close to every shopper. Often, they are described as multigenerational stewards of their farms, living on land inherited from their parents with intentions of leaving it to their children. Furthermore, these family farmers use sustainable practices to provide an organic product and they really care about the welfare of their cows, who have access to plenty of pasture land and green grass. In this story, Horizon Organic as a character functions as a cooperative, purchasing milk from these many disparate locations and centralizing the distribution of organic milk and other products to families of consumers. Seemingly following the model of their “partner” family farms, Horizon Organic also understands and cares very much about cows, to the extent that they are represented by a cartoon cow as their logo. In the story told by Horizon’s Organic’s packaging, these farmers are all doing their work in similar multi-generational farms scattered across the United States. The cartoon farm images depicted on their website suggests the types of farms where the work of producing Horizon Organic milk happens. Because we know all the characters in this story care deeply about cows, we can infer that the setting created for them caters to their needs. Thus, these farms are parcels of land covered in green grass where cows graze outdoors, sometimes joined by chickens or other companions. These farms seem to be idealized places where the intrusion of modern agricultural practices have not intruded. In many ways, then, these are farms as we imagine them to have been in our recent past, heavily imbued with nostalgia. The family farmers who live on these idyllic farms are the primary actors in an anticlimactic plot that involves maintaining the healthful cycle of milk production by caring for cows and the farms they depend on. In fact, any change in the established practices of the past seem undesirable in this long-unchanged landscape. Thus, Horizon Dairy marketers have used the packaging label and the accompanying website to construct a story in which they, as a benevolent cooperative, partner with

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family farmers who work to produce milk on traditional farms across the United States. This narrative, with its sentimental depiction of the dairy industry is certainly in line with the ethic of many who favor organic foods and is undoubtedly persuasive. Yet, this story carries with it suggestions of a less-wholesome message that emerges when one considers more closely the ideological implications of this narrative starring family farmers and Happy the Cow. I now turn to a consideration of some of these rhetorical implications. DISCUSSION OF NARRATIVE IMPLICATIONS The most important components of the story told by the Horizon Organic milk package and accompanying website are the various families who do the farming that produces healthful food for other American families. Indeed, on the package panel featuring the young boy, the word “family” appears four different times, and the consumer’s own family is directly referenced twice through the use of “your,” as in “products your family loves.” Additionally, the image of the boy works to reinforce the notion of a white, traditional family, as he pours a glass of milk in a kitchen reminiscent of any middle-class American home. When one follows the instructions to “Get to Know a Horizon family farmer” and visits the HorizonOrganic.com website, the concept of “family” continues to dominate. Here, Horizon Organic even refers to the organic farmers from whom they purchase their product as “Our Horizon Family,” ultimately utilizing the notion of an extended family to describe their capitalist relationship with these businesses. There are six family farms featured on their “Farm” page of their website, and each one highlights family relationships on the farm. For example, at the Havengreen Organic Farm in Michigan, owners Brian and Agnes Koenigsknecht “wanted to raise a family here” and are “now proud grandparents” after raising ten children on the farm. The Gourley Family Dairy link on the map in Oregon notes that “the family is active in 4H and FFA (Future Farmers of America) regularly competing in local and state fairs.” At the other end of the map, the children living on the Faithful Vision Farm in Maine are also “actively involved in 4H.” Clearly, consumers are encouraged to visualize a farm where the cows are going to “fairs” with the children, who are learning the methods of organic farming from their parents. Horizon Organic is careful to highlight the multi-generational nature of the families featured on its website. These families remember their pasts as they move into the future. For example, the Hall & Breen Farm in Vermont was deeded in 1868 and “has been in the family for five generations.” At the Goelz Family Organic Farm in Minnesota, husband and father Adam is quoted as saying “I always wondered about back in the

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day when my grandparents and great-grandparents were running this farm—they didn’t have chemicals.” The informative textbox linked to the image of Happy the Cow focuses on how the family farm “ties the generations together” as well as “offer the next generation a way to stay and work on the land they love.” Furthermore, when visitors to the site read the stories of the families, this notion of children is reinforced in that all the farmers are or have raised children at those farms who participate in farm-related hobbies, such as 4-H and FFA. This focus on the success of multi-generational farm families implies sustainability, a value important to shoppers with environmental concerns and a buzz word in the marketing of environmentally-conscious products. Perhaps more importantly, all of the families featured by Horizon in the materials I analyzed are white, traditional, nuclear families that include a man, a woman and children. Although Horizon Organic may work with farms run by individuals, childless families, or same-sex families, these non-traditional families are not included among the families selected to represent the partner farms. The only image of a family member that appears on the package or the website is that of a small, white boy. One can only surmise that Horizon Organic marketers want to encourage consumers to envision a white, middle class family in their narrative. Horizon Organic is not the first company to use the concept of family as a rhetorical trope in marketing. John Adams suggests that the concept of family is used by rhetors to “entangle their listeners in familial unity” and that the use of the family as a relational image in rhetoric conjures a shared experience for humans that has “deep reaching persuasive implications as a motive term.” 27 In other words, merely using the concept of family can induce feelings of inclusion for those receiving the message. Clearly, Horizon Organic uses this construction of the family to create a sense of identification between the potential buyer and their product that helps Horizon sell milk. But this pragmatic function is not the only rhetorical implication scholars have noticed in the use of family as a concept in advertising and some have suggested more ideological functions as well. Nora Draper, writing from the perspective of critical advertising studies, has studied the use of family in the marketing materials for cell phones who promote “family plans.” 28 She suggests that the use of a child or a family in phone ads highlight certain traditional roles of families, including the reproductive and developmental roles most central to child-rearing. Thus, Draper argues, these ads reinforce and promote conservative notions of family that are white, straight, and middle-class. notes that cell phone companies often show an image of a child, suggesting a family and parental frame to view their advertising; the use of a child and of parent-children relationships suggests an emphasis on the reproductive and sociological (development and socialization) roles of

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families and a traditional framing of the concept of family. Significantly, Horizon Organic constructs family in exactly these same ways Draper describes. Ultimately, then, the family described and promoted by Horizon Organic is a white, traditional one who engages in the reproduction and raising of children. The forwarding of this particular construction of family, to the exclusion of any other, suggests alignment with conservative ideological values, such as those underlying the movement to define marriage as between one man and one woman. These conservative ideals are certainly in alignment with the capitalist goals underlying the very creation of this company. Quite simply, as a profit-driven corporation, Horizon Dairy benefits from conservative politicians seeking to protect the rights of big businesses, and Horizon executives certainly strive to obtain their raw ingredient for the lowest possible cost only to sell their product at a significant mark-up. More subtly, the promotion of this particular type of traditional family suggests a problematic equation of whiteness with ecological purity and sustainability, a correlation often made by twentieth century eugenicists. Importantly, Horizon Organic spotlights the details of the family life of each farm owner to the extent that it excludes information about any other aspect of their business. Interestingly, Horizon shares no information about the size of the farm, the number of employees, or the number of dairy cows that live on these farms. Yet, importantly, while the farms contracted under Horizon Organic may be owned and operated by families, they are primarily, or at least equally, farm businesses. In fact, the notion that agriculture is a capitalist enterprise is completely absent from the Horizon Diary narrative analyzed here. Instead, there is simply a “Horizon Family.” In veiling their capitalist motives, Horizon also veils the unpleasant farming practices, like over-milking or crowding, that often occur to maximize profits. In highlighting the family based ownership of the farms, Horizon hopes shoppers will forget the capitalist motive that explains their very existence. The primary criteria for the decisions made on these business-farms is undoubtedly based upon costconsciousness, but Horizon is careful to avoid mentioning it or the business relationship that exists between themselves and these smaller “family” farms. Yet, the notion of a “family farm” has been a political and economic construction familiar to most Americans since at least the 1980s, when the United States public became aware that many small farms in the United States were failing. In 1985, popular musician Willie Nelson helped organize the first “Farm Aid” concert, in which famous musicians gathered together to perform for live and television audience in an effort to raise money for failing family farms. 29 Farm Aid continues today as a large non-profit lobby organization for small farmers’ rights as they continue to struggle against large corporate agribusiness. The National Family

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Farm Coalition, also founded in the 1980s, engages in similar support and lobbying for small family farms. 30 Politically, then, the concept of the family farm is far from neutral and its use carries with it a liberal connotation implied by concerns of labor rights and equity. Yet, importantly, Horizon Organic is not itself a family farm; it is a large, corporate agribusiness. Highlighting the family farm, then, functions rhetorically to help Horizon Organic cloak its capitalist ethic in the family farmer, with whom their target consumer certainly empathizes. In addition to the use of the family farmer in this narrative, Horizon Organic also uses a cartoon cow, Happy, to represent itself as a logo on its packaging. Happy lives up to her name, appearing to smile as she stares at the consumer, wearing a cow-bell, an artifact akin to a dog collar that domesticates and adorns a pet. Furthermore, Happy is a healthy cow, able to leap across the image of a very pure-blue cartoon earth. She is representative of all the cows in the Horizon Organic system, which are also pictured on a panel of the milk package analyzed in this essay, where they are described as “happy.” In Glenn’s analysis of factory farm discourse, she explores the dual purposes of using “speaking animals who are selling the end ‘products’ of the brutal processes they endure in the factory farm system.” 31 She acknowledges that the primary purpose of the industry is to sell the product, but argues that companies also desire “to make the nonhuman animal victims disappear and replace them with animals functionally indistinguishable from humans.” 32 She argues that although this may at first appear to make humans more like the animals used in this type of advertising, it really works to reinforce the distinction between human and non-human animals so that we take for granted the use of their products for food or other consumables. I extend these arguments to the cartoonization of the cow in the case of Horizon Organic. Clearly, the Horizon Organic cartoon cow does participate in the selling of its product through the use of a “cute, clever, or pretty animal character . . . [who] is usually persuasive, in part, because he or she uses an appeal to emotion” 33 Although Happy the Cow does not speak, she does suggest movement by jumping over the Earth, which implies health and vigor. In this act, Happy the Cow also seems to pay homage to a famous fictional cow—the cow who jumped over the moon, a nonsensical childhood rhyme familiar to the vast majority of consumers who were raised in American culture. This cartoon cow is a familiar cow, a cow that reminds consumers of the warmth and whimsy of childhood, and once again connecting nostalgia with its product. Notably, former Horizon Organic chief executive Charles F. Marcy has been quoted as saying, “Our franchise skews to families with young kids.” 34 Horizon’s cow sends the message that they are in line with the pure values of childhood, but rather than leaping over the moon, the Horizon cow leaps over a pristine earth, perhaps alluding to the pristine environment longed for by

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its consumers, who pay extra to help promote the realization of the cartoon through smart consumption. Of course, this point regarding children harkens back to my analysis of the other primary character in the Horizon Organic narrative, families. Both Happy the Cow and the concept of the family serve as metaphors for the values that Horizon Organic hopes are associated with their product. Happy the Cow works together with the constructed concept of family farms to suggest a value orientation that favors a traditional understanding of the family with reproductive and sociological functions. Families are both the producers and the consumers of the products sold by Horizon Organic, but only a specific type of family is included: those that are straight, child-bearing, white and middle-class. Ultimately, then, the narrative constructed by the packaging and related website material by Horizon Organic is one in which traditional family farmers all around the United States use sustainable and humane practices to produce organic milk sold by Horizon Organic, who is a family oriented company. This narrative vision may well be a laudable one. There is nothing inherently wrong with constructing messages that highlight the sustainability or wholesomeness of a product when the producer of that product adheres to the spirit and the law of organic certification as outlined by the USDA. However, reports suggesting that Horizon Organic engages in practices that are in opposition to their narrative vision have emerged, challenging the sincerity of their environmental ethics. Within just a few years of its purchase by Dean Foods, Horizon Organic faced criticism that its farming practices did not meet the standards required by the USDA Organic program. In 2006, the Cornucopia Institute, a non-profit organic industry watchdog, released a “report card” evaluating organic dairy producers that rated Horizon Organic as “ethically challenged” after Horizon refused to answer survey questions about the number and treatment of cows on their dairy farm in Maryland. 35 Cornucopia filed several formal legal complaints with the USDA between 2006–2008 against Horizon Organic, asking for investigations of the legality of their corporate owned farms in Maryland and Idaho; Horizon was accused of breaking the regulations that requires cow access to pasture and keeping up to 8,000 cows at each location confined to a feedlot. 36 In response to these reports and charges, The Organic Consumers Association, a second organic industry watchdog organization, helped organize a consumer boycott against Horizon Organic that began in 2006. 37 In 2011, a still-pending class-action suit was brought against Dean’s Horizon Organic Products charging that health claims appearing on the product labels for Horizon Organic were “false, misleading, and reasonably likely to deceive the public” by including a phrase that “DHA Omega-3 [an additive] supports brain health.” 38 A second case, settled by Dean Food with payouts for consumers, charged that Horizon Organic listed “Evaporated Cane Juice” instead of “sugar” on their ingredients

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listing. Both cases suggest a willingness to confuse or mislead shoppers by making false health claims or mislabeling ingredients. This impression is reinforced by the most recent allegations leveled against Horizon Organic by the Cornucopia Institute, who believe that WhiteWave Foods sold a large, controversial dairy farm that struggled to meet organic standards to a “friendly entity” that has made minor modifications to the operation and continues to provide milk to market under the Horizon Organic brand. 39 In effect, they are accused of diversionary tactics in order to hide a problematic, over-crowded farm that they still depend upon for raw product. In this essay, I have explored the way that Horizon Organic constructs a persuasive narrative that mirrors the values of the consumers they hope purchase their product. This narrative features traditional American families who both purchase and consume their foods, which are produced using sustainable methods that maintain happy and healthy cows. Yet, the practices of this large capitalistic organization have not always matched the ethical story they hope consumers will associate with their Happy the Cow logo. Horizon Organic operates in a competitive market for profit, and it has spent considerable effort crafting this narrative, which has resonance for shoppers judging from Horizon’s ever-growing market share. Despite efforts to regulate the labeling of organic foods, the USDA NOP remains imperfect, as does consumer understanding of policy impacting the quality and availability of their foods. Agribusinesses like Horizon Organic function in a highly competitive market, and their primary goal is to sell milk for maximum profit. That goal directly contradicts many of the values of the shoppers desiring healthful food produced with minimal ecological impact, who are often willing to pay more for products that they believe match their political and ideological values. My short analysis of one milk carton suggests that Horizon Organic, at least, is willing to construct a marketing narrative that has no correlation to their own political ideology as a capitalist entity in order to sell more milk. Shoppers hoping to use their dollars to promote companies who mirror their progressive political values have good reason to be suspicious of the claims of large organic agribusinesses like Horizon Organic Dairy. NOTES 1. Organic Trade Association, “2012 Press Release: Consumer Trade Association’s 2012 Organic Industry Survey shows continued growth.” Accessed Sept 2, 2014, www.organicnewsroom.com/2012/04/us_consumerdriven_organic_mark.html. 2. Organic Trade Association, “2011 Press Release: Seventy-eight percent of U.S. families say they purchase organic food.” Accessed Sept 2, 2014, http:// www.organicnewsroom.com/2011/11/seventyeight_percent_of_us_fam.html.

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3. Organic Trade Association Website, “Industry Statistics and Projected Growth,” Accessed Sept 2, 2014. http://www.ota.com/organic/mt/business.html. 4. Stephanie Strom, “Has ‘Organic’ Been Oversized?,” New York Times, July 12, 2012. Accessed Sept 12, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/business/organicfood-purists-worry-about-big-companies-influence.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. 5. Cathy B. Glenn, “Constructing Consumables and Consent: A critical Analysis of Factory Farm Industry Discourse” Journal of Communication Inquiry 28 (2004): 63–81. 6. Horizon Organic Dairy, “Horizon Organic Hails Release of Organic Standards,” PR Newswire, December 20, 2001. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/horizon-organic-hails-release-of-organic-regulations-76300442.html. 7. Marion Nestle, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 8. United States Department of Agriculture, “NOP Regulations: Subpart D—Labels, Labeling, and Market Information,” last modified February 4, 2010. Accessed October 2, 2014. http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?& template=TemplateN&leftNav=NationalOrganicProgram& page=NOPSealinNOPStandards&description=NOP%20Seal%20in%20the%20NOP%20Regulations. 9. United States Department of Agriculture, Labeling Packaged Products under the National Organic Standards, last modified date February 5, 2010. Accessed October 2, 2014, http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?template= TemplateA&leftNav=NationalOrganicProgram& page=NOPUnderstandingOrganicLabeling&description=Understanding+Organic+Labeling. 10. United States Department of Agriculture, Organic Production and Handling Standards, Updated October 2011. Accessed October 2, 2014, http://www.ams.usda.gov/ AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3004445. 11. Ibid. 12. For example, see Nestle, Food Politics. 13. Joan Dunayer, Animal Equality: Language and Liberation (Derwood, MD: Ryce Publishing, 2001), 126. 14. Aaron Stibbe, “Language, Power and the Social Construction of Animals,” Society and Animals 9 (2001), 146. 15. Glenn, “Constructing Consumables.” 16. C.C. Croney and R.D. Reynnells, “The Ethics of Semantics: Do we clarify or obfuscate reality to influence perceptions of farm animal production?” Poultry Science 87 (2008): 387–391. 17. Win Welford, “Supermarket Semantics: The Rhetoric of Food Labeling and Advertising,” ETC: A Review of General Semantics 49 (1992): 3–17. 18. Walter Fisher, “Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument,” Communication Monographs 54 (1984): 1–22. 19. Ibid, 2. 20. Ibid, 2. 21. Ibid, 2. 22. Denver Business Journal, “Dean Foods Buying Horizon Dairy,” June 30, 2003. Accessed September 12, 2014, http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2003/06/30/ daily2.html?page=all. 23. Susan Berfield, “Organic Milk Rivals in a Tussle Over Trade Secrets,” Bloomberg BusinessWeek, July 25, 2012. Accessed September 18, 2014, http:// www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-25/organic-milk-rivals-in-a-tussle-overtrade-secrets. 24. Alicia Wallace, “Dean Food Completes Spinoff of Broomfield’s WhiteWave Foods,” The Denver Post, Business, May 23, 2013. Accessed September 12, 2014, 5.20.2013. http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_23309435/dean-foods-completesspinoff-broomfields-whitewave-foods.

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25. USDA standards for organic milk prohibit the use of milk that contains antibiotics or pesticides. By stating this “benefit,” Horizon Organic contributes to the confusion felt by the average consumer over the exact meaning of labeling claims. 26. The U.S.D.A. requires milk producers who make claims about the absence of GMOs in food to include this disclaimer. Its existence suggests the ambivalence of the USDA toward organic and natural foods. 27. John Adams, “The Familial Image in Rhetoric,” Communication Quarterly 31 (1983): 56–61. 28. Nora A. Draper, “Defining Family: Representation and Rhetoric in the Marketing of Shared Mobile Phone Plans,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 31 (2013): 57–71. 29. Donna Sellnow. “The Comic Embellishment of a Tragic Situation: Combining Testimony and Music in the Farm Aid Telecasts,” North Dakota Journal of Speech & Theatre, 5 (1992): 13–22. 30. The National Family Farm Coalition website, accessed November 4, 2014, http:// www.nffc.net/Who percent20We percent20Are/page-whoweare.htm. 31. Glenn, “Constructing Consumables,” 72. 32. Ibid, 72. 33. Ibid, 72. 34. Margaret Webb Pressler, “Organic Foods Get into the Mainstream,” The St. Augustine Record, August 9, 2003. Accessed Sept 12, 2014, http://staugustine.com/stories/080903/bus_1703400.shtml. 35. Thomas Gray, “Fighting to Keep Organic Foods Pure.” Time Magazine, August 30, 2007. Accessed online September 3, 2014. (http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1657841,00.html). 36. The Cornucopia Institute, “America’s Largest Corporate Diary Processor Muscles its Way into Organics,” The Cultivator: News from the Cornucopia Institute, JulyAugust 2008. Accessed September 18, 2014, http://cornucopia.org/wp-content/themes/ Cornucopia/pdf/July-August2008.pdf. 37. Alicia Wallace, “Horizon Organic Starting to Feel the Pain from Organic Consumers Boycott of Its Feedlot Sourced Milk,” Organic Consumers Association Website, July 26, 2006. Accessed October 1, 2014, http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/ article_1322.cfm. 38. Julie Wernau, “Dean Foods sued for Horizon milk health claims.” Chicago Tribune, October 4, 2011. Accessed October 2, 2014, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/ 2011-10-04/business/chi-dean-foods-sued-for-milks-health-claims-20111004_1_deanfoods-milk-products-health-claims. 39. The Cornucopia Institute Website, “Horizon ‘Organic’ Factory Farm Accused of Improprieties, Again,” Feb 14, 2014. Accessed September 12, 2014, http:// www.cornucopia.org/2014/02/horizon-organic-factory-farm-accused-improprieties/.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, John. “The Familial Image in Rhetoric,” Communication Quarterly 31 (1983): 56–61. Berfield, Susan, “Organic Milk Rivals in a Tussle Over Trade Secrets,” Bloomberg BusinessWeek, July 25, 2012, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-25/organic-milk-rivals-in-a-tussle-over-trade-secrets Cornucopia Institute, “America’s Largest Corporate Diary Processor Muscles its Way into Organics,” The Cultivator: News from the Cornucopia Institute, July-August 2008, http://cornucopia.org/wp-content/themes/Cornucopia/pdf/July-August2008.pdf. Cornucopia Institute Website, “Horizon ‘Organic’ Factory Farm Accused of Improprieties, Again,” The Cornucopia Institute Website, Feb 14, 2014, http://www. cornucopia.org/2014/02/horizon-organic-factory-farm-accused-improprieties/ Du-

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nayer, Joan, Animal Equality: Language and Liberation, Derwood, MD: Ryce Publishing, 2001. Croney, C.C. and Reynnells, R.D., “The Ethics of Semantics: Do we clarify or obfuscate reality to influence perceptions of farm animal production?,” Poultry Science 87 (2008): 387–391. Draper, Nora A. “Defining Family: Representation and Rhetoric in the Marketing of Shared Mobile Phone Plans,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 31 (2013): 57–71. Fisher, Walter. “Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument,” Communication Monographs 54 (1984): 1–22. Glenn, Cathy B., “Constructing Consumables and Consent: A critical Analysis of Factory Farm Industry Discourse,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 28 (2004): 63–81. Gray, Thomas, “Fighting to Keep Organic Foods Pure,” Time Magazine, August 30, 2007, (http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1657841,00.html). Nestle, Marion, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Organic Trade Association, “2011 Press Release: Seventy-eight percent of U.S. families say they purchase organic food,” Organic Trade Association Website, http:// www.organicnewsroom.com/2011/11/seventyeight_percent_of_us_fam.html. Organic Trade Association, “2012 Press Release: Consumer Trade Association’s 2012 Organic Industry Survey shows continued growth,” Organic Trade Association Website, www.organicnewsroom.com/2012/04/us_consumerdriven _organic_mark.html. Organic Trade Association, “Industry Statistics and Projected Growth,” Organic Trade Association Website, Accessed September 14, 2014, http://www.ota.com/organic/ mt/business.html. Pressler, Margaret Webb, “Organic Foods Get into the Mainstream,” The St. Augustine Record, August 9, 2003, http://staugustine.com/stories/080903/ bus_1703400.shtml. Sellnow, Donna, “The Comic Embellishment of a Tragic Situation: Combining Testimony and Music in the Farm Aid Telecasts,” North Dakota Journal of Speech & Theatre, 5 (1992): 13–22. Stibbe, Aaron, “Language, Power and the Social Construction of Animals,” Society and Animals 9 (2001), 146. Stephanie Strom, “Has ‘Organic’ Been Oversized?,” New York Times, July 12, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/business/organic-food-purists-worry-aboutbig-companies-influence.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. United States Department of Agriculture, NOP Regulations: Subpart D—Labels, Labeling, and Market Information, February 4, 2010, http://www.ams.usda.gov/ AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?&template=TemplateN&leftNav=NationalOrganicProgram&page=NOPSealinNOPStandards&description=NOP%20Seal%20in%20the%20NOP%20Regulations. United States Department of Agriculture, Labeling Packaged Products under the National Organic Standards, February 5, 2010, http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ ams.fetchTemplateData.do?template=TemplateA&leftNav=NationalOrganicProgram&page=NOPUnderstandingOrganicLabeling&description=Understanding+Organic+Labeling. United States Department of Agriculture, Organic Production and Handling Standards, October 2011, http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3004445. Wallace, Alicia, “Horizon Organic Starting to Feel the Pain from Organic Consumers Boycott of Its Feedlot Sourced Milk,” Organic Consumers Association Website, July 26, 2006, http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_1322.cfm. Wallace, Alicia. “Dean Food Completes Spinoff of Broomfield’s WhiteWave Foods,” The Denver Post, Business, May 23, 2013, http://www.denverpost.com/business/ ci_23309435/dean-foods-completes-spinoff-broomfields-whitewave-foods.

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Welford, Win, “Supermarket Semantics: The Rhetoric of Food Labeling and Advertising,” ETC: A Review of General Semantics 49 (1992): 3–17. Wernau, Julie, “Dean Foods sued for Horizon milk health claims.” Chicago Tribune, October 4, 2011, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-10-04/business/chi-deanfoods-sued-for-milks-health-claims-20111004_1_dean-foods-milk-products-healthclaims.

TEN Chipotle Mexican Grill’s Meatwashing Propaganda Corporate-Speak Hiding Suffering of “Commodity” Animals Ellen W. Gorsevski

Peter Woit, a mathematician at Columbia University, has pointed out that eminent physicist Stephen Hawking believes that within 1,000 years the planet earth will be “trashed” and no longer habitable, so there is a pressing need to learn more about space with the aim of moving humans to other planets as the only way the species can survive, a topic Hollywood films, such as Interstellar starring Matthew McConaughey, have taken on. 1 Meanwhile, many in the world public today are blissfully unaware of this matter of earth’s rapidly emptying hour-glass. As a preview into one aspect of greenwashing, it is worthwhile to observe public ignorance or repression of information about the likelihood of an imminent environmental apocalypse. The collective, public denial of environmental fragility is a state of being on which myriad governments and corporations rely for political stability and profits; that is, dominant controlling entities can only remain in control by ensuring globalized consumer-citizens, or “consumizens,” 2 stay environmentally unconscious. Controlling large, international populations’ perceptions of their culpability or inability to prevent environmental disaster requires careful use, control and management of words, images and symbols. To that end, “greenwashing” refers to the persuasive messages that corporations and other large organizations, such as governments, use in their public communication (including 201

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pamphlets, web marketing, print advertisements and television commercials) to portray their missions and products in an environmentally friendly light. 3 Greenwashing misleads because such goals or consumer goods may be hazardous to the public as consumers and citizens, and to the environment. 4 Jennifer Budinsky and Susan Bryant urge critical attention be paid to this issue because “for environmental emancipation to occur, it is important to problematize . . . discourses that put a price on nature and obfuscate the domination of nature.” 5 Greenwashing promotes palatable interpretations of politically and culturally contentious practices that are harmful to sentient beings and natural world systems, including ecosystems and quasi-ecological systems that are human directed, such as suburbias or cities where wildlife (ranging from koala bears and kangaroos to birds like eagles) have adapted to urban conditions. Greenwashing is used by governments and businesses alike. Robert Jacobs offers one of the most blatant examples of government greenwashing designed to influence political and cultural critics during the Cold War. Jacobs recounts the U.S. government’s Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) pamphlet in 1953 advising Americans to build atomic bomb shelters by promising, “HOME SHELTERS CAN SAVE YOU.” 6 The FCDA’s optimistic statement failed to acknowledge that, following test shot Annie on March 17, 1953 in Nevada, the test site’s own demonstration shelter “was so radioactive that test workers could not enter it.” 7 Fast forward to 2014, and the Canadian government along with its nuclear corporation, Ontario Power Generation (OPG), is issuing plans, which are laden with innocuous safety discourse, to use Lake Huron’s shoreline area as a nuclear waste repository. OPG’s plans exemplify greenwashing because they actively ignore the environmental safety implications of inevitable water table leaching of radioactive materials into an already endangered ecosystem that millions of people (Canadians and Americans) and countless animals depend upon for life. 8 Greenwashing flourishes where human technologies, ranging from political systems to environmental remediation systems, 9 have reached a limit in not being able to contain or reverse the destruction of earth’s human-sped-up entropy process of which professor Hawking has forewarned. Aside from automobile industry products such as hybrid cars, or the chemical industry’s purportedly “green” household cleansers, 10 another major industry involving both government and the private sector in the rapid deterioration of the natural environment is the food industry, especially that sector dealing with animals processed as livestock for meat. 11 Just as many members of the public have been encouraged to believe they need nuclear power (and its implied might in nuclear missile form) to go about their daily lives with ample, low-cost electric energy and to feel safe from enemies who also possess nuclear power, respectively, many people also believe they need large quantities of meat to nourish

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their bodies and to keep them healthy or safe from diseases. However, Brian Henning reports that “mass consumption of animals is a primary reason why humans are hungry, fat, or sick and is a leading cause of the depletion and pollution of waterways, the degradation and deforestation of the land, the extinction of species, and the warming of the planet.” 12 Given these serious problems, which, if geopolitical analyst Gwynne Dyer is correct, will produce global conflicts and wars, 13 it is important to take another look at greenwashing processes related to humans’ ever increasing consumption of meat from animals raised as livestock in massive factory fields and in giant processing plants, often referred to euphemistically as “conventional” meat sources. Following the work of Arran Stibbe, 14 this chapter critically analyzes the discursive, visual and sensory rhetoric deployed by Chipotle Mexican Grill, a trendy, popular, growing fast-food chain whose corporate discourses lead its customers to perceive its venues as progressive and environmentally conscious. Specifically, Chipotle makes the claim to use, “when possible,” sustainably grown sources of meats, which are raised without the use of “synthetic hormones.” I have observed first hand, however, in visits in 2014 to Chipotle locations in Ohio towns like Bowling Green and Perrysburg, that a small, not-very-noticeable countertop sign is often present, stating, in effect, “Due to shortages we are serving conventionally produced meats.” This modest, unobtrusive statement on “conventionally produced meats” constitutes a specific kind of greenwashing, which I term here “meatwashing.” I define meatwashing as rhetorical discourses that obscure massive animal suffering required by globally burgeoning consumer demands for unsustainable amounts of meat. 15 This chapter will demonstrate that Chiptole’s meatwashing is evident in an array of symbolic forms of communication to its consumer. For example, one such opaque reference to unsustainably produced meat is the small, countertop sign about “conventionally produced meats” being used. This countertop sign’s message contravenes the corporate claims of Chipotle, which contend that Chipotle sells more “naturally raised” animals as its source of meats than any other fast food supplier. In response to my written request to Chipotle requesting specific information, 16 Chipotle’s data from its 2013 annual report lists that the company “purchased over 140 million pounds of responsibly raised meat.” 17 Chipotle’s meat comes from “responsibly raised” animals, which at least up until 2014 Chipotle implied in its advertising is the majority of its meat supply, as opposed to meats from “conventionally raised” animals. Chipotle’s ratio of “green” or “naturally” sourced meat versus “brown” meat from “conventional” sources, called factory farms or concentrated animal feed-lot operations (CAFOs), is “proprietary.” Such data is secret information that Chipotle is not transparent in discussing or providing to consumers. All Chipotle has to do in reality is source one gram more of meat from a “natural” meat supplier than competitors in order to make

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good on its claim to sell more “naturally sourced” meats than any other fast food operation in the United States, since to date no other major fast food suppliers use any “natural” sources of meat whatsoever, because sustainably produced meats are more expensive and far less abundant than factory produced meats derived from animals in industrial CAFOs. In short, I posit Chipotle uses meatwashing to hide animals’ suffering due to CAFO practices which Chipotle’s own founder, Steve Ells, has called “grim.” 18 First, this chapter will provide a brief background on Chipotle as a popular and growing fast food chain. Second, the chapter will review key literature on ecocriticism that specifically examines the treatment of animals used for modern human consumption both as visual and wordbased propaganda, and as a food product of meat that is eaten by consumers. In short, this survey of ideas about animals sums up the ways animals become cognitively, emotionally and physically ingested. Third, there will be an ecocritical analysis of Chipotle’s discursive, visual, and sensory presentation—its “meatwashing” rhetoric—of its products. Citing current food market research, such as that by Dana Liebelson and Venessa Wong, 19 I contend Chipotle’s messages combine to form “meatwashing” by creating an innocuous and inaccurate impression of the life of animals used as sources of meat for mass consumption, nationwide. Finally, the chapter will conclude by discussing the ramifications of meatwashing for food industries, for humans, for animals living as livestock, and for the natural environment. CHIPOTLE’S OXYMORON: ENVIRONMENTALLY CONSCIOUS FAST FOOD Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG or Chipotle for short) is a thirteen billion dollars burrito business that originated in 1993 in health conscious Denver, Colorado. Chipotle’s corporate philosophy claims to believe that consumers can “eat out thoughtfully and sustainably.” 20 Chipotle’s tag line, which is featured prominently on its website, is “Food With Integrity,” which features the mission of upholding its “commitment to finding the very best ingredients raised with respect for animals, the environment and farmers.” 21 Its founder, Steve Ells, cheerfully proclaims on Chipotle’s website in an open letter that, in an effort to reduce Chipotle’s part in “the way most of the food in the US is produced and processed. . . . [he] met ranchers and farmers dedicated to raising livestock and to growing produce using responsible, respectful, and sustainable techniques.” 22 Chipotle’s web site features photographs of well treated farm animals, such as adorable, clean pigs and fluffy chickens being tended to by caring farmers.

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Chipotle’s hip sustainability message is mirrored in its décor. Chipotle’s décor combines stark, industrial metal seating and surfaces with chic, black and white photographs, such as of its flagship store in Denver, Colorado, with an ethnic twist. Chipotle’s interior design incorporates Mexican styled symbology in the form of corrugated metal wall art of a god that is reminiscent of Aztec gods, as shown in Figure 10.1 below. As one person’s web post, commenting on an article about Chipotle, puts it, “CMG is McDonald’s for shi-shi urbanite hipsters who ‘think’ it’s Mexican. The [Chipotle] burrito is . . . tasteless [versus]. . . . My local, singlestore Mexican place—run by a Mexican chef—makes the genuine article, a delicious . . . meat-filled burrito . . . with spectacular salsa. Amazing the garbage the . . . hipster set will buy if it’s sold with style.” 23 Critics like this point out that although the restaurant chain’s name and design features promise a Mexican cuisine flavor, the substance may not always be there. On the other hand, while it is easier for people living in large, urban areas to locate more authentic Mexican cuisine that features fresh ingredients at small, mom and pop venues, it can be more difficult for people to do so when they are confined to suburban areas, such as many parts of the American Midwest, a geographically large region that is known for its bland cooking. 24 Also, seeing Chipotle’s basic, Tex-Mex styled burrito and taco salad menu, it is clear that over the years its major competitor, Chili’s, has altered its menu items to be blander. For instance, back in the mid-1990’s Chili’s menu featured a black bean veggie burger, which was later discontinued. Chili’s meaty, ‘white-bread’ American menu items have for at least a decade dominated its menu, but Chili’s is now renew-

Figure 10.1. Chipotle Menu. Photograph taken by and copyright permissions granted by Melody Overton, MelodyEats.com

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ing its marketing presence, including its décor and television commercials (if not its menu), to compete with Chipotle. Chipotle has simply filled a niche in the fast-food consumer market for millions of people who want a quick, tasty, meal that is affordable to middle-class consumers during their work or school day. Moreover, contrary to the insipid menu phasing toward blandness and mildness that Chili’s followed until now, Chipotle’s customers have demonstrated that they want fast food that features fresh ingredients, such as lettuce, tomatoes, cilantro, avocados, and of course, the spicy hot, Chipotle chili pepper for which the restaurant chain is named. The overall message Chipotle conveys to consumers is that, as founder Steve Ells reiterated in an ABC News Nightline story, “I think it’s really important for people to know where their food comes from . . . we spend a lot of time researching the very best sources, so that when people go to Chipotle, they can rest assured that they are getting great food.” 25 The backdrop for the story, which aired in 2009, is “idyllic Polly Face farm, nestled in the hills of Swoop, Virginia.” The Nightline story’s portrayal of the farm showcases verdant forests where small numbers of “happy pigs” frolic in underbrush of this lush, natural setting, while cattle graze in open fields with a charming, old wooden barn in the backdrop. Nightline’s story is so upbeat about Chipotle that Chipotle’s own website features a link to view a replay of it. In the story, Ells maintains that “most of our beef” comes from suppliers that do not use antibiotics. Also, while not stated directly, the archetypal American farm imagery that is the backdrop for the story invites audiences not to think that, at least in measurements of unspecified tons, Chipotle’s meats could come from CAFOs. But names and numbers tell a different story. By 1998, Chipotle’s major investor was McDonalds, which supported the then fledgling chain as its store numbers increased from only sixteen locations to over 500; in 2006, McDonald’s divested from Chipotle, just before the indie fast-food brand soared to about 1,500 locations. 26 Even more opportune for Chipotle was its ability to then use McDonald’s as a fast-food “‘enemy’ to measure itself against” so as to appear much more ethical and environmentally conscious in comparison, albeit with McDonald’s bar being set abysmally low. 27 Other Tex-Mex themed fast food competitors include Moe’s Southwest Grill (founded in 2000) and the older Taco Bell (founded in 1962). Investment brokerage firm JP Morgan anticipates that over the longer term Chipotle is fully expected to expand to between 6,000 and 9,000 stores nationwide. 28 This increased pressure to grow the company has apparently initiated a retreat from being able to deliver on Chipotle’s sustainability message. Liebelson’s research on Chipotle’s successful advertising campaigns in 2011 and in 2013 indicates that interest among trendy consumers is piqued by the use of indie-pop music, such as songs by Fiona Apple and

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Coldplay, and by Chipotle’s use of “Pixar-style” animation in a “commercial that went viral and turned the restaurant into a poster-child for sustainable food.” 29 Meanwhile, in reality, Chipotle appears to use some meat, especially beef, which comes from what their corporate information refers to as “conventional” or “commodity” livestock sources, which, as market terminology referring to mass produced items that are traded on the stock market, could be euphemisms for CAFOs. 30 To support the argument that Chipotle engages in proffering propagandistic messages to consumers, a process that I call meatwashing, it is noteworthy that, among other discursive and symbolic sleights of hand that will be explored in more detail later in this chapter, Chipotle’s corporate-speak frequently repeats the meaningless term, “natural,” to characterize its foods and the settings in which its meat-producing animals dwell prior to being slaughtered. 31 The term “natural” lacks any regulatory meaning, in contrast to the substantive term, “organic,” the latter connoting the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) definition of food products that do not contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs) nor hormones, among other constraints. 32 Many consumers, even Chipotle’s more educated, health conscious customers in its prime, demographic target market, are probably unaware of such distinctions. ECOCRITICISM TO REPOLITICIZE ANIMALS AS SENTIENT BEINGS Before turning to a more in-depth analysis of Chipotle’s sly corporate messages, it is helpful to provide a theoretical and ethical underpinning for the vital need to expose meatwashing as a particularly harmful form of greenwashing. Therefore, this section will briefly highlight some of the main lines of thought that ground this piece in ecocriticism. Ecocriticism is vital to the exploration of the politics of food and to understanding food as a political language and as a form of power. Indeed, Greg Garrard maintains that “ecocriticism is an avowedly political mode of analysis” in which “cultural analyses [are] explicitly [linked] to a ‘green’ moral and political agenda.” 33 An ecocritical viewpoint in this discussion will enable a consideration of non-human animals as sentient beings that are worthy of improved lives and treatment in the food industry, among other areas of human-animal contact or intersection, such as humanowned animals as pets, or in commercial enterprises like circuses, zoos, or sports like rodeos, 34 which are beyond the scope of this discussion on the politics of fast food. In considering the food industry as part and parcel of American politics, an ecocritical perspective turns attention to patriotic American symbology, from our longstanding penchant for “meat and potatoes” to the annual Thanksgiving slaughter of the beautiful, peaceful bird that founding father Benjamin Franklin originally wished would be our national

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symbol, the turkey. Food is deeply imbricated into American political consciousness, ranging from the rapidly vanishing populist farmer who is our food’s idealized producer, to the meals prepared on patriotic holidays, including the ubiquitous meat barbeque on the Fourth of July. Corn has become one of Americans’ greatest symbols of the heartland, even if today much of it is grown for use as a high-energy, fattening animal feed and for energy subsidies as ethanol instead of food. 35 Beyond food’s significance to American cultural norms and patriotism, food is political because it reminds us of our fragile existence and reliance on the fickleness of our natural environment. Crops dried up and blew away in the American Dust Bowl years, causing massive exodus and widespread poverty and hunger, as documented by the great American photographer Dorothea Lange, whose images serve as metonyms for American resilience and the vulnerability of the American democratic experiment. American politics have long promised, but proven largely incapable of delivering on, equality and abundance for all. To help us sort out the ways that food is a sociocultural and deeply political necessity, ecocriticism traverses “disciplinary boundaries” while it owes its epistemological and ontological heft to “its close relationship with the science of ecology” that is concerned with “important environmental threats faced by the world today.” 36 One of the most pressing threats, according to environmental ethicist Brian Henning, is “inefficient and environmentally destructive . . . intensive livestock production,” especially that of CAFOs. 37 Henning describes CAFOs this way: “cattle are often crammed into feedlots shoulder to shoulder knee deep in their own excrement, pigs are kept in confined sow crates with little room to move, chickens are frequently kept in poorly ventilated sheds . . . in overcrowded cages.” 38 Beyond the obvious suffering forced upon these animals, which are treated merely as industrial pre-meat objects, is extensive political wrangling about where in the world, literally, can the smelly, environmentally polluting CAFOs be newly established to support the world’s following of Americans’ lead in increased desire to eat ever larger quantities of meat. 39 The earth’s logistical limits to support capitalistic and exponential growth in meat-eating has political and cultural implications. However, there is insufficient space here to engage with arguments that advocate for specific actions, such as veganism, which in any case is not my intent. This discussion leaves out cogent arguments for total, organic veganism to other scholars and activists, which is a culturally situated, contentious debate. 40 Instead, my concern is understanding and uncovering the politics of food occurring via meatwashing, as will be made evident in the subsequent analysis of the suasory communicative gymnastics required by Chipotle to claim environmental sustainability is possible with a meats-reliant corporate profit motive. To that end, “[o]ne ecocritical way of reading,” adds Garrard, “is to see contributions to environmental de-

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bate as examples of rhetoric.” 41 Specifically in this case, I turn attention to Chipotle’s apparent uses of rhetorical devices as means to deflect attention away from debate. Using an ecocritical approach to rhetorical analysis is a means of questioning how truly “environmental” the company’s practices and products are, especially given its current and projected rapid rates of growth. What this discussion, which is based in an ecocritical orientation, does is to question Chipotle’s corporate portrayals of animals, contrasting such portrayals with more accurate depictions of the kind of lived experiences of many of the animals that Chipotle has increasingly used for meats in its chain restaurants. While clearly Chipotle is nowhere near the polluting, corporate “villain” that McDonalds may be in terms of “Mickie D’s” far reaching environmental impacts, neither does McDonald’s avidly purport to be a squeaky clean, environmentally “sustainable” fast-food operation the way that Chipotle does. For this reason, while by no means letting other major fast food chains like McDonald’s off the hook, it is valid to explore any duplicitousness in the public presentation of Chipotle as a “greener” rival to be reckoned with, as a powerhouse in the bustling burrito sector of the fast food market. Chipotle’s meatwashing is problematic and merits scrutiny from an ecocritical perspective. For Garrard, “since intensive livestock farming is objectionable on both environmental and welfare grounds, animal studies” form both “ally” and “branch” of ecocriticism. 42 Here I also follow the lead of Stibbe’s research, which requests a reconsideration on the part of both the public and private sectors, especially “consumizens,” that animals merit greater attention, more accurate public sphere portrayals, respect, and improved treatment by humans. Stibbe’s research has “examined destructive discourses that objectify animals and justify intensive farming systems, with negative consequences for both animals and the ecological systems that support life.” 43 This perspective necessitates, at minimum, a recognition of the necessity for changes in the ways we as a society think about and consume animals literally and figuratively. Stibbe asserts that ecocritics have the responsibility to “look at animals” not just as sentient beings capable of experiencing emotions like fear and physical sensations such as pain, but “because if we do not [reenvision animals] we might overlook the fact that we are violating . . . [them, which] inevitably leads to their suffering as well as to ecological damage.” 44 In terms of a teleology, many ecocritics urge, among a diverse array of other environmentally sound changes in humans’ relationships to the natural environment, a decreased consumption of meat, and a change in the way animals are treated, and in the way livestock animals’ bodily meats are regulated, produced and marketed to the public. Ecocritical perspectives demand greater transparency from corporate and government entities that supervise, run, and advertise the food industry, as well as greater accountability and responsibility on the part of consumizens individually, in small groups like family settings, in large or-

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ganizations like universities or corporations, 45 as well as by states regionally, by countries nationally, and by global processes of commerce internationally. The concept of consumizen includes all sides of the same, multifaceted consumer-as-citizen and vice versa conceptualization of a participant in a capitalist economy under globalization. Global consumizens may be responsible or irresponsible, or both, depending upon the items being consumed and voted on. As consumers, people may enact or even bolster citizenship choices, such as joining boycotts made famous to speed the ending of South Africa’s apartheid regime, and protests in recent years of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and its (mis)treatment of Palestinians. Conversely, when voters support politicians and policies that focus exclusively on economic benefits, such as more jobs and profits, with little or no regard for negative environmental, social, cultural or other impacts, the concept of consumizen can be considered in a more derogatory light. As will be explored below, the interesting aspect of Chipotle’s corporate symbolic presentation is that it seems to be designed to appeal to consumizens who aspire to be environmentally conscious in their purchasing decisions, but who are probably not inclined to go so far as to question, much less boycott, Chipotle for its seeming waffling between aspirationally pro-environmental business practices and actually practicing environmental policies that could hurt its bottom line. In short, Chipotle’s symbolic representation seems to rely on a derisive conceptualization of consumizen. Voting, consuming humans affect non-voting, unrepresented animals who are consumed. For Stibbe, ecocritical discourse analysis helps to demonstrate the myriad “ways animals have been excluded from discussions of language and power,” especially since animals are unable to “use language to resist how they have been discursively constructed” as lesser beings. 46 This “coercive power,” argues Stibbe, is exerted on animals in modern societies by technocrats in large scale food industries, a process that also “depends on the consent of the majority of the human population, who explicitly or implicitly agree to the way animals are treated every time they buy animal products.” 47 Ecocriticism of messages surrounding the use of animal products as food, fashion, medical resources, and for other industrial purposes, entails asking questions that reveal rather than obscure non-human animals as sentient beings. One crucial question to ask is how a host of discursive, visual, symbolic and corporeal messages communicates and “influences the way that animals are socially constructed, and hence treated, by human society in general discourse as well as the discourse of animal products industries?” 48 Power inequities normalizing violence against animals exist in countless everyday expressions, such as a good idea being often metaphorically conveyed as the violent “killing two birds with one stone” instead of the common, nonviolent backyard experience of “feeding two birds with one

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feeder.” Taken to an epic industrial scale, then, technocratic discourses about food specifically reduce animals from the status of being countable and numerically individual sentient beings like “a lamb” or “a chicken” to the lesser status of being portrayed as unknowable mass things or objects, “some lamb” or “some chicken.” One comparable scenario in terms of humans is when investigators are called in following a genocide to uncover and assess human remains. Cultural norms surrounding meat as food help efface power inequities between human animals and non-human animals, along with the dire environmental consequences of this equation. Speciesism is the prevalent Western ideology that merits human animals as being over and above the value of non-human animals. Charles Patterson has made the uncomfortable and controversial argument that the way the Nazis conducted the Holocaust is comparable to the way contemporary society propagandistically and physically treats its food animals. 49 Meatwashing techniques indicate an acknowledgment that “meating” is a fraught practice. Awkward puns included, symbolically, discursively and in terms of a political voice, animals do not count; it is deemed socially and morally acceptable, in real and metaphoric senses, when animals are rendered. Aside from questioning harms to animals resulting from the epic scale of modern food systems, ecocriticism also ponders the many harms to humans. People working in the worst aspects of the food industry are deeply imbricated into the agribusiness food model. Slaughter houses, where injuries such as severed human limbs occur, continue to try to reduce elevated turnover rates because the jobs are so dangerous and disgusting. 50 Workers who must physically move massive numbers of animals, such as cattle, pigs, or chickens, are also dehumanized by their lesser socio-political-economic status, such as being immigrants. One scene from the documentary film, Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home, which details rampant animal abuses in the food industry, shows what appears to be a Latino immigrant worker, cruelly kicking chickens as he frantically is forced to meet quotas, moving live chickens as if they were already an inert, unfeeling food “commodity.” 51 Both the human and the animals depicted in this scene experience oppression, albeit in different ways and in different scales. 52 This is a very different depiction of Latino ethnicity from the artful “Mexican” theme in the glossy corporate identity put forth by Chipotle’s décor and menu. With the basic tenets of ecocriticism having been summarized above, emphasizing rhetorical study of sociocultural communication about animals as a key branch of ecocriticism, the discussion next turns to exploring Chipotle’s corporate communications on animals. Specifically, the analysis will compare and contrast some of the ways that Chipotle has portrayed animals, and its sources of animals used for meat production, versus its actual practices, that is to say, industrial food practices Chipotle’s representatives have politely referred to as “conventional.” The key

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question driving the following ecocritical analysis is what, if any, disparity can be found between the treatment of substantial numbers of animals that the company relies on for its meats as derived from large-scale agribusiness, versus the treatment depicted in the restaurant chain’s aspirational corporate messages? CHIPOTLE’S MEATWASHING In late summer of 2014 I noticed that Chipotle had changed its “Food With Integrity” menu placards at the Bowling Green, Ohio location by my campus where I sometimes went to eat a vegetarian bean salad for lunch. Previously for many years, the large, overhead menu placard from which customers routinely order showed adorable, pictorial icons of a cuddly chicken, a perky pig, and cute cow above statements about Chipotle’s chicken, pork and beef products being “antibiotic-free” and “added hormones-free,” as shown in the photograph in Figure 1. Suddenly, however, the change came; now on the new menu placard the sweet little images were gone, no longer were there the cute picture icons, and, more interestingly, the new sign was conspicuously missing the statements about food products being free from antibiotics and added hormones. What had necessitated the change? At about this time in 2014 food markets were experiencing continued meat and vegetable shortages due to prior seasons’ droughts and other weather related problems, especially Texas’s and California’s long-term, severe droughts, the former being a state where large numbers of cattle for beef are raised (including at the gigantic ranch of former U.S. President George W. Bush), 53 and the latter being a state known for its lettuce and avocado crops, among green produce items sold at Chipotle. Chipotle has made claims to considering reducing or eliminating its reliance on selling guacamole, which is made from avocados, as a means to reduce its carbon footprint; 54 however, considering avocados are less expensive to buy and ship long distances than meat products, this argument seems like a red (meat) herring of sorts to deflect attention away from Chipotle’s sizeable and ever growing carbon footprint from its “conventionally sourced” meat products. So it was during this time frame in 2014 I noticed the small, countertop sign about Chipotle’s serving of “conventional meats” appearing at both of its Bowling Green and Perrysburg, Ohio locations. Meanwhile, Chipotle’s web site has continued to show images of tidy livestock being lovingly tended by smiling farmers. At its “Food With Integrity” web link, there is a stylized notebook with three tabs listing, “Animals,” “People,” and “Environment.” 55 When one’s computer mouse runs over the “Animals” tab, a cute little post-it styled note pops up, featuring the “punny,” tongue-in-cheek slogan, “We treat them like

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animals. . . . Naturally raised,” along with a cut-out photograph of a clean, pink pig standing on a patch of grass. Below that is the link, “More about our animals,” which, when clicked on, takes one to the web page titled, “We Treat Them Like Animals.” 56 The “Pork” link on this page features more adorable pictures of clean pigs and chubby, dear little piglets; the page displays bold claims such as, “Naturally Raised: Naturally raised animals means they are treated in a humane way, fed a vegetarian diet, never given hormones, and are allowed to display their natural tendencies”; and also “since 2001, Chipotle has sourced 100 percent of our pork from producers who follow these guidelines.” The overall impression that the web site visitor gets is of a “natural” or even idealized pig’s life experience. When one follows the “Beef” link, there is a beautiful, Western scenery photograph of a small herd of classic, Holstein looking cattle with black-and-white fur; the herd is standing in a beautiful grassy field with a forested hilltop in the background. The statement reads: “Today, thanks to increased demand, we source 100 percent of our beef from ranches that meet or exceed our naturally raised standards. Once in awhile we do experience a shortage in certain areas of the country and we’ll let you know at the restaurants if that happens [italics added].” 57 The information that is missing is exactly which areas of the country? How large are these areas? How many Chipotle outlets serve these areas? Moreover, how often is the frequency of the vague, colloquial, folksy sounding “once in awhile”? Also, as noted in Figure 1, in-store menu-board changes appear to depart from Chipotle’s web messages, which have at this writing not yet been updated to remove the cuddly images and “hormone-free” promises. Clearly, from my observations in visits to two Chipotle stores in my area during the summer of 2014, the countertop sign alerting customers to the deviation from their “naturally raised” policy appeared more frequently than not. From these conflicting messages, Chipotle appears to wish to continue having its corporate meat cake and eating it, too. The urge to create the impression of sustainability while not fully upholding that goal has led Chipotle to exhibit, beyond its web presence, some other seemingly prevaricating public relations semantics. For instance, according to Chipotle’s April, 2014 quarterly disclosure, Some of our restaurants served conventionally raised beef during the first quarter of 2014 and some are continuing to serve conventionally raised beef, due to supply constraints for our Responsibly Raised meats. A small number of restaurants also served commodity chicken for a short time during the first quarter of 2014 due to weather-related shortages. More of our restaurants may periodically serve conventionally raised meats in the future due to supply constraints. When we become aware that one or more of our restaurants will serve conventionally raised meat, we clearly and specifically disclose this temporary change on signage

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Ellen W. Gorsevski in each affected restaurant, so that customers can avoid those meats if they choose to do so [italics added]. 58

From this statement the burden of making environmentally friendly eating selections shifts from Chipotle as the corporate producer to the individual consumizen, who must be on the lookout for the small countertop sign alerting customers to the fact that factory farmed beef products and “commodity chicken” are being sold at that time. Once alerted to the lack of beef, pork or chicken as food that has “Integrity” then Chipotle’s consumizen is the one who is called upon to “avoid those meats” but— conveniently for the drive to increase sales—only if they “choose” to do so. Chipotle makes claims to rely most on local food sources, so Chipotle could just as easily put up a countertop or menu sign that is common for dishes that run out at other locally sourced restaurants, namely, “sold out.” However, thus far that has not been the practice. Chipotle’s actions in avoiding taking leadership and profit setbacks to tell customers that Chipotle will not sell any factory farmed or mass produced livestock meats at all during the increasingly prevalent periods of shortages demonstrates its oxymoronic position. Namely, Chipotle appears to prioritize the selling of more food, of any kind of quality, with or without “Integrity,” rather than maintaining its stated corporate mission. 59 What seems noticeably missing from Chipotle’s above excerpted quarterly statement is information about its meat inputs and outputs. In its quarterly statement, no numbers whatsoever, nor data in the form of percentages, are provided. Chipotle’s absence of transparency about such crucial information points to the possibility that as a fast food corporation, it simply cannot live up to its stated mission of providing consumers with “Food With Integrity.” In 2013 Chipotle spokesperson Chris Arnold admitted that there is a need to diverge from its goal of using antibioticsfree and hormones-injected-free meats because “we just need more. . . . And the supply of naturally raised beef is certainly tight.” 60 As the foregoing discussion has demonstrated, in Chipotle’s shifting between statements of “100 percent naturally raised” to conversely characterizing meats as “conventional” and “commodity,” there is a conflict of visual and mission messages with the substance of its actions and practices. “Conventional” and “commodity” meats are autocratic terms, which Stibbe has noted are the telltale signs of mass agribusiness’s objectifying discourses that enable non-human animal suffering, as well as human suffering on the part of people laboring in the “conventional” factory farm, slaughterhouse, or fast-food, minimum-wage restaurant. Chipotle’s apparently shifty visual and textual rhetorical shenanigans appear to represent perfectly the oxymoron of aspiring to be simultaneously environmentally sustainable and a growing, profit-bearing, fast-food operation.

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CONCLUSION: “AIMING” HIGHER FOR HUMAN AND NONHUMAN ANIMALS The rhetorical practice of meatwashing may be summarized as the visual, aural, symbolic and discursive omission or minimization of accurate depictions and messages about the industrial practices that surround animals used as meats, and the non-farmer status of the labor of humans who are often treated in debased ways throughout the trajectory of the processing of livestock and later, livestock animals’ bodily dismemberment and reduction into meats. Depicting both human and non-human animals in a more accurate, transparent way would be, and is, upsetting. What is at stake/steak here is the politics of food: the powerful purchasing and voting habits of consumizens to drive corporate, agribusiness sales and profits. Consumizen behaviors that are uncritical of meatwashing help to support the status quo of a less than minimal conceptualization of rights for non-human animals and for humans as lower-end, food business laborers whose work often occurs symbolically and geographically distant from farms depicted in advertising. Rhetorical critics might advance the critique of meatwashing from this chapter’s discussion in a number of ways. Critics and students of rhetoric and propaganda studies could support and extend the work of environmental critics and activists by discovering, critiquing, and sharing information about how corporate messages surrounding meat are apparently usually scrubbed clean intentionally in order to influence consumizens’ purchasing and voting habits. Meatwashing is a discursive, visual, auditory, interactive, and embodied symbolic influencing process that draws on—in varying valences and measures—inherently suasory sociocultural resources to hide animal suffering. As rhetorical capital, these resources are provided with the appearance of depth and truth; being based as they are in history, and ranging from patriotism to folklore and other areas, these influential assets are versatile and comprise tactics that further rationales for constant economic growth. Future studies on the politics of food could uncover both government and corporate messages where meatwashing clearly appears to alter the accuracy of data presented in the messages, and therefore portends to influence human behaviors within post-capital globalization. Comparative studies internationally would also be fruitful for ecocritics to explore. For instance, studies could be constructive in observing how meatwashing invokes patriotism and folklore in the United States versus in other developed or developing nations. Future studies could productively explore a variety of meatwashings from disciplinary specialty areas of communication, such as organizational meatwashing or intercultural meatwashing. For example, intercultural communication studies into meatwashing could explore how many developed societies and cultures that have previously revered (but ate far less of) highly

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symbolized animals, such as horses, but which are now using those formerly revered cultural icons as meat-food. Animals such as horses have often been thought of as respected and venerated sentient beings, partners in the American Western cowboy iconography, and (as opposed to cattle) comparatively less used for meats. Via corporate communicative and political practices, including “cattle-ranching lobbying” that has undermined the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon, wild horses in the U.S. are violently rounded up and sent in miserable conditions to slaughter by the thousands. 61 How could horses, so long a symbol of American Western power, come to be rendered into mere poundage used for industrial meat? It seems reasonable to speculate that meatwashing is probably involved, which calls for future study. Likewise, in 2013, a scandal erupted in Europe when the media alerted consumizens to the discomfiting fact that Ikea, that family-friendly retailer of cost-conscious, cozy family furniture, had sold in the Czech Republic not just beef meats for its cafeteria’s famous “Swedish meatballs,” but that Ikea had in reality also used horse meat, which was discovered by DNA testing. 62 This kind of clash between myth and reality points to the need for studies of meatwashing to unveil communication practices of corporations and governments that affect a variety of non-human animals and the human consumizens ingesting these sentient beings, formerly symbols of national might but later reduced to living meat-food-units wielding little to no respect, much less rights or power. While there is insufficient space here to develop it further, one crucial avenue of future research that remains to be explored is the labor critique related to Chipotle’s and other corporate and government meatwashing practices. The labor linkage occurs, for instance, in Chipotle’s web presence and television commercials up to 2014, which valorize the patriotic, populist trope of “farmer” in Chipotle’s promise to “respect” farmers. The bucolic images of farms and kindly faces of white, land-owning farmers displayed on Chipotle’s televised and web messages, up to and circa 2014, are not “commodity” or “conventional” factory farms. “Conventional” sites of animals-to-meats production are typically large, industrial scale animal feedlots with densely packed animals, and not the picturesque farms showcased in advertising. Why are such “conventional” livestock factory locales missing in visual rhetorical form of images and in textual form of words, on Chipotle’s website and television commercials? Meatwashing means that images of animals living in subpar conditions must be scrubbed, omitted, downplayed or euphemized via corporate-speak and what amounts, in visual terms, to corporate selfie snapshots that have been photoshopped to crop out unsightliness. Meatwashing, which selectively shows some facts and images while obfuscating others, facilitates fast-food scale consumption both of meats and of inaccurate portrayals of animals from whence meats come. In short, for

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animals-as-meats to be sufficiently palatable in digestive and symbolic forms, meatwashing invites the public to perceive animals as coming from a mythic, idealized, universal farm; meanwhile, meatwashing simultaneously hides the existence of “conventional” factory feedlots that reduce living, breathing, feeling animals to inanimate “commodities.” Meatwashing entreats the collusion of consumizens in not seeing as much as in seeing. Aside from sobering environmental ramifications, it is worthwhile for people who are shaped by forces of globalization into consumizen status to be more aware of meatwashing practices for many reasons. From a dearth of space, I focus here on two key reasons. First, the health and safety of human populations is put at risk when industrial scale animal production causes increased outbreaks of foodborne illnesses, such as from mass production and consumption of e-coli tainted meats. Second, implicated within mass scale or “commodity” meat production is the necessarily low wage, dangerous work of moving live animals through the process of factory livestock feeding and holding centers to slaughterhouses. Undergirding and unmentioned in meatwashing, these nasty, mostly hidden jobs are increasingly more often done by immigrant workers, who are often non-white, non-land-owning, and who have little or no political power. In meatwashing, the actively disappeared and unmentionable counterpart to the “respect” for the farmer seems to be an implied disrespect for the low-wage laborer working in feedlot conditions, whether in the “conventional” factory feedlot, in the slaughterhouse, or in the fast-food operation itself. Gargantuan industrial scale, “conventional” foods usually entail great suffering on the part of both human and non-human animals. Garrard reminds us that in “industrialization . . . most animals are removed from everyday life, and the meat production process [is] hidden away.” 63 While beautiful images on artfully made web sites, imaginative videos, and television commercials show happy animals in countryside settings befitting Grandma Moses paintings, along with healthy consumers delighting in eating plentiful, fresh meats and vegetables, the realities of the modern, mega-sized food production system is suppressed. Consumizens as audiences for such messages are invited to only see the “natural” side of the business, and to actively repress any consciousness they have about so-called “conventional” sources of foods, such as the GMO vegetables, or animals that are routinely hormone-injected to survive illnesses endemic to CAFOs. Henning, among others, points to the widespread use of antibiotics as a reason why resistant strains of “superbacteria” have increased, threatening both human and non-human animal populations with potentially untreatable illnesses. Another environmental concern of “commodity” styled food production is that when it comes to large scale cattle, chicken or pig farming, often local aquifers become infiltrated and polluted with waste products

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in the form of feces and urine that is contained in, and leaches into the water table from, enormous cesspools spanning many acres of land. The over-abundance and consumption of large quantities of cheap foods, especially industrial or “conventional” meats and cheeses, has implications for the health of populations consuming and voting for continued subsidies for these products and the agribusinesses that profit from them. 64 Meanwhile, blue-collar people working in the food industry, from the low-level worker who is frying the meats, to the immigrant laborers who usually subsist tenuously on minimum wages or less while keeping vast scale warehouse operations moving their “commodity” to market, are dehumanized. To survive such working conditions often means passively conforming to a corporate organizational norm of seeing and behaving in ways that are contrary to basic morals. For example, a normally bustling Chipotle that both employs and serves students at the Pennsylvania State University’s main campus was shut down in September of 2014 when most of its managers quit. One staffer, a Penn State student named Stephen Healy, put up a sign, which read: “Want to know why [we’re] closed? Ask our corporate offices why our employees are forced to work in borderline sweatshop conditions. Almost the entire management and crew have resigned. People > Profits. Trend it. Help spread awareness. #Chipotle. ChipotleSwag.” 65 Things must have been sufficiently miserable for employees in that situation to have reached the point of making this typically busy fast-food outlet both a local and national story. 66 Writing for Penn State’s student newspaper, Natalie Weston and Kate Warrington reported that at this hectic location, Chipotle’s “Employees . . . [work] well over the hours they are scheduled for, sometimes working up to 11 hours with no break or food. . . . The kitchen space is also illequipped for the amount of business they frequently experience. . . .” 67 While in the news piece Weston and Warrington were careful not to overgeneralize that this alleged “sweatshop” circumstance is the experience of all restaurant locations in the chain, it was still deemed important to call attention to such a situation being unacceptable at even a single outlet. “People shouldn’t have to work under these conditions,” Healy reportedly stated. The story notes that following the store’s shutdown, Chipotle promptly called in its corporate publicist, Chris Arnold, to smooth things over. At the same time, workers in key stages of the food processing phases, before food products are even shipped to individual stores, have also reported suffering. In rendering animals as mass things, these human workers are compelled to ignore and repress the mass suffering of their non-human animal counterparts. Given all these facts, it is clear that the current food system is broken, and, in many respects, is neither sustainable nor ethical for both human and non-human animals. 68 As a customer of Chipotle, I have written this ecocritical essay as a challenge to the company, and other fast food giants, to change by adding substance and

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accuracy to their corporate narratives and practices, making everything jibe for actual, not virtual, environmental sustainability. 69 Until that challenge is taken up, 70 behind the happy, shiny statements about and images of livestock such as cattle fit for a John Wayne movie, there are other stories to be gathered and told. The politics of fast food reflect the American post-industrial landscape, economy, and democratic system, which is geared to favor corporations over citizens/consumers. The present politics of the food system feeds and speeds environmental entropy, which will continue to impact the lives of people and animals. If we are what we eat, we should be troubled indeed. NOTES 1. Christopher Nolan, Interstellar, directed by Christopher Nolan (2014; Burbank, California: Paramount/Warner Brothers), motion picture; Peter Woit, “To Mars and Beyond,” Not Even Wrong (blog), April 14, 2013. http://www.math.columbia.edu/ ~woit/wordpress/?p=5741. 2. On my home landline in October 2014, my telephone caller identification showed a call identified as “Consumer Voter,” so at political mid-term election time, consumer first and voter second seems to be the order of priority in ranking the value of means of participating in American democratic politics. 3. Chito Peppler (2011). Greenwashing presentation at GWU. YouTube video, 7:25, February 10, 2011. Accessed from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= BVwdtyOCQOs. 4. David Ervin, JunJie Wu, Madhu Khanna, Cody Jones, and Teresa Wirkkala, “Motivations and Barriers to Corporate Environmental Management,” Business Strategy & The Environment (John Wiley and Sons, Inc) 22, no. 6 (2013): 390–409. Environment Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed October 24, 2014); Finn Frandsen and Winni Johansen, “Rhetoric, Climate Change, and Corporate Identity Management,” Management Communication Quarterly 25, no. 3 (2011): 511–530. 5. Jennifer Budinsky and Susan Bryant, “‘It’s not easy being green’: The Greenwashing of Environmental Discourses in Advertising,” Canadian Journal of Communication 38 (2013): 207–226. 6. Robert A. Jacobs, The Dragon’s Tail: Americans Face the Atomic Age (Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), 18–19. 7. Jacobs, The Dragon’s Tail, 19. 8. Alex Green, “Dumping on the Great Lakes: Port Huron Council Asked to Oppose Canadian Plan to Bury Nuclear Waste,” Sandusky Register, November 12, 2013. http://www.sanduskyregister.com/article/lake-erie/4897936. 9. Catherine A. Ramus and Ivan Montiel, “When Are Corporate Environmental Polices a Form of Greenwashing?” Business Society 44 (2005): 377–414. 10. Budinsky and Bryant, “It’s Not Easy Being ‘Green,’” 213–223. 11. Alexander D. Blanchette, Conceiving Porkopolis: The Production of Life on the American ‘Factory’ Farm. [Dissertation.] University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology, 2014. 12. Brian Henning, “Standing in Livestock’s ‘Long Shadow’: The Ethics of Eating Meat on a Small Planet,” Ethics and the Environment 16 (2011): 63–93. 13. Gwynne Dyer, Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats (London, UK: Oneworld Publications, 2011). 14. Arran Stibbe, Animals Erased: Discourse, Ecology, and Reconnection with the Natural World (Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2012). 15. Henning, “Livestock’s ‘Long Shadow,’” 63.

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16. Alex Anonymous, Email to Author, May 2, 2014, Investor Relations, Chipotle Mexican Grille. In spring of 2014, I submitted to Chipotle’s web interface this question: “What is the ratio of meat you sell to consumers that comes from ‘naturally raised’ sources versus that which you sell from ‘conventionally raised’ sources?” The email I received from Chipotle in response to my query reads as follows: Hello Ellen, Thank you for the inquiry below. We don’t disclose the actual percentage related to your question below. Please find our most recent disclosures related to this matter below. In our [2013] annual report, we also indicated that we purchased over 140 million pounds of responsibly raised meat (more than any other restaurant company that we are aware of). In the case of beef, due to low herd sizes in both commodity and responsibly raised beef, sourcing all responsibly raised beef has been relatively more challenging the last few quarters. When we do serve commodity meat, we fully disclose that at the specific restaurant where it is served so our customers are aware of this and can make an informed menu ordering decision. These shortages are usually short in duration at any given store or market level [italics added]. Thank you, Alex [no last name provided] 17. Alex Anonymous, Email to Author. 18. Steve Ells, “Steve’s Story: Letter From Steve,” Chipotle Mexican Grill, Retrieved October 7, 2014 from http://www.chipotle.com/en-us/chipotle_story/steves_story/ steves_story.aspx. 19. Dana Liebelson, “Behind the Burrito: 5 Things Chipotle’s Ads Don’t Tell You,” Mother Jones.com, September 25, 2013. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/09/ chipotle-commercial-sustainable-food-truth; Venessa Wong, “There Aren’t Enough Antibiotic-Free Cows for Chipotle,” Businessweek.com, August 4, 2013. http:// www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-14/there-arent-enough-antibiotic-free-cowsfor-chipotle. 20. Roben Farzad, “Chipotle: the One that Got Away from McDonald’s,” Business Week, October 3, 2013. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-03/chipotle-theone-that-got-away-from-mcdonalds. 21. Anonymous, “What is Food With Integrity?” Chipotle, Accessed October 7, 2014 from http://www.chipotle.com/en-us/fwi/fwi.aspx. 22. Ells, “Letter from Steve,” 3. 23. Web poster StuySquare’s comment on article by Farzad, “Chipotle: the One that Got Away.” 24. Despite inroads into the American Midwest made by purveyors of ethnic community foods, such as from small, local grocers or eating venues in small chains or mom and pop restaurants, featuring Mexican, Indian, Chinese, or Thai cuisines, folklorists suggest that fried and heavily meat-based, bland comfort foods are still prevalent in the Midwest region. For instance, see: Rich Pirog and Zach Paskiet, “Iowa’s Potential for Developing Place-based and Traditional Foods,” Leopold Center, Iowa State University, 2004, Accessed November 11, 2014 from http:// www.leopold.iastate.edu/sites/default/files/pubs-and-papers/2004-10-geographytaste-iowas-potential-developing-place-based-and-traditional-foods.pdf. Also, the economic and corporate agribusiness operations that profit from the use of heavy fertilizers and monoculture, especially the single-mass crops of corn intensively cultivated in the Midwestern states like Iowa, contribute to the cultural sway of bland comfort foods in the American Midwest; for details, see: Bryan Walsh, “Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food,” Time-CNN, August 21, 2009. Accessed from: http:// www.nrdp.net/uufsa/EE3high percent20price percent20cheap percent20food.pdf. In general, restaurant and travel sites on the Internet feature the commonly held assumption that Midwesterners often prefer bland food, for example, Tripadvisor, a travel tips web site, offers this restaurant review: “Bland Mexican food, perfect for Midwestern palates.” Tripadvisor.com Accessed November 11, 2014 from http:// www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g39214-d1174518-r191960194-El_MazatlanBowling_Green_Kentucky.html

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25. John Berman, “Chipotle’s Fast Food Facelift: From Choice Ingredients to Quality Livestock, Chipotle Aims To Alter Fast Food,” ABC News Nightline, June 17, 2009. Accessed October 7, 2014 from http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video?id=7857921. 26. Farzad, “Chipotle: the One that Got Away,” 3. 27. Chris Nichols, “Chipotle’s Wrong: Fast Food Isn’t Going Away,” Yahoo Finance, September 9, 2014, 13. Accessed September 23, 2014 from http://finance/yahoo.com/ news/chipotle-s-wrong--fast-food-isn-t-going-away. 28. John McDuling, “Chipotle’s Plan to Take Over America Starts With Being on Every Corner in Washington, DC,” Quartz.com, May 6, 2014. Accessed September 23, 2014 from http://Chipotle’s-plan-to-take-over-america-starts-with-being-on-every-corner-in-WashingtonDC. 29. Liebelson, “Chipotle’s Ads Don’t Tell,” 1 and 6. 30. Alex Anonymous, Email to Author, May 2, 2014, Investor Relations, Chipotle Mexican Grille. Also, in terms of investment opportunities, “commodity” commonly refers to “gold, oil or livestock” futures, which are mass produced, and which are invested in across international markets. See: “Definition of ‘Commodity Funds,’” Mutual Fund, IndiaTimes.com. Accessed November 11, 2014 from http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/commodity-funds. 31. Liebelson, “Chipotle’s Ads Don’t Tell,” 2. 32. Liebelson, “Chipotle’s Ads Don’t Tell,” 2. 33. Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism: the New Critical Idiom (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), 3. 34. Shani, Amir; Pizam, Abraham. “Towards an Ethical Framework for AnimalBased Attractions.” International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 20 (2008): 679–693. 35. Aaron Wolf, King Corn, directed by Aaron Wolf, documentary film, (Balcony Releasing, 2007). 36. Garrard, Ecocriticism, 5. 37. Henning, “Livestock’s ‘Long Shadow,’” 64. 38. Henning, “Livestock’s ‘Long Shadow,’” 66. 39. Like many countries internationally, Asian nations, for example, have experienced a drastic increase in meat consumption. See: Beth Hoffman, “How Increased Meat Consumption in China Changes Landscapes Across the Globe,” Forbes.com, March 26, 2014. Accessed November 11, 2014 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/bethhoffman/2014/03/26/how-increased-meat-consumption-in-china-changes-landscapesacross-the-globe/ See also: “Surf vs. Turf: New Trends Are Changing Japan’s Traditional Food-consumption Habits,” Knowledge@Wharton, December 20, 2013. Accessed November 11, 2014 from http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/surf-vsturf-new-trends-changing-japans-traditional-food-consumption-habits/. 40. See, for instance: Carol Adams, “Ecofeminism and the Eating of Animals,” Hypatia 6 (1991): 125–145; Carol Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York, NY: Continuum, 1990); Val Plumwood, “Babe, the Tale of the Speaking Meat: Part I,” Australian Humanities Review 51 (2011), accessed from http:/ /www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-November-2011/plumwood.html. 41. Garrard, Ecocriticism, 6. 42. Garrard, Ecocriticism, 149. 43. Stibbe, Animals Erased, 189. 44. Stibbe, Animals Erased, 190. 45. Krishna S. Dhir, “Corporate Communication through Nonviolent Rhetoric,” Corporate Communication: An International Journal 11 (2006): 249–266. 46. Stibbe, Animals Erased, 19. 47. Stibbe, Animals Erased, 20. 48. Stibbe, Animals Erased, 22. 49. Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust (New York, NY: Lantern Books, 2002).

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50. Doug Hamilton, “Modern Meat: Industrial Meat,” Frontline, written, produced, directed by Doug Hamilton, PBS, 2002, documentary film series. 51. Jenny Stein, Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home, directed by Jenny Stein (Tribe of Heart Films, 2012) motion picture. 52. David Barboza, “Meatpackers’ Profits Hinge on Pool of Immigrant Labor,” The New York Times, December 21, 2001. Accessed from http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/ 21/us/meatpackers-profits-hinge-on-pool-of-immigrant-labor.html 53. In 2013, for instance, Texas was estimated to have produced over 4 million cattle for beef. See: Carol Pittman, “Texas Cattle Inventory by County,” National Agricultural Statistics Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2013, report. Accessed from http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Texas/Publications/County_Estimates/ cecatt1.htm. 54. Emily Atkin, “Chipotle Warns It Might Stop Serving Guacamole If Climate Change Gets Worse,” ClimateProgress.org, March 4, 2014. Accessed from http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/04/3360731/chipotle-guacamole-crisis/. 55. “Food With Integrity,” Chipotle.com, 2014. Accessed from http:// www.chipotle.com/en-us/fwi/fwi.aspx. 56. “We Treat Them Like Animals,” Chipotle.com, 2014. Accessed from http:// www.chipotle.com/en-us/fwi/animals/animals.aspx. 57. “We Treat Them Like Animals: Beef,” Chipotle.com, 2014. Accessed from http:// www.chipotle.com/en-us/fwi/animals/animals.aspx. 58. Alex Anonymous, Email to Author, 3. 59. Rhee Seung-Kyu and Su-Yol Lee. “Dynamic change of corporate environmental strategy: rhetoric and reality.” Business Strategy & The Environment (John Wiley & Sons, Inc) 12 (2003): 175–190. Environment Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed October 24, 2014). 60. Wong, “Aren’t Antibiotic-free Cows for Chipotle,” 3–4. 61. Anonymous, “Mustangs: The Killing Fields,” The Economist, June 28, 2008, 90; see also: Deanne Stillman, Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West, New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. 62. Kim Hjelmgaard, “Horse Meat Found in Ikea Meatballs,” USAToday, February 26, 2013. Accessed from http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/02/25/ horsemeat-scandal/1933037/. 63. Garrard, Ecocriticism, 152. 64. Anonymous, “Health & Environmental Implications of U.S. Meat Consumption & Production,” Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins Bloomburg School of Public Health, 2014. Accessed November 11, 2014 from http://www.jhsph.edu/research/ centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-a-livable-future/projects/meatless_monday/ resources/meat_consumption.html. 65. Quoted in photograph that appears with news story: Natalie Weston and Kate Warrington, “Chipotle in State College Closed as Workers Complain About Conditions,” The Daily Collegian, September 10, 2014. Accessed from http:// www.collegian.psu.edu/news/article_71885058-3902-11e4-90cb-0017a43b2370.html. 66. Joel Landau, “Employees at Penn State Chipotle Complain of Sweatshop Conditions,” New York Daily News, September 10, 2014. Accessed from http:// www.nydailynews.com/news/national/penn-state-chipotle-employees-complainsweatshop-conditions-article-1.1934818. 67. Weston and Warrington, “Chipotle Closed as Workers Complain,” 7. 68. Monika Hartmann, “Corporate Social Responsibility in the Food Sector,” European Review of Agricultural Economics 38 (2011): 297–324. 69. Charles H. Cho, Robin W. Roberts and Dennis M. Patten, “The Language of US Corporate Environmental Disclosure,” Accounting, Organizations and Society 35 (2010): 431–443; Scott R. Colwell, and Ashwin W. Joshi, “Corporate Ecological Responsiveness: Antecedent Effects of Institutional Pressure and Top Management Commitment and Their Impact on Organizational Performance,” Business Strategy & the Environment (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) 22 (2013): 73–91.

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70. See, for instance: Pratima Bansal and Kendall Roth, “Why Companies Go Green: A Model of Ecological Responsiveness,” The Academy of Management Journal 43 (2000): 717–736; Michael A. Berry and Dennis A. Rondinelli, “Proactive Corporate Environmental Management: A New Industrial Revolution,” The Academy of Management Executive 12 (1998): 38–50.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aaron Wolf, King Corn, directed by Aaron Wolf, documentary film (Balcony Releasing, 2007). Alex Anonymous, Email to Author, May 2, 2014, Investor Relations, Chipotle Mexican Grille. Alex Green, “Dumping on the Great Lakes: Port Huron Council Asked to Oppose Canadian Plan to Bury Nuclear Waste,” Sandusky Register, November 12, 2013. http://www.sanduskyregister.com/article/lake-erie/4897936. Alexander D. Blanchette, Conceiving Porkopolis: The Production of Life on the American ‘Factory’ Farm [Dissertation.] University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology, 2014. Anonymous, “Health & Environmental Implications of U.S. Meat Consumption & Production,” Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins Bloomburg School of Public Health, 2014. Accessed November 11, 2014 from http://www.jhsph.edu/research/ centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-a-livable-future/projects/meatless_monday/ resources/meat_consumption.html Anonymous, “Mustangs: The Killing Fields,” The Economist, June 28, 2008, 90; see also: Deanne Stillman, Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West, New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. Anonymous, “What is Food With Integrity?” Chipotle, Accessed October 7, 2014 from http://www.chipotle.com/en-us/fwi/fwi.aspx. Arran Stibbe, Animals Erased: Discourse, Ecology, and Reconnection with the Natural World (Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2012). Beth Hoffman, “How Increased Meat Consumption in China Changes Landscapes Across the Globe,” Forbes.com, March 26, 2014. Accessed November 11, 2014 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/bethhoffman/2014/03/26/how-increased-meatconsumption-in-china-changes-landscapes-across-the-globe/. “Bland Mexican food, perfect for Midwestern palates.” Tripadvisor.com. Accessed November 11, 2014 from http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g39214d1174518-r191960194-El_Mazatlan-Bowling_Green_Kentucky.html. Brian Henning, “Standing in Livestock’s ‘Long Shadow’: The Ethics of Eating Meat on a Small Planet,” Ethics and the Environment 16 (2011): 63–93. Bryan Walsh, “Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food,” Time-CNN, August 21, 2009. Accessed from: http://www.nrdp.net/uufsa/EE3high percent20price percent20cheap percent20food.pdf. Carol Adams, “Ecofeminism and the Eating of Animals,” Hypatia 6 (1991): 125–145; Carol Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York, NY: Continuum, 1990) Carol Pittman, “Texas Cattle Inventory by County,” National Agricultural Statistics Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2013, report. Accessed from http://www. nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Texas/Publications/County_Estimates/cecatt1. htm. Catherine A. Ramus and Ivan Montiel, “When Are Corporate Environmental Policies a Form of Greenwashing?” Business Society 44 (2005): 377–414. Charles H. Cho, Robin W. Roberts and Dennis M. Patten, “The Language of US Corporate Environmental Disclosure,” Accounting, Organizations and Society 35 (2010): 431–443.

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Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust (New York, NY: Lantern Books, 2002). Chito Peppler (2011). Greenwashing presentation at GWU. YouTube video, 7:25, February 10, 2011. Accessed from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVwdtyOCQOs. Chris Nichols, “Chipotle’s Wrong: Fast Food Isn’t Going Away,” Yahoo Finance, September 9, 2014, 13. Accessed September 23, 2014 from http://finance/yahoo.com/ news/chipotle-s-wrong--fast-food-isn-t-going-away. Christopher Nolan, Interstellar, directed by Christopher Nolan (2014; Burbank, California: Paramount/Warner Brothers), motion picture. Dana Liebelson, “Behind the Burrito: 5 Things Chipotle’s Ads Don’t Tell You,” Mother Jones.com, September 25, 2013. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/09/ chipotle-commercial-sustainable-food-truth. David Barboza, “Meatpackers’ Profits Hinge on Pool of Immigrant Labor,” The New York Times, December 21, 2001. Accessed from http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/21/ us/meatpackers-profits-hinge-on-pool-of-immigrant-labor.html. David Ervin, JunJie Wu, Madhu Khanna, Cody Jones, and Teresa Wirkkala, “Motivations and Barriers to Corporate Environmental Management,” Business Strategy & The Environment (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) 22, no. 6 (2013): 390–409. Environment Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed October 24, 2014). “Definition of ‘Commodity Funds,’” Mutual Fund, IndiaTimes.com. Accessed November 11, 2014 from http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/commodityfunds. Doug Hamilton, “Modern Meat: Industrial Meat,” Frontline, written, produced, directed by Doug Hamilton, PBS, 2002, documentary film series. Emily Atkin, “Chipotle Warns It Might Stop Serving Guacamole If Climate Change Gets Worse,” ClimateProgress.org, March 4, 2014. Accessed from http:// thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/04/3360731/chipotle-guacamole-crisis/. Finn Frandsen and Winni Johansen, “Rhetoric, Climate Change, and Corporate Identity Management,” Management Communication Quarterly 25, no. 3 (2011): 511–530. “Food With Integrity,” Chipotle.com, 2014. Accessed from http://www.chipotle.com/ en-us/fwi/fwi.aspx. Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism: the New Critical Idiom (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), 3. Gwynne Dyer, Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats (London, UK: Oneworld Publications, 2011). Jennifer Budinsky and Susan Bryant, “‘It’s not easy being green’: The Greenwashing of Environmental Discourses in Advertising,” Canadian Journal of Communication 38 (2013): 207–226. Jenny Stein, Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home, directed by Jenny Stein (Tribe of Heart Films, 2012) motion picture. Joel Landau, “Employees at Penn State Chipotle Complain of Sweatshop Conditions,” New York Daily News, September 10, 2014. Accessed from http://www.nydailynews. com/news/national/penn-state-chipotle-employees-complain-sweatshopconditions-article-1.1934818. John Berman, “Chipotle’s Fast Food Facelift: From Choice Ingredients to Quality Livestock, Chipotle Aims to Alter Fast Food,” ABC News Nightline, June 17, 2009. Accessed October 7, 2014 from http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video?id=7857921. John McDuling, “Chipotle’s Plan to Take Over America Starts With Being on Every Corner in Washington, DC,” Quartz.com, May 6, 2014. Accessed September 23, 2014 from http://Chipotle’s-plan-to-take-over-america-starts-with-being-on-every-corner-in-Washington DC. Kim Hjelmgaard, “Horse Meat Found in Ikea Meatballs,” USAToday, February 26, 2013. Accessed from http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/02/25/ horsemeat-scandal/1933037/. Krishna S. Dhir, “Corporate Communication through Nonviolent Rhetoric,” Corporate Communication: An International Journal 11 (2006): 249–266.

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Michael A. Berry and Dennis A. Rondinelli, “Proactive Corporate Environmental Management: A New Industrial Revolution,” The Academy of Management Executive 12 (1998): 38–50. Monika Hartmann, “Corporate Social Responsibility in the Food Sector,” European Review of Agricultural Economics 38 (2011): 297–324. Peter Woit, “To Mars and Beyond,” Not Even Wrong (blog), April 14, 2013. http://www. math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=5741. Pratima Bansal and Kendall Roth, “Why Companies Go Green: A Model of Ecological Responsiveness,” The Academy of Management Journal 43 (2000): 717–736. Quoted in photograph that appears with news story: Natalie Weston and Kate Warrington, “Chipotle in State College Closed as Workers Complain About Conditions,” The Daily Collegian, September 10, 2014. Accessed from http://www. collegian.psu.edu/news/article_71885058-3902-11e4-90cb-0017a43b2370.html. Rhee Seung-Kyu and Su-Yol Lee. “Dynamic change of corporate environmental strategy: rhetoric and reality.” Business Strategy & The Environment (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) 12 (2003): 175–190. Environment Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed October 24, 2014). Rich Pirog and Zach Paskiet, “Iowa’s Potential for Developing Place-based and Traditional Foods,” Leopold Center, Iowa State University, 2004, Accessed November 11, 2014 from http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/sites/default/files/pubs-and-papers/200410-geography-taste-iowas-potential-developing-place-based-and-traditional-foods. pdf. Roben Farzad, “Chipotle: the One that Got Away from McDonald’s,” Business Week, October 3, 2013. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-03/chipotle-theone-that-got-away-from-mcdonalds. Robert A. Jacobs, The Dragon’s Tail: Americans Face the Atomic Age (Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), 18–19. Scott R. Colwell, and Ashwin W. Joshi, “Corporate Ecological Responsiveness: Antecedent Effects of Institutional Pressure and Top Management Commitment and Their Impact on Organizational Performance,” Business Strategy & the Environment (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) 22 (2013): 73–91. Shani, Amir; Pizam, Abraham. “Towards an Ethical Framework for Animal-Based Attractions.” International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 20 (2008): 679–693. Steve Ells, “Steve’s Story: Letter From Steve,” Chipotle Mexican Grill, Retrieved October 7, 2014 from http://www.chipotle.com/en-us/chipotle_story/steves_story/ steves_story.aspx. “Surf vs. Turf: New Trends Are Changing Japan’s Traditional Food-consumption Habits,” Knowledge@Wharton, December 20, 2013. Accessed November 11, 2014 from http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/surf-vs-turf-new-trendschanging-japans-traditional-food-consumption-habits/. Val Plumwood, “Babe, the Tale of the Speaking Meat: Part I,” Australian Humanities Review 51 (2011), accessed from http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/ archive/Issue-November-2011/plumwood.html. Vanessa Wong, “There Aren’t Enough Antibiotic-Free Cows for Chipotle,” Businessweek.com, August 4, 2013. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-14/therearent-enough-antibiotic-free-cows-for-chipotle. Web poster StuySquare’s comment on article by Farzad, “Chipotle: the One that Got Away.” “We Treat Them Like Animals,” Chipotle.com, 2014. Accessed from http://www. chipotle.com/en-us/fwi/animals/animals.aspx. “We Treat Them Like Animals: Beef,” Chipotle.com, 2014. Accessed from http://www. chipotle.com/en-us/fwi/animals/animals.aspx.

ELEVEN Corporate Colonization in the Market Discursive Closures and the Greenwashing of Food Discourse Megan A. Koch and Cristin A. Compton

With the announcement and subsequent advertising of a new food market in town, we were immediately intrigued, in part because this new store promised superior products and a fun shopping experience. We were particularly excited (for academic and personal reasons) when we learned the store promised to bring fresh, organic, natural, and local products to our area. Everything about this shopping and research opportunity sounded fantastic. During the research process, however, we started to realize that neither of us knew what the store’s language meant: Many of these products claim that they are “organic,” “all-natural,” or “Non-GMO.” Organic seems to be the most used label, but the wide variety of organic “certification” shocked me. . . . I do not wish to question the rigor or the standards of each of these “organic” certifiers, but I do have to wonder—why is there not a unified definition of organic? Also, why is organic not defined anywhere in the store, since it seems to be on so many different products? 1

In the United States what food we choose to consume has come to represent our personal values and morals. 2 Various food movements like the Slow Food movement, 3 the food justice movement, 4 and the locavore movement 5 have captured the minds, stomachs, and wallets of millions of Americans. Despite the varied praxeologies of each movement, what remains is a growing social narrative that privileges the purchase and 227

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consumption of foods grown in a more conscious and ethical manner than the perceived norm. 6 A growing social awareness of the morality and ethicality now associated with food consumption has driven grocery stores and food markets to cater to consumers seeking these socially superior foods. Natural, local, and organic food sales have become a multi-billion dollar industry, 7 giving grocery stores and local markets a reason to perpetuate the popularity of these items. It is unclear whether the values of corporations, the food producers, or the consumers are being sold at your local market. Communication scholarship is uniquely qualified to explore the value-laden discourse surrounding food for several reasons. First, communication scholarship has noted that food functions symbolically as “a communicative practice by which we create, manage, and share meanings with others.” 8 Simply put, food can be seen as a form of symbolic human communication. 9 Further, critical communication scholars have noted that food is a material good whose socially ascribed moral status is situated through discourse. 10 Given the importance of food in terms of personal identity 11 as well as to shared culture 12 and collective memory, 13 exploring how the morality attributed to the purchase and consumption of food is discursively constructed and perceived falls distinctly within the communication studies discipline. Following in the steps of critical communication scholars exploring food discourse, 14 we chose to explore the discourses surrounding food within the context of a local natural food market using Deetz’s concept of systematically distorted communication 15 to guide our analysis. Systematically distorted communication occurs when communicators reproduce meanings rather than co-construct them. Reproduced meanings frequently act in opposition to the communicator’s own values and needs. Within the food market we analyzed, both the employees and the products were communicators. These parties both systematically communicated an incomprehensible ideal in the form of natural, organic, and local foods, which will be discussed in further detail below. We drew on greenwashing techniques identified in business and marketing scholarship 16 to further narrow our focus on communication techniques that distort the environmental benefits of certain products. 17 Using the lens of greenwashing allowed us to focus on how food labels, advertisements, and employee and customer discourse produce and reproduce systematically distorted communication about the superiority of foods identified as natural, organic, or local. Specifically, we were interested in how this communication served to manage the meaning of these products as evidenced through discursive closures. We suspect that greenwashing discourse is a way in which communication becomes systematically distorted in the food market. The purpose of this study is to explore how, if, and to what extent discourses about natural, organic, and local are greenwashed and repro-

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duced in in the context of a local food market. Previous communication scholarship has demonstrated how shifting and value-laden discourses have been co-opted for corporate gain through greenwashing, 18 although the focus was not specifically on food products. While the intersection of corporate greenwashing and food discourse has been tangentially explored through the lens of communication scholarship, 19 a deeper exploration of how individuals interpret and organize around food discourse in the context of a local market contributes to an ongoing academic conversation about food and power. GREENWASHING AND COMMUNICATION How we communicate about the environment and related “green” policies and practices is at the heart of the concept of greenwashing. The act of greenwashing, “the term for ads and labels that promise more environmental benefit than they deliver,” relies on people’s (mis)understanding of “green” language and terminology. 20 Although the greenwashing of products has been a marketing practice for decades, its use has become far more common as corporations attempt to meet consumer demands for more environmentally-conscious products and services. 21 Indeed, it has been estimated that the market for green products and services will be near $845 billion by 2015. 22 With so much potential for profit, marketers have proven to be eager to take advantage of loose and often confusing federal regulations regarding green labeling, and using terms like “eco,-” “natural,” and “organic” and applying them in confusing and misleading ways. 23 Often, these claims are not only misleading, but dangerously inaccurate, leading customers to purchase products that are ultimately more harmful than other products that do not inaccurately claim to be “green.” 24 The prevalence of the misuse of environmental terminology by marketers has affected people’s understanding of these terms. Since the late 1960s, our language has become saturated with green terms whose definitions have changed radically, in part due to their co-optation by green marketers (Budinsky and Bryant, 2013). For example, Benz 25 focused on the explosion of the word “eco-” by tracing its evolution in use from the truncated term meaning “ecological” with a purely environmental definition, to its use as a bound morpheme used to “green” the root of words it was affixed to (e.g., eco-efficient, eco-appropriate), to a stand-alone noun (e.g., “they are an eco”) or verb (e.g., ecoing one’s house). “Eco-,” according to Benz, has suffered a fate similar to the terms “organic” and “natural,” becoming co-opted by clever marketers who have commodified the term as a marketing tool for a wide variety of products and services. 26 Throughout our research, we examined the terms “organic” and “natu-

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ral” as they appeared in the store, on product labels, and in conversations. Perhaps the largest and most frequently cited source of critique regarding the language abuse associated with greenwashing and marketing is TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, Inc., a public relations company with offices in both Canada and the United States. In 2007, they released a well-report on their website in which they identified “the six sins of greenwashing.” The “sins” include the hidden trade-off (claiming that a product is “green” without attention to other environmental details), no proof (claims with no supporting information), vagueness (claims so broad they are meaningless), irrelevance (claims that are true but unimportant), the lesser of two evils (a product claim that is true but distracts from the environmental problems of the category of products), and fibbing (an untrue claim). In this groundbreaking report, TerraChoice argued that 99.9 percent of the products it tested committed at least one “sin.” 27 In an updated 2009 report, TerraChoice identified the seventh “sin” of worshipping false labels (a label that indicates a thirdparty endorsement that does not exist). 28 In its most recent report, the company noted that although 95 percent of the products tested still committed at least one sin, greenwashing is slowly beginning to decline. 29 Some scholars posit that consumers holding companies accountable via social media have reduced occurrences of blatant greenwashing. 30 Others claim that increased pressure for honesty from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), activists, and the media has been the driver of the downturn. 31 Whatever the cause, greenwashing appears to be a problem that is slowly starting to be addressed—at least within the stores and products that have been tested. We are interested in exploring if and how greenwashing is happening in food stores whose products are primarily categorized and marketed as natural and organic because these types of products have not been as readily addressed by consumer groups when compared to greenwashing analysis of oil companies 32 and cars, 33 for example. GREENWASHING IN THE NATURAL MARKET Since the 1980s, natural-and-organic food stores have grown in popularity and in profit. Some view this as evidence of an increased demand for ethical standards of food production. 34 For example, Whole Foods has nearly tripled its annual sales to thirteen billion dollars in the last decade. 35 Overall, the natural-and-organic grocery industry had fortyeight billion dollars in sales in 2012, an increase from six billion dollars in 1998. 36 According to TerraChoice, however, big box stores offer the most reliable “green” products to customers. 37 This is somewhat surprising; it seems reasonable to think that stores focusing their sales explicitly on

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natural and organic products, such as Whole Foods, would provide the most reliable and authentically green products to customers. However, because scholarship exploring greenwashing has not previously focused on food items, it is possible that this ranking is misleading. The products that have been tested and re-tested for greenwashing have been primarily non-perishable household products such as toys, electronics, office products, health and beauty products, and cleaning products. 38 However, labels on food products are also marketed to customers as “green,” both in their production and in their packaging and delivery to consumers. 39 Recent scholarship from the UK has demonstrated ways in which food labels indicating a food item is sustainable influenced consumer perceptions of food products. For example, in a 2012 study, researchers noted a wide discrepancy between participants’ perceptions and evaluation of sustainable food labels, but reported that participants found many labels to be trustworthy even if they had no idea what the label actually meant. 40 Although we do not make this claim, this research could mean that greenwashing happens just as frequently at a local market trying to sell “organic” mushrooms as it does on “all-natural” bathroom cleaner sold at a big-box retailer. COMMUNICATION AND THE CORPORATE COLONIZATION OF LANGUAGE Stanley Deetz’s concept of corporate colonization 41 provides a useful lens for exploring the co-option of environmental language for marketing purposes. Broadly, Deetz argues that people’s non-work lives have been systematically colonized by corporations and corporate values. 42 Deetz also argues that this has happened through the colonization of language that has become “systematically distorted” by corporations with the power to control communication in a capitalist society. 43 Corporations gain this communicative power by creating the communicative environment in which they exist, or “enact the environment to which they react.” 44 The communicative system becomes self-referential and reinforces the legitimacy of the organization’s communication. Although systematically distorted communication functions outside of the awareness of corporate employees, it is a powerful force that regulates what can be said or considered by the employee. Deetz names eight discursive closure strategies 45 that enable a corporation’s systematic distortion of language: a) disqualification (disqualifying the speakers’ legitimacy); b) naturalization (treating the socially produced as given); c) neutralization (value positions and value laden activities are treated as free of values); d) topical avoidance (ignoring the topic); e) subjectification of experience (ignoring the socially integrated part of one’s identity); f) meaning denial and plausible deniability (an

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interpretation of a statement is simultaneously placed in the interaction and denied as meant, e.g. shouting and claiming to be calm); g) pacification (conflictual issues are diverted by false attempts to engage them while the issue has already been deemed unsolvable); and h) legitimation (higher order explanations). Previous scholarship exploring how discourses surrounding food have become systematically distorted has used the lens of corporate colonization. Specifically, Singer examined global hunger and the development of biotechnology to increase agricultural product output. 46 Singer points out that the seed company Monsanto practices discursive closure through the use of various strategies to subtly exclude marginalized parties (i.e., poor farmers) from communicating their interests while pushing corporate interests under the guise of corporate social responsibility. 47 Food corporations and organizations will promote certain aspects of their products (i.e. “green,” “organic,” “natural”) without explaining what these terms actually mean, thereby benefiting from the positive associations customers make between the product and its corporate-provided description. Deetz’s description of the systematic distortion of communication through discursive closure serves as an effective way to explore greenwashing discourses surrounding food. While greenwashing discourses actively distort the meaning of a certain term used to describe a product, viewed through the lens of discursive closure we can better understand how the organization reifies those distorted meanings. Simply, greenwashing affords us a lens through which to understand how systematically distorted food discourse functions in the context of Tony’s Market. In this study, we will explore discursive closures related to greenwashing occurring in discourse around food that enable and constrain communicative norms in a local food market. TONY’S MARKET When Tony’s Market opened in Market City, USA in early 2014, many residents of the Midwestern town welcomed the store with open arms. Tony’s was appealing to town residents for several reasons. First, Tony’s offered a new grocery shopping option for Market City; at the time of its opening, the company only had a handful of stores open in the country, and Market City was its first store in this region of the country. Second, the store renovated a rundown large commercial building situated in a prominent location near a major Midwestern university, a bustling downtown area, and a mostly low-income residential area. Tony’s arrival transformed the building from an eyesore into a landscaped, appealing, well-maintained oasis. Finally, and perhaps most important, Tony’s promised to focus on benefitting the community, both through philan-

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thropy and by bringing a wide variety of fresh, local, and environmentally-conscious products to the homes of its customers at a reasonable price. Tony’s Market opened in a community that was formerly considered a “food desert.” The store offers access to fresh produce, meats, and lowcost processed foods in an area that otherwise only offered fast food and expensive restaurant options. The building in which Tony’s opened had been abandoned for ten years and other markets had passed over this site because the lack of potential profit. In Market City, Tony’s opened on the edge of an area that had been designated as a food desert by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). 48 To be categorized as a food desert, communities must be designated as low-income and low-access. The USDA designates low-income communities as “a) a poverty rate of 20 percent or greater, OR b) a median family income at or below 80 percent of the area median family income,” while low-access communities are designated “based on the determination that at least 500 persons and/or at least 33 percent of the census tract’s population live more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store (ten miles, in the case of non-metropolitan census tracts).” 49 From its opening, Tony’s Market appeared to offer a unique shopping experience with natural products in a location that would be beneficial to low-income, low-access community members. According to its website, Tony’s puts community, sustainability, and health at the core of its business practices. As we spent more time in the store talking with employees, customers, and one another, we began to question the meanings behind both the product labels and the store’s discourse used to market the natural, local, and organic products. “What does this label actually mean?” and “What do you think that sign is supposed to be telling me about this product?” we asked each other on more than one occasion. Based on the discourses we observed in the store, our conversations with employees, and the company’s website, Tony’s Market seems to genuinely be committed to providing natural products to consumers: this made the store an ideal place to explore the food labels, meaning-making, and possible greenwashing. We began our research interested in observing if and how greenwashing was happening in a specific environment: a grocery market whose primary products are those that have been categorized as natural and organic. Little scholarship has focused specifically on greenwashing, food, and grocery stores. Automobiles, cleaning products, and oil companies have all been critiqued for greenwashing their corporate communications, but we think it is time to focus on food and the products that are put into our bodies every day. We argue that grocery stores, which provide one of the primary locations where people evaluate and purchase products that may have been greenwashed, 50 are a prime location to learn how and if greenwashing is prevalent. We are particularly interested in how greenwashing occurs in natural-and-organic stores that pur-

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portedly sell food products that are marketed as “green” or otherwise environmentally friendly. When all of or the majority of the products available for purchase have the potential for being greenwashed, how are the environmental benefits of the product communicated? Additionally, how do customers and employees understand the verbiage on the labels attached to these products? Simply put, we want to explore greenwashing in the natural market. Our primary research question for this study is: how are greenwashing discourses systematically distorting the communication around food in Tony’s Market? METHODS Because our research question implies exploring the shared language and behaviors within a culture-sharing group, we chose to use an ethnographic design for this study. 51 Ethnographies typically incorporate two primary methods: participant observation and interviews. 52 We conducted participant observation as complete observers. 53 Complete observers are unobtrusive in a research site, watching how the “scene” evolves and plays out between participants. 54 Although we had permission from a gatekeeper to enter the site and to conduct research, we did not meet the gatekeeper face-to-face until our initial interview. Thus, employees and customers did not identify us as researchers. Consistent with the role of complete observer, participants were unaware of our purpose in the store, which allowed us to observe customers, staff, and food products without individuals becoming sensitized to our presence. We conducted participant observation for a total of forty-five hours. To set boundaries for our research prior to data collection, we agreed participant observation could happen anywhere within the property boundaries of the store, including areas such as the driveway or parking lot, as well as the formal shopping area. The site was visited at various times of day. Once we left the site, we wrote up our formal field notes within seventy-two hours of the visit. 55 PARTICIPANTS Two months after beginning participant observation, we arranged interviews through the store’s gatekeeper who put us in contact with eleven employees from various departments in the store (e.g., deli, bulk goods, wine and spirits, natural living, store café). Based on conversations with the gatekeeper, it was made evident multiple times that others had requested to use this store as a site for research and scholarship. For some unknown reason, she enthusiastically agreed to let us conduct research in the store, perhaps because she connected with our initial research interests. Whatever the reason, we remain grateful for the opportunity. All but

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one of these interviews took place within the store while the employee was on the clock. This resulted in us keeping the interviews brief: most interviews ranged from fifteen to thirty minutes in length. Of these eleven interviewees, seven were women and four were men. All of the interviewees were Caucasian except for one who was African-American. Although we did not ask participants for their demographic information, all appeared to be under forty years of age. We conducted semi-structured interviews as this format provided for a flexible interview style 56 and allows for probing 57 of the respondents’ answers. Employees were asked questions like, “What is the best/worst thing about working at Tony’s?” and “What does ‘natural’ mean in Tony’s Market?” The interviews were recorded with the participants’ oral permission. We divided the transcriptions and checked each other’s transcriptions against the interview recordings for accuracy. The transcribed interviews yielded 108 pages of double-spaced data. The second author collected ethnographic interviews on three separate visits to the store in order to better understand customer and staff interactions and to ask questions about available food products. These interviews were not recorded; rather, the content of the interviews were immediately written down into field note format. The ethnographic interviews lasted fewer than five minutes in most cases. Questions such as, “What brought you into Tony’s today?” and if the shopper was holding a product clearly marked “natural” or “organic,” the second author asked what those terms meant to the customer. Towards the end of our data collection, we began primary-cycle coding. Specifically, we developed first-level codes that focused on the “who, what, and where” 58 that was present in the data. We did primary cycle coding independently and reconvened during the process to discuss and broaden the codes. Once primary-cycle coding was complete, we began second-level coding, in which scholars engage in “interpretation and identifying patterns, rules, or cause-effect progressions.” 59 We immediately noticed some key themes in relation to the meaning management of food discourse at Tony’s. We chose to use corporate colonization 60 as a framework through which to analyze our data in our second-level codes. This practice is consistent with the process of second-level coding, which explains, theorizes, and synthesizes primary-cycle codes and incorporates theoretical and disciplinary concepts. 61 Additionally, through the use of prospective conjecture, which allows scholars to “borrow from other fields, models, and assumptions,” 62 we incorporated the Seven Sins of greenwashing discussed in the literature above. We chose to use the Seven Sins because they are well-cited and appear frequently in critical marketing scholarship on greenwashing. After coding was completed, the researchers discussed their interpretations of the data and began drafting an analysis.

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ANALYSIS Two of Deetz’s discursive closures were repeatedly observed during our analysis of participant interviews and participant observation. These closures included legitimation and naturalization. During data analysis, we also found overlapping concepts identified in previous greenwashing literature 63 within the discursive closures observed at Tony’s. Below, we discuss these discursive closures as related to the distortion of communication about food in the context of Tony’s Market. CONSTRUCTING “GOOD” FROM LEGITIMIZED INCOMPREHENSIBILITY Legitimation, according to Deetz, is a type of discursive closure that rationalizes conflictual or contradicting decisions or practices by drawing on one or more higher order explanatory devices. 64 Those devices “attach a higher order value where one’s own values might lead to different choices.” 65 It became evident throughout our six months observing at Tony’s Market that the words “natural” and “organic”—prominently displayed throughout the store on product labels, on in-store advertising, in employees’ discourse, on handwritten store signs, and on large signs on the front of the store—were being legitimized as unquestionably “good food.” Where the terms “natural” or “organic” appeared, it was evident that the product or produce labeled this way was to be legitimized as superior to a product without this label. We observed recognition of the legitimation of these terms in multiple ways, particularly in employee and customer discourse. For example, Grant, an employee in the café section, explained to us that any kind of natural food is “just what it’s supposed to be. And how it’s supposed to be.” In other words, foods that are labeled natural are already in a preferred or intended state, and any alteration of that food would make it an inferior product. Similarly, Jason, a member of the produce department, described the natural and organic products available at Tony’s as: Not only good tasting but good for you . . . seasonal, organic, unprocessed, local. And it’s as whole as you can get it, as straight from the Earth as you can get it, like, that is our goal! Um and that’s what I would classify as “good food,” not only good tasting but beneficial for you and it doesn’t take from the environment more than is necessary . . . it doesn’t contain anything besides the way it shows up in nature.

For Jason, the products available at Tony’s provided a ubiquitous good: good tasting, beneficial to the human body, and environmental consciousness. This level of equation of “natural” and “organic” with “good,” consistent in employee interviews, is a clear example of discur-

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sive closure: by only discussing Tony’s natural and organic produce as superior to that produced conventionally, any questionable labor, transportation, or processing technique associated with this type of produce is discursively eliminated from the conversation. Additionally, many of the customers we observed and interacted with believed that foods labeled “natural” or “organic” were superior to their conventional counterparts. For example, during participant observation, the second author noticed: One couple catches my ear near the bakery section. They seem to be arguing about bread. The woman barks at her husband, “This one! It’s organic! See, it says so here on the label.” He puts the bread in the cart and says, “Okay, but I don’t know what that means.”

The couple selected the loaf of organic bread because it was labeled as such, despite the fact that the customer, like the authors, had a hard time determining what organic meant or why it was superior with the resources we found at Tony’s Market. Once we recognized the equation of “natural” and “organic” with “good,” we wanted to clarify the specific definitions of “natural” and “organic” and what they meant for the different products found within the store and to customers and employees. Specifically, we were interested in what it was about “natural” and “organic” products that Tony’s Market portrayed as superior, both for customers and the store itself. What we discovered was that the construction and legitimation of “natural” and “organic” as synonymous with “good” was a conscious discursive choice made by Tony’s. Although Tony’s currently sells mostly natural and organic products, the store was not planning to sell these products exclusively when it opened. Sherry, the marketing manager, shared with us that Tony’s overall goal was to provide “good food,” but “good” did not necessarily mean “natural” or “organic” at the store’s opening: We want to provide good food for all, and when I first came on board I was told that we’d have Oreos and Cheez-Its and Mountain Dew because they wanted it to be, you know, someplace where everybody could find what they were looking for. But, when we started sourcing those products from distributors, we realized that we were buying such a small amount that we wouldn’t be able to be competitive with the other stores, like our Snickers bars would be too expensive. So we just went all in with the natural foods, got a lot of non-GMOS and organics.

Tony’s was faced with an economic reality: the store did not have the buying capacity to compete with other area convenience stores and pharmacies that offered conventional food products for customers. Thus, Tony’s had to change the products it offered to differentiate itself and increase the likelihood for profitability. Sherry’s quote reveals that the meaning of “good” shifted at Tony’s in terms of its goal of bringing

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“good” food to the community: “good” did not mean natural, organic, and local foods at the store’s inception; however, the store wholeheartedly embraced this discourse and continues to promote these products as superior. Tony’s embracing of this discourse discursively closes employees and customers from constructing foods like Oreos, Cheez-Its and Mountain Dew as “good” products. Although these products do not offer consumers health benefits, they provide cheap, fast, high-calorie options for people of all incomes. GREENWASHING AND THE INCOMPREHENSIBILITY OF PRODUCT LABELS What we began to realize as we explored Tony’s Market use of the words “natural” and “organic” as a legitimized selling tool were the inconsistencies in meaning on product labels as well as employee and customer discourse. While we recognize that these terms do have context-bound definitions (e.g., USDA, FDA), the ways that they were used most frequently within the store reflected inconsistencies. This happened in two ways: either the words were simply left undefined, or there were so many conflicting definitions and interpretations attached to them that they were rendered incomprehensible. Simply put, the words “natural” and “organic” were used in such a way that rendered both words meaningless. For example, many employees such as Betty, a checker, could not provide a definition of either term, instead telling us that natural, “to me, means organic,” making the two words synonymous. Kara, an employee in the frozen and dairy department, also conflated “natural” and “organic,” immediately discussing the term “organic” when asked what “natural” meant to her: That’s kind of funny, I was just talking to a friend about it, because you know, people can put “organic” on really anything. Like, really, there’s no, I think the USDA is starting to be more strict about it, but at first you could put an organic sticker on just about anything.

While Kara also equated the terms “organic” and “natural” in her definition, she also acknowledged the meaninglessness of these terms on many product labels. While she is correct in stating that the United States Department of Agriculture standards for organic certification have become stricter in recent years, 66 her recognition that labels can be inconsistent or misleading reflected our own experience. Our own frustrations with the incomprehensibility of many product labels appeared frequently in our notes and conversations. Leslie, an employee in the Natural Living section said it best: “‘natural’ can unfortunately mean different things to different people and different companies. A lot of companies use the term to describe their product when it’s not

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really “‘natural.’” We found this to be the case with the terms organic and local we well. As we explored product labels, we identified several examples of TerraChoice’s “sins” of greenwashing 67 throughout the store, particularly “no proof” (labels with no indication of what their varying certifications meant) and “vagueness” (products labeled as “more natural” with no explanation of what the product was more natural than; products labeled “local” identified only as “Grown in the USA”). Perhaps the clearest example of the legitimization of the meaningless terms “natural” and “organic” to equate to a ubiquitous “good” came when we observed or discussed unhealthy foods such as cookies or candies baring this label. For example, the first author observed: There is a chalkboard with colorful images and text that reads, “NonGMO candy. Natural Colors!!! Real Flavors!!! No Preservatives!!!” There is a smiling face drawing below the text and lots of exclamation points and stars. I look at the ingredients of the candy on the laminated white cards and see that they include non-GMO corn, but cane sugar is still the number one ingredient in the candy. What kind of message is this sending to customers?

Attaching the terms “natural,” “non-GMO,” “real,” and “no preservatives” alongside smiley faces and stars next to the candy was designed to legitimize it as a better product. Another example of this happened when Thomas, the bulk specialist, said: You know, we don’t sell Nabisco Oreos but we have Newman’s Own which is organic and natural and it’s just like an Oreo, so it’s the exact same thing just with the different nutrition. It’s not all that added sugar, you know, some of them have sugar, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the fake stuff that a lot of people really don’t like.

Despite the fact that both the store sign and Thomas equated “natural” and “organic” to mean “good,” the fact remains that the overconsumption of cane sugar has been linked to health problems such as heart disease, weight gain and obesity, and high blood pressure. 68 Dougherty has argued that discourse about sugar is classed in the U.S. 69 No type of processed sugar is actually “good” for the human body, yet the ways in which we talk about sugar ensures that some individuals talk about “appropriate” kinds of sugar in order to discursively close off lower class individuals’ input or conversation. 70 Here, the signs in the bulk section of the store and the bulk section specialist, Thomas, made the argument that certain kinds of sugar are better or “good” for the customers because of the products’ associations with phrases like, “Non-GMO,” “natural,” and “organic.” By implying that natural or organic sugars are nutritionally superior to “fake” sugars, Thomas is discursively closing off the reality that sugar is simply bad for the body. Tony’s Market contributed to and benefitted from the incomprehensibility of these terms by providing little additional information about

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product labels or terminology within the store in either written or spoken terms. The company did not require its employees to know the definitions of “natural” or “organic” to provide accurate information to customers; instead, according to the employees, Tony’s Market simply “encouraged” employees to be familiar with the definitions of these terms to educate customers. While some employees communicated a passion for learning and sharing this knowledge, others, like Kara, an employee in the frozen foods section has: actually had some people get upset with me before, which, I should be educated, especially in my department, when people ask me questions. But at the same time, I’m not a dietician. You know, it’s just my job to pay rent and whatnot.

Kara points out that she is not invested in researching or communicating the definitions of terms like “natural” and “organic,” or in providing extra information about these labels to customers. The discourse within and around Tony’s Market is saturated with the terms natural, organic, and local. It was therefore surprising to learn that Tony’s Market does not provide the resources or opportunities to learn more about these products nor does the company emphasize that being knowledgeable about the meanings of these terms is central to the business model of the store. Kara is invested in making sure the market runs smoothly and that she does her job before she becomes invested in promoting natural and organic foods to the store’s customers. Kara’s response reflects discursive greenwashing: she cannot provide product information and thus can provide no proof that these products are superior (TerraChoice, 2009) and her responses to customer questions about the “naturalness” of the products remain vague (TerraChoice, 2009). We do not perceive this as an intentional act of deception; rather, we see this as disinterest for a deeper understanding of the products sold in her department. Tony’s, as a company, grasps onto these terms in order to sell its products, but the employees could not reliably tell the customers why certain products or label distinctions might be superior over others. Natural and Local: Naturalization of Employee/Consumer Food Discourse Another discursive closure Deetz presents that we found in Tony’s Market was naturalization, whereby discourse is stopped because socially produced processes are viewed as given – things are the way that they are because of “natural” laws. 71 From a critical standpoint, this type of discursive closure can marginalize or privilege certain discourses, allowing for individuals in positions of power to remain in power without question. At Tony’s Market we see greenwashing used in concert with naturalization. Interestingly, the words “natural” and “local” become naturalized through organizational practices and discourses. These

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words seem to impart significant meaning to the employees and customers of Tony’s, but we find it important to interrogate the meanings that are ultimately conveyed by the organization to their staff and publics. Grant, an employee working in Tony’s in-store café and bar explained in his own words the meaning behind the use of the word “natural” within the store: “Natural” means that when something is grown it’s not uh, it’s, it’s in its purest form. “Natural” to me is something that you don’t do anything to, just outright that’s what it is. And that’s what you get. So, um, uh, produce—that’s obviously a big deal. You don’t have any GMOs, it’s just what it’s supposed to be. And how it’s supposed to be.

Grant emphasizes with his explanation the importance of “natural” to the atmosphere of the store. This discourse of “naturalness” is privileged in Tony’s Market and the descriptor of “natural” acts as an attractive quality of the store and a reason for shopping at Tony’s over other supermarkets. Although “natural” might appear to be in line with other “green” wording such as organic, environmentally-friendly, sustainable or fair trade, the USDA does not in fact have a specific definition of the word “natural” except as it relates to meats and dairy products (“a product containing no artificial ingredient or added color and is only minimally processed. Minimal processing means that the product was processed in a manner that does not fundamentally alter the product. The label must include a statement explaining the meaning of the term natural” 72). Grant seems to conflate part of the definition of “organic” with his personal definition of “natural” when he says that GMOs must not be in “natural” products or produce. He views GMOs as unnatural, tainting the food products. Grant explained that natural foods include those without GMOs, coming from nature as they are “supposed to be.” “Natural” becomes naturalized in the organizational discourse at Tony’s because the employees, like Grant, do not question underlying meanings or definitions of certain terms used to describe the food products. Products lacking a “natural” label were not considered “good food” by employees and customers: in the second author’s field notes, she conducted an ethnographic interview where they chatted about Fage brand yogurt which claims on its packaging to be “all natural.” The customer preferred the Fage brand to other brands and told Cristin that the natural claim “doesn’t hurt anything,” but that she “didn’t know what that means really.” Both customers and staff do not need to discuss or interrogate the meaning of natural because everyone believes that this term is good. The repetition of the word throughout the store on posters, products, and through conversation reifies its position of importance. Many of the employees also mentioned the importance of “local” products in Tony’s, and how often the customers asked for local food products. However, employees had different definitions of local: one con-

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sidered “local” to be within fifty miles of the city (Jason, produce section), another thought that if the food came from the state then it was local (Thomas, bulk goods specialist), and the packaging of some produce suggested that the entire U.S. was considered “local.” Gray questions the unbridled positive discourse surrounding “local farms and farmers” because consumers are often misled to believe that local farms engage in more sustainable practices and that farm owners of local farms treat their workers more fairly, yet Gray found that labor conditions are rarely better on smaller, local farms when compared to large row crop farms around the U.S. 73 Kara, the frozen foods and dairy stocker, explained the expectations of customers that shop at Tony’s Market for specific types of products: So you come here and you expect to get things from local farmers, or you know, things that don’t have a whole lot of extra chemicals and haven’t gone through like, huge pasteurization. Just, things that have less chemicals are more you know, straight from the ground. We try to focus mainly, like, our produce comes, as much as we can, from local people. And even with dairy, we try to focus mostly on having local things.

Kara says that Tony’s customers have an “expectation” of finding local products and that Tony’s employees “focus” on purchasing local products for the store. Tony’s is known for having local products and the store organizers label certain products as local through the repeated discursive interactions between employees and customers. These socially constructed perceptions are accepted as given, 74 but the actual number of products that come from fifty miles around the store’s location is minimal compared to the national brand products that line the store’s walls and shelves. Kara mentions that the store’s staff “tries to focus on local products,” yet she doesn’t seem to know precisely how much of the store’s products comes from nearby farms or the state. Kara’s assertion that the store focuses on providing local produce and other food products conflicts with Sherry, the marketing manager’s explanation that only a minority of Tony’s food comes from local sources: Um, I’d say it’s (food products) regional mostly, umm we order a lot of UNFI um, I know there’s like the Natural Living department orders from over a hundred distributors. Produce is always changing; grocery is more stable. Um, the meat market sources a lot of meat from [the state] where Tony’s is from. But our goal is to have at least 10 percent local foods. . . . We have really cute little signs that you might have seen around. They get knocked off all the time but we put them back up. But they say “Homegrown.”

As the marketing manager, Sherry has a broader perspective of the store and the products brought into Tony’s. She asserts that only approximately 10 percent of the products at Tony’s come from local sources even

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though other employees and customers appreciate the store for its local food appearance. There are several issues with Tony’s use of the word local: first, no one is interrogating the definition of local; second, Tony’s does not inform or provide information for customers explaining why local products have certain advantages over other types of products; third, Tony’s benefits from this ambiguous “local” association thanks to a larger customer base and profit off of all products, local or not. Jason, an employee in the produce department, spoke at length about the emphasis that Tony’s places on bringing in local foods and the questions he receives from customers about these items. He expressed some concern about the small number of local products found on Tony’s shelves, calling into question the alignment of the store’s values and practices, We say that we strive to bring local product to us. We, like, if we say those things, they have to be true. And so, we do do it; we don’t do it as much as I think we should, like, we definitely bring uh, local Missouri produce, even Kansas produce, stuff like that . . . I understand it’s really hard, like, my manager has a terrible time orchestrating all of these farmers and getting the product in and getting corporate to sign off on it and then being able to put it out, like, it’s an entire ten step process to get it in. And that is where a large failure happens in our integrity, because we are saying we’re doing it and we’re trying to do it, but everything takes so long and is so circuitous that by the time it actually happens that product is not valid product anymore.

Jason’s quote reflects his discomfort with how Tony’s Market enacts the value of integrity in relation to providing local food for purchase. As before mentioned, Tony’s has fully embraced the discourse of the superiority of natural, organic, and local products. However, the corporate system Tony’s has set up for itself to coordinate buying produce from local farmers and selling it in store complicates rather than streamlines this process. This puts Tony’s Market in an uncomfortable position, simultaneously attempting to live up to their goal of bringing local produce to the community and finding themselves trapped by complex food distribution networks and corporate policies they find themselves bound to. Ultimately, the discourse about the superiority of local foods found within Tony’s actually discursively closes Tony’s off from highlighting the benefits of their conventionally produced goods, ironically allowing them to only bolster a few of their products honestly. DISCUSSION This chapter shows how greenwashing can discursively close off communication between a corporate entity, its employees, and its customers. Although greenwashing has been happening for decades, this study con-

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tributes an exploration of greenwashing specifically within the context of a grocery store. For this chapter, we explored food discourse within Tony’s Market by interviewing customers, employees, and observing product labels. We used Deetz’s discursive closure framework 75 coupled with TerraChoice’s sins of greenwashing 76 as a lens to analyze data. Our research question asked how greenwashing discourses systematically distorted the communication around food in Tony’s Market. We found examples of greenwashing coupled with two discursive closures: first, legitimization of the terms “natural,” “organic,” and “local” as “good” rather than unique terms with agreed-upon meanings. Second, the naturalization of the terms “natural” and “local” as a channel by which the stores’ values are conveyed complicated how customers and employees understood the products available for purchase. In both themes, the dominant food discourse (e.g., natural, organic, and local) was greenwashed by the techniques of vagueness and no proof. 77 In addition, this greenwashing discursively closed Tony’s Market, its employees, and its customers to other interpretations or meanings about this food. IMPLICATIONS FOR TOPIC Greenwashing has been examined in other contexts and this chapter contributes new information regarding the intersection of food discourse and greenwashing techniques within a grocery store. Our analysis revealed food discourse in Tony’s Market is greenwashed in such a way that meanings of food categories are rendered incomprehensible. Tony’s has fully embraced a social discourse bolstering natural, organic, and local products as a taken-for-granted good. The whole-hearted commitment of Tony’s to these naturalized discourses, while intended to benefit customers’ health, well-being, and the communal good, actually serves to muddy the discourse around these food products. IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORY Although we chose to explore this topic through the lens of Deetz’s corporate colonization, specifically using the framework of discursive closures, greenwashing literature lends itself very well to multiple theoretical frameworks both within and outside of the communication discipline. The seven sins of greenwashing 78 function in a way that orients scholars to the complex ways that corporate discourse can influence our product choices and permeate our daily lives. Within each of these seven sins there are numerous opportunities for theoretical interrogation. Although food has multiple meanings, 79 the use of greenwashed food discourse discursively closes people off to these possibilities.

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PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS Tony’s Market makes it clear that their focus is providing “good” to the community; through the products it sells, through its philanthropy, and through its community involvement. For the entire duration of this research study, we saw evidence that this goal was fully embraced through store events designed to benefit community members, such as student tour groups who came to learn about growing food. We also learned of several employees whose families benefitted from donations gathered by their co-workers. However, there is a disconnect between the espoused values of Tony’s Market and the corporate policies and practices that are enacted. Two primary disjunctures arose during our data collection: store employees not being required to learn or know the definitions of the terms natural, local, or organic (as well as non-GMO); second, the dearth of local products on shelves in comparison with the bounty of discourse promoting Tony’s as a superior source of local products. We recommend that Tony’s educate its employees about how they define and apply the terms natural, local, and organic to ensure message consistency across organizational discourse. Simultaneously, it would be beneficial to all parties if the store also educated its employees about the seven sins of greenwashing. 80 This knowledge, coupled with Tony’s current management style that allows its employees to make or contribute to decisions about product purchases, will likely lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the intersection between Tony’s values and food discourse. LIMITATIONS AND STRENGTHS One limitation we faced in our data collection was the location of our interviews. All but one was conducted on Tony’s premises while the employee being interviewed was on the clock. Our gatekeeper was an organizational superior to all participants, and personally asked them to give us some of their time. We were concerned that the environment of the interviews would constrain the responses of participants, despite our guarantee that their identities would remain anonymous. However, this limitation could also be viewed as a strength: participants were able to physically and discursively point to signs and products in Tony’s as they discussed them, as well as having access to discursive resources they might not have outside of the confines of the store. A second limitation was related to the timeline of this study. Tony’s Market had opened only four weeks prior to when we began collecting data. Many employees told us that this location of Tony’s was still getting on its feet and solidifying its practices and procedures in Market City throughout our roughly four months of observations and interviews. De-

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spite the newness of the store, we actually saw this as a strength: we were able to see the discursive construction of Tony’s Market both from within the store as scholars but also as members of Market City. Getting into this research site “at the ground floor” offers insight that will never again exist in the context of this market. FUTURE DIRECTIONS One direction for scholarship exploring food discourse, food markets, and greenwashing is further interrogation of organizational identity and identification. Gaps between employees’ identities and the store’s identity were evident almost immediately. What was fascinating in the context of Tony’s Market was the perpetuation of Tony’s values by employees with no agreed-upon understanding of what those values meant and, in some cases, questioning by employees about the enactment of these values. We would encourage scholars to enter other food markets or grocery stores with an eye towards interrogating the taken-for-granted discourse found in these locales. NOTES 1. Cristin’s fieldnotes. 2. Debbie S. Dougherty, The Reluctant Farmer: An Exploration of Work, Social Class, & the Production of Food (Leicester, UK: Troubador Publishing, 2011). 3. Carlnita P. Greene, “Competing Identities at the Table: Slow Food, Consumption, and the Performance of Social Style” in Food as Communication: Communication as Food, ed. Janet M. Cramer, Carlnita P. Greene, & Lynn M. Walters (Peter Lang Publishing: New York, 2011). 4. Julie Guthman, Weighing In: Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). 5. Margaret Gray, Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). 6. Julie Guthman, Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). 7. Heidi Tolliver-Nigro, “Green Market to Grow 267 Percent By 2015,” Matter Network, June 29, 2009, http://www.matternetwork.com. 8. Carlnita P. Greene and Janet M. Cramer, “Beyond Mere Sustenance: Food as Communication/Communication as Food” in Food as Communication: Communication as Food, ed. Janet M. Cramer, Carlnita P. Greene, & Lynn M. Walters (Peter Lang Publishing: New York, 2011): x. 9. Ibid. 10. Dougherty, The Reluctant Farmer. 11. Greene, “Competing Identities at the Table: Slow Food, Consumption, and the Performance of Social Style.” 12. Kathleen M. German, “Memory, Identity, and Resistance: Recipes from the Women of Theresienstadt” in Food as Communication: Communication as Food, ed. Janet M. Cramer, Carlnita P. Greene, and Lynn M. Walters (Peter Lang Publishing: New York, 2011). 13. Kristen Lucas and Patrice M. Buzzanell, “It’s the Cheese: Collective Memory of Hard Times during Deindustrialization” in Food as Communication: Communication as

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Food, ed. Janet M. Cramer, Carlnita P. Greene, and Lynn M. Walters (Peter Lang Publishing: New York, 2011). 14. Ross Singer, “The Corporate Colonization of Communication about Global Hunger: Development, Biotechnology, and Discursive Closure in the Monsanto Pledge” in Food as Communication: Communication as Food, ed. Janet M. Cramer, Carlnita P. Greene, & Lynn M. Walters (Peter Lang Publishing: New York, 2011). 15. Stanley A. Deetz, Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization: Developments in Communication and the Politics in Everyday Life (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992). 16. Richard Dahl, “Greenwashing: Do You Know What You’re Buying?” Environmental Health Perspectives 118 (2010): 247. 17. TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, “The Seven Sins of Greenwashing,” Environmental Claims in Consumer Markets (2009). 18. Emily Plec and Mary Pettenger, “Greenwashing Consumption: The Didactic Framing of ExxonMobil’s Energy Solutions.” Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture 6, (2012): 459–476. 19. Lucie Sirieix, Marion Delanchy, Hervé Remaud, Lydia Zepeda, and Patricia Gurviez, “Consumers’ Perceptions of Individual and Combined Sustainable Food Labels: a UK Pilot Investigation,” International Journal of Consumer Studies 37, no. 2 (2013): 143–151. 20. Richard Dahl, “Greenwashing: Do You Know What You’re Buying?” Environmental Health Perspectives 118 (2010): 247. 21. Ibid. 22. Heidi Tolliver-Nigro, “Green Market to Grow 267 Percent By 2015,” Matter Network, June 29, 2009, http://www.matternetwork.com. 23. Magali A. Delmas and Vanessa C. Burbano, “The Drivers of Greenwashing,” California Management Review 54, no. 1 (2011): 64. 24. William S. Laufer, “Social Accountability and Corporate Greenwashing,” Journal of Business Ethics 43, no. 3 (2003): 253–261. 25. Brad Benz, “Let it Green: the Ecoization of the Lexicon,” American Speech 75, no. 2 (2000): 215–221. 26. Ibid. 27. Terra Choice, “The Six Sins of Greenwashing. A Study of Environmental Claims in North American Consumer Markets” (2007). 28. TerraChoice, “The Seven Sins of Greenwashing.” 29. Ibid. 30. Thomas P. Lyon and A. Wren Montgomery, “Tweetjacked: The Impact of Social Media on Corporate Greenwash,” Journal of Business Ethics 118, no. 4 (2013): 747–757. 31. Delmas and Burbano, “The Drivers of Greenwashing.” 32. Miriam A. Cherry and Judd F. Sneirson, “Chevron, Greenwashing, and the Myth of ‘Green Oil Companies,’” Journal of Energy, Climate, and the Environment 3 (2012). 33. David Friedman and Don MacKenzie, Automaker Rankings 2004 (Cambridge, MA: UCS Publications, 2004). 34. Katrin Zander and Ulrich Hamm, “Consumer Preferences for Additional Ethical Attributes of Organic Food,” Food Quality and Preference 21, no. 5 (2010): 495–503. 35. Annie Gasparro, “Natural Grocers Lose Vigor,” Wall Street Journal—Eastern Edition, April 10. B1-B2 (2014). Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed June 30, 2014). 36. Ibid. 37. TerraChoice, “The Seven Sins of Greenwashing.” 38. Ibid. 39. Maria C. Aprile, Vincenzina Caputo, and Rodolfo M. Nayga Jr., “Consumers’ Valuation of Food Quality Labels: the Case of the European Geographic Indication and Organic Farming Labels,” International Journal of Consumer Studies 36, no. 2 (2012): 158–165.

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40. Lucie Sirieix, Marion Delanchy, Hervé Remaud, Lydia Zepeda, and Patricia Gurviez, “Consumers’ Perceptions of Individual and Combined Sustainable Food Labels: a UK Pilot Investigation,” International Journal of Consumer Studies 37, no. 2 (2013): 143–151. 41. Deetz, Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization. 42. Ibid. 43. Deetz, Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization. 44. Ibid, 170. 45. Ibid. 46. Singer, “The Corporate Colonization of Communication about Global Hunger.” 47. Ibid. 48. “United States Department of Agriculture Food Access Research Atlas,” www.ers.usda.gov, last modified on May 28 2014, http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/ fooddesert#.VCWp-hawRuV. 49. “United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service,” www.ers.usda.gov, last modified September 3 2014, http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/ food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us.aspx#.VCWrFxawRuU. 50. TerraChoice, “The Seven Sins of Greenwashing.” 51. John W. Creswell, Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2012). 52. Ibid. 53. Sarah J. Tracy, Qualitative Research Methods: Collecting Evidence, Crafting Analysis, Communicating Impact (Malden, MA: John Wiley and Sons, 2013). 54. Ibid, pp.111–112. 55. Ibid. 56. Tracy, Qualitative Research Methods. 57. Steinar Kvale, Doing interviews (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2008). 58. Tracy, Qualitative Research Methods, p. 189. 59. Ibid, p. 194. 60. Deetz, Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization. 61. Tracy, Qualitative Research Methods. 62. Ibid. 63. TerraChoice, “The Seven Sins of Greenwashing.” 64. Deetz, Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization. 65. Ibid, p. 196. 66. United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety Information. 67. TerraChoice, “The Seven Sins of Greenwashing.” 68. Guthman, Weighing In. 69. Dougherty, The Reluctant Farmer. 70. Ibid. 71. Deetz, Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization, p. 190. 72. “United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety Information,” www.fsis.usda.gov, last modified April 2011, http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/ connect/e2853601-3edb-45d3-90dc-1bef17b7f277/Meat_and_Poultry _Labeling_Terms.pdf?MOD=AJPERES. 73. Gray, Labor and the Locavore. 74. Deetz, Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization, p. 190. 75. Ibid. 76. TerraChoice, “The Seven Sins of Greenwashing.” 77. Ibid. 78. TerraChoice, “The Seven Sins of Greenwashing.” 79. Dougherty, The Reluctant Farmer. 80. TerraChoice, “The Seven Sins of Greenwashing.”

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UK Pilot Investigation.” International Journal of Consumer Studies 37, no. 2 (2013): 143–151. TerraChoice. “The Six Sins of Greenwashing. A Study of Environmental Claims in North American Consumer Markets” (2007). Tolliver-Nigro, Heidi. “Green Market To Grow 267 Percent by 2015.” Matter Network, June 29 (2009). Tracy, Sarah J. Qualitative Research Methods: Collecting Evidence, Crafting Analysis, Communicating Impact. John Wiley & Sons, 2012. “United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service,” www.ers.usda.gov, last modified September 3 2014, http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us.aspx#.VCWrFxawRuU. “United States Department of Agriculture Food Access Research Atlas,” www.ers.usda.gov, last modified on May 28 2014, http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/ fooddesert#.VCWp-hawRuV. “United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety Information,” www.fsis.usda.gov, last modified April 2011, http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/ connect/e2853601-3edb-45d390dc-1bef17b7f277/Meat_and_Poultry _Labeling_Terms.pdf?MOD=AJPERES. Zander, Katrin, and Ulrich Hamm. “Consumer Preferences for Additional Ethical Attributes of Organic Food.” Food quality and preference 21, no. 5 (2010): 495–503

TWELVE Mistaken Consensus and the Body-asMachine Analogy Samuel Boerboom

Until recently diets advocating carbohydrate restriction have remained on the margins of mainstream anti-obesity dietary guidelines in the United States. Such diets have maintained fad status for much of the last half of the twentieth century. That is not to say that carbohydrate-restricted diets have not enjoyed the endorsement of respected medical figures. Based on his research dating back to the 1950s, Dr. Robert Atkins made famous his carbohydrate-restricted diet in his 1972 book Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution. 1 Popular newspaper medical columnist Dr. Peter Gott published his user-friendly Doctor Gott’s No Flour, No Sugar Diet in 2006 based on decades of recommended carbohydrate restriction in his syndicated newspaper columns. 2 In 2014—a watershed year for the scrutiny of mainstream nutrition science—the perception among several news media outlets of low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets underwent significant change. The Katie Couric-produced documentary Fed Up broached the topic of carbohydrates and obesity. 3 With the headline “Don’t Blame Fat,” Time magazine noted that after four decades of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommendations urging Americans to consume much less fat and significantly more carbohydrates, the result has been a “failure.” 4 Calling for an end on the “War on Fat,” Time observed that “our demonization of fat may have backfired in ways we are just beginning to understand” and that this “myopic focus on fat has warped our diet and contributed to the biggest health crises facing the country.” 5 What precipitated Time’s landmark issue debunking orthodox assertions made by the USDA that dietary fats are deleterious to health? Much 251

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of the evidence cited by Time in their reporting derived from investigative journalist Nina Teicholz’s 2014 book The Big Fat Surprise. In her book Teicholz articulates that nutrition science flawed because reliable, longitudinal experiments to test the impact of foods on the human body are exceedingly difficult to conduct. She notes, “Most of our dietary recommendations are based on studies that try to measure what people eat and then follow them for years to see how their health fares.” 6 Given the number of variables—(genetics, lifestyle factors, foods eaten in conjunction with the food being examined, the unreliability of self-reporting mechanisms)—much of the data from these dietary studies tends to be unreliable and correlative at best. According to Teicholz given the urgency of heart disease in the 1950s, scientists and public health bureaucracies were eager to target a culprit and dietary fat fit the frame. As Teicholz notes, “this hypothesis became accepted as truth before it was properly tested. Public health bureaucracies adopted and enshrined this unproven dogma.” 7 Researchers wanting to test the fat hypothesis met significant resistance. The urgency of addressing heart disease as the leading cause of death lead organizations like the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health to close ranks and push for these new anti-fat guidelines. The passion and “zealotry” of these institutions toward defending the perhaps intuitive notion that you are what you eat—i.e., dietary fat leads to bodily fat accumulation and clogged arteries—disrupted the “self-correcting” mechanism of the scientific process of reviewing clinical trial reports. Teicholz notes of the low-fat orthodoxy of the time: This kind of reaction met all experts who criticized the prevailing view on dietary fat, effectively silencing the opposition. Researchers who persisted in their challenges found themselves cut off from grants, unable to rise in their professional societies, without invitations to serve on expert panels, and at a loss to find scientific journals that would publish their papers. Their influence was extinguished and their viewpoints lost. As a result, for many years the public has been presented with the appearance of a uniform scientific consensus on the subject of fat, especially saturated fat, but this outward unanimity was only made possible because opposing views were pushed aside. 8

For Teicholz the low-fat diet, such as it has been formulated and recommended to the American public, is little more than “an uncontrolled experiment on the entire American population.” 9 With this in mind it is perhaps ironic to note that in 1961, fifty-three years ago, Time put Ansel Keys, the leading proponent of low-fat guidelines on its cover, 10 sanctioning then, as it does now with its declarative “Eat Butter” cover, the newest “trends” in dietary research. Given the publication of Teicholz’s book and its immediate influence on mainstream reporting of updated and revised dietary guidelines (CNN invited Teicholz to pen an editorial for

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its website 11), it is apparent that the low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet—the one that made Dr. Atkins and his then-heterodox diet methods wellknown—is moving from the margins to the mainstream of dietary health consensus, at least for now. 12 Teicholz’s research is significant for developing a more sophisticated understanding of how dietary choices impact health. As The Economist notes in their review of her book, fellow science journalist Gary Taubes, whom she cites and refers to in glowing terms, has been debunking the link between dietary fat and obesity for nearly fifteen years and has “been much disparaged for his pains.” 13 Taubes, as profiled in the September, 2014, issue of Wired, is co-founder of the Nutrition Science Institute (NuSI), a nonprofit that funds “fanatically careful tests of previously overlooked [nutritional] hypotheses.” 14 Like Teicholz, Taubes critiques the observational, correlational studies linking particular nutrients to diseases. Taubes, however, is unique from Teicholz and other nutrition science researchers in that he defends a particular counter-hypothesis to the energy balance (calories in versus calories out) paradigm of obesity. His “alternative hypothesis” 15 suggests that it is the body’s hormonal response (especially insulin, which shunts fatty acids into fat cells 16) to particular nutrients in food, and not in some energy quantum, that leads to fat accumulation and obesity. In this chapter I am less concerned with the accuracy of hypotheses about metabolic functions vis-à-vis nutrition as I am with the rhetorical significance of Taubes’ critique of the energy balance paradigm. I argue that Taubes’ research is rhetorically noteworthy for two significant reasons: First, it critiques the analogical reasoning present in the energy balance paradigm (and especially with the caloric unit of energy behind it) that the human metabolic system is akin to a machine running on fuel. The entire paradigm rests on an analogy that is faulty and unhelpful for consumers trying to make informed nutritional decisions. Second, I contend that the energy balance paradigm exculpates corporate food producers for promoting the carbohydrate-based diet. By focusing on the function and form of the energy balance paradigm, I aim to show how the language of food is politicized through rhetorical forms. HOW ANALOGY FUNCTIONS RHETORICALLY To effectively evaluate analogy scholars must both map the formal elements of an analogy and note how the arrangement (or staging) of those constitutive elements affects audience (mis)understanding. Additionally, the context that makes possible the formation of an analogy must be considered in conjunction with its formal elements. As I discuss later in this section, the historical context behind the development of the caloriebased energy balance paradigm for heart disease and obesity provided

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for a pragmatic, though not, if Taubes’ hypothesis proves correct, accurate model for explaining how food consumption predicts and contributes to health outcomes like morbidity and mortality. In this section I first review and discuss the formal elements of analogy before addressing how context factors into analogy construction and reception. FORMAL ELEMENTS OF ANALOGY The vast literature on analogy spans multi-disciplinary concerns from language acquisition, argumentation, cognition, and rhetorical studies. For the purposes of this chapter I wish to restrict the focus of analogy to its comparative function. That is, I define analogy here as a rhetorical figuration of two unlike terms or concepts, with the hope that the more familiar or known of the two renders, via comparison or imitative characteristics, insight into the lesser known of the two. In this regard analogy is most like simile. 17 Lanham emphasizes proportion of parallel cases 18 in his definition of analogy, implying that whether the link between two things is explicit (simile) or more implied (metaphor), it nonetheless must be plausible to be persuasive. Campbell and Huxman observe that analogies can clearly be divided between those that offer literal and obvious comparisons (between two colleges, for example, or several different baseball pitchers) and those that offer metaphorical similarities or “similarity in principle.” 19 Of the latter type of analogy, it “gives no proof, makes no demonstration.” 20 Even of the former literal analogies credible criteria are rhetorically enacted. That is to say, analogies are inherently untrue, “essentially dissimilar” 21 and “logically invalid” 22 even if rhetors can make their component parts appear or be successfully identified as, following Burke, “consubstantial.” 23 As Kozy observes, valid critiques posed on the soundness of analogical arguments are not levied on in its form, but in the “exactness of the comparison.” 24 Certain scholars believe there is no “uniform basis” upon which to exercise the classificatory urge to define analogies into types, like figurative or literal, as these “symbolic forms [should be viewed] as members of a family of analogy derivatives.” 25 Similarly, “simile, metaphor, and allegory are nothing more than ways of presenting analogies in support of some proposition.” 26 Kenneth Burke notably observed: “Metaphor is a device for seeing something in terms of something else. It brings out the thisness of a that, or the thatness of a this. . . . And to consider A from the point of view of B is, of course, to use B as a perspective upon A.” 27 Additionally, Burke notes that metaphor is a deliberate type of “incongruity” involving the “carrying-over” of terms from one context to another, a “process that necessarily involves varying degrees of incongruity in that the two realms are never identical.” 28 Incongruity of terms can be insightful, but, as I hope to demonstrate in this chapter, it can also create

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deliberative spaces that are deceptive and misleading with significant consequences on human health and well-being. Benoit and France suggest certain operational terminology for discussing analogy. For example, they observe that the first, known part of an analogy be termed the “initial field” and that part of the analogy to which it infers (“that part of the analogy which is being inferred to”) as the “terminal field.” 29 This terminology is useful for our purposes as it explains the directionality of an analogy in a way that lays bare the inferential action undertaken by a rhetor. As Wilcox and Ewbank observe, “When we communicate our perception of a referent influences our symbol choice, as do our attitudes toward or evaluation of the referent.” 30 Here, “referent” is the grounds for invention upon which an analogy can be constructed and upon which an analogy can be accepted by a given audience. Our trust in or familiarity with the subject of an initial field makes or breaks the perceived validity of the inference to a terminal field. In other words, and as I will demonstrate in the next section, Taubes’ critique of the energy balance paradigm of metabolism whereby food units of energy termed calories are analogized to fuel that the body (akin to a machine) stores as fat if it fails to expend that energy via metabolism and exercise. The extensional analogy inferring physics principles to human metabolism is problematic. But first, it is imperative to examine how context shapes both the formation of analogies and their reception among audiences as well. CONTEXTUAL ELEMENTS OF ANALOGY The field of science generally speaking, and of nutritional science, specifically, frequently use analogy when making recommendations based on the results of experiments to the general public. Analogy, though, also helps scientists formulate hypotheses. For example, Little observes that “analogy is one of the primary ways in which scientists may ‘form some picture’ of an elusive mechanism they will never directly observe.” 31 Before the founding of Taubes’ NuSI, there have never been clinical trials testing nutrition’s impact on factors related to obesity or, for that matter, heart disease. Most diet studies rely upon observational or self-reporting data. To counter the paucity of reliable data, and to more directly observe the impact of nutrition on human health, NuSI recently conducted a study in which a subject stayed under direct observation for eight weeks and was forbidden to leave: He spent two days of each week inside tiny airtight rooms known as metabolic chambers, where scientists determined precisely how many calories he was burning by measuring changes in oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air. He received meals through vacuum-sealed portholes

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Due to the expense and time associated with NuSI’s approach identified above, it is perhaps easy to see why consensus about dietary recommendation, let alone new analogies for how human metabolism works, may be a long time coming. As I will discuss in the next section, how researchers imagine the body’s metabolism to work—as a machine burning all calories equally, or, alternatively, as a genetically- and environmentallydetermined system attuned to certain type of food calories over others— predicts the analogy they use to interpret and explain their results to peers, public health bureaucracies, and the general public. Science is an arena of discourse wherein credibility is often performed via the mechanism of public reporting of experimental data. Gross argues that scientific truth exists in a “hierarchy of reliability” in which its truth is “uppermost” when compared to/with political oratory and academic research. 33 Science-based rhetoric has extraordinary rhetorical power because it has a high degree of what Gross terms “intersubjective agreement,” which, due to its evidence-based quantitative methods, creates “a universal audience for scientific discourse.” 34 Scientific reports often rely upon analogy to help explain difficult or unobserved concepts. The rhetorical power of analogy in scientific discourse is different than in other political discourse. Gross explains: Scientific reports and scholarly argument are alike in the value they place on the heuristic function of analogy and on the rules of inference and evidence with which analogies and the hypotheses they generate must be examined. However, scientific reports have recourse to one additional tool: a complex of quantitative methodologies shared by scientists and central to their verification procedures. 35

I will examine in the next section Taubes’ assertion that nutrition-based analogies have long resisted the evidentiary backing of exhaustive, falsifiable scientific research. That is, the energy balance paradigm of how food impacts the body has predominately been taken at face value by scientists, governmental agencies, and consumers. This suggests that food nutrition has been merely rhetorical, instead of scientifically grounded. In this way nutrition discourse has relied upon the rhetorical power of scientific reporting with its presumed high level of intersubjective agreement, without actually availing itself of scientific proof—indeed, without actually pursuing intersubjective agreement that comes from carefully-conducted clinical trials. One reason why science-based analogies emerge publicly without empirical confirmation is that scientists frequently use analogical reasoning strategies in situations that are “epistemically uncertain.” 36 Public health crises necessitate different methods of engagement than other health concerns. Cummings explains that epidemiology is a field that frequently

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“favours a type of plausible reasoning from uncertain and unknown premises over deductive reasoning from known premises . . . in contexts that are characterised by a lack of knowledge.” 37 Cummings’ research examines how AIDS researchers in the 1980s had few means of understanding how AIDS came to be acquired. Given the context of epistemic uncertainty, epidemiologists sought to establish an “explanatory framework for AIDS” 38 through an analogy of the similarly-infectious hepatitis B virus. This analogy, argues Cummings, enabled AIDS researchers to make significant breakthroughs in understanding the etiology of the AIDS virus—that the AIDS virus, like hepatitis B, is transmitted both from mother to infant, or through sexual contact. Cummings observes, though, that analogical reasoning has: the epistemic status of a presumptive truth. A presumptive truth occupies a low-level epistemic category, one in which we have some plausible grounds for commitment to a thesis, but also one in which that commitment will lapse should new and conflicting information be forthcoming. 39

Presumptive truth, in the case of nutrition, is too often uncontested due to the particular rhetorical power of scientific messaging. Teicholz in her research on the history of the dietary fat hypothesis, discovered problems with the epidemiological-like reporting of the data that has persisted to this day. She observes: Despite these types of problems that routinely afflict nutritional epidemiology, decision-makers have nevertheless often used these findings as ‘proof,’ simply because they are often the only kind of data available. Clinical trials, which could establish cause, are far more complicated and expensive undertaking and are therefore conducted much less frequently. In the absence of trial data, as [we] see again and again over the last 50 years of nutrition history, epidemiological evidence has therefore been made to suffice. Even though it cannot, by its very nature, make claims about causation, it has repeatedly been employed in just this way. 40

When the epistemically uncertain conditions that give rise to a public health exigency lapse, it is necessary to seek definitive supporting data to substantiate provisional findings. As Teicholz and Taubes both suggest, there remains little reason to accept contingent, observational data as causative explanations for why obesity and heart disease remain rampant, despite several decades of low-fat recommendations by public health bureaucracies.

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THE BODY-AS-MACHINE ANALOGY Obesity is, as Taubes titles the first part of his book Why We Get Fat, a matter of “Biology, Not Physics.” 41 The prevailing analogy animating discussions of obesity is based on the energy balance, or calorie-in, calories-out, paradigm. Put simply, this paradigm employs an analogy imagining the body as akin to a machine dependent upon fuel. The body operates efficiently so long as it consumes fuel efficiently—that is, so long as a person eats enough to fuel metabolic process, but not too much, which, if left “unburned” will accumulate and add mass to the machine. Taubes explains that the human body, unlike a machine, does not behave in a manner easily described by the basic laws of physics. Instead, it regulates energy according to biological processes, which are to this point, not known precisely enough to afford easily generalization. The problem, as Taubes sees it, is in viewing calories as interchangeable (as “fuel”) and not understanding the body’s hormonal response to different nutrients. Per gram, protein and carbohydrates each contain four calories, while a gram of fat contains over twice as much, nine calories. Thus, under this energy balance paradigm, if one reduces dietary fat, one reduces overall calories and limits or controls weight gain. However, Taubes explains this formulation simply is not true: Lost in this distillation is the fact that the effects of these different nutrients on metabolism and hormone secretion are so radically different, as is the manner in which the body employs the nutrients, that the energetic equivalence of the calories themselves is largely irrelevant to why we gain weight. 42

Additionally, Taubes in his public lectures 43 explains why the calories/ energy balance model of weight gain is overly simplistic and misleading as an explanation for obesity. He recounts a hypothetical example of a person eating an additional 200 calories a day would gain over the course of one year nearly seventeen pounds. 44 By the same logic the converse is true: all a person would need to do to lose seventeen pounds is cut out 200 calories a day. In another example Taubes explains that overeating by as little as twenty calories a day would, in the mistaken calculus of the energy balance paradigm, turn a lean person in her twenties into an obese person in her fifties. Taubes notes, “In the context of the calories-in/ calories-out logic, this led to the obvious questions: How do any of us remain lean if it requires that we consciously balance the calories we eat to those we expend with an accuracy of better than 1 percent?” 45 In Taubes’ explanation this formulation is obviously reductionistic, as it fails to take into account energy expenditures, gender, age, genetics and host of other factors that explain why weight gain and obesity remains a worse problem today than before when the low-fat diet became in vogue. More importantly and for the purposes of this chapter, the above exam-

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ple is problematic because our bodies are not simple machines, neither do they behave as such. The body-as-machine analogy undergirding the energy balance paradigm fails because we not only misunderstand physics, but we do not adequately understand metabolic processes vis-à-vis weight gain. To this point Taubes observes the first law of thermodynamics, the law of energy conservation. He notes: The calories we consume will either be stored, expended, or excreted. This in turn implies that any change in body weight must equal the difference between the calories we consume and the calories we expend, and thus the positive or negative energy balance…The first law of thermodynamics dictates that weight gain—the increase in energy stored as fat and lean-tissue mass—will be accompanied by or associated with positive energy balance, but it does not say that it is caused by a positive energy balance . . . It is equally possible, without violating this fundamental truth, for a change in energy stores . . . to be the driving force in cause and effect; some regulatory phenomenon could drive us to gain weight, which could in turn cause a positive energy balance— and thus overeating and/or sedentary behavior . . . All those who have insisted (and still do) that overeating and/or sedentary behavior must be the cause of obesity have done so on the basis of this same fundamental error: they will observe correctly that positive caloric balance must be associated with weight gain, but then they will assume without justification that positive caloric balance is the cause of weight gain. This simple misconception has led to a century of misguided obesity research. 46

Positive energy balance can be caused by multiple factors, not just diet— or, to use the machine analogy, fuel. That is, it is not just the food we eat and the energy we (fail to) expend. We can utilize energy from sources other than just food. The key factor for Taubes and his alternative hypothesis is how our bodies store and utilize fat for energy. Taubes’ research points to physics as being a poor field upon which to build an extensional analogy 47 because the set of circumstances explaining physics—namely, thermodynamics—has not been proven to be predictive in accounting for human metabolism. Taubes notes of obesity that “thermodynamics has nothing do with it” because it can only explain that people are obese because more energy enters their bodies than leaves them. 48 Here, Taubes sharpens his critique of the machine analogy by noting that it fails to account for why obese persons have harder times expending energy than persons of healthy weight. Put differently, the machine analogy established on the energy balance model might reliably explain that too much unused energy (that which does not leave) will cause any entity or living organism to grow larger, but it fails to account for the expending dimension. Why do obese persons expend less energy? Taubes observes:

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Samuel Boerboom The assumption is that the energy we consume and the energy we expend have little influence on each other, that we can consciously change one and it will have no consequence on the other, and vice versa. The thinking is that we can choose to eat less, or semi-starve ourselves (reduce calories-in), and this will have no effect on how much energy we subsequently expend (calories-out) or, for that matter, how hungry we become. We’ll feel just as full of pep if we eat twentyfive hundred calories a day as if we consume half that amount. And by the same token, if we increase our expenditure of energy, it will have no influence on how hungry we become (we won’t work up an appetite) or on how much energy we expend when we’re not exercising. Intuitively we know this isn’t true, and the research in both animals and humans, going back a century, confirms it. 49

There is, then, a dependent relationship between energy consumed and energy expended. Here Taubes details why that dependent relationship is at the heart of his critique of the machine analogy animating mainstream nutrition science: Change one, and the other changes to compensate. To a great extent, if not entirely, the energy we expend from day to day and week to week will determine how much we consume, while the energy we consume and make available to our cells . . . will determine how much we expend. The two are intimately linked. Anyone who argues differently is treating an extraordinarily complex living organism as though it were a simple mechanical device. 50

The bulk of Taubes’ critique of the energy balance, body-as-machine analogy rests with the energy-out/energy expending dimension of human metabolism. Under this critique nutrition must not be viewed as fuel that, if not burned, gets stored as fat. Fuel implies that food nutrients are all equally available as energy; that all a person needs to do is expend more energy to “burn off” excess calories. Taubes explains: If we restrict the amount of food an animal can eat . . . not only does it get hungry, it actually expends less energy. Its metabolic rate slows down. Its cells burn less energy (because they have less energy to burn). And when it gets a chance to eat as much as it wants, it gains the weight right back. 51

One valuable question Taubes’ research and critique of the energy balance/body-as-machine analogy is: How are humans to expend energy when they feel hungry and are lethargic from lack of available energy? The key here is available energy. Taubes’ alternative hypothesis of obesity, which itself relies upon an analogy, rejects the machine analogy by explaining that our fat cells are more “like wallets than a savings or retirement account. You’re always putting fat into it, you’re always taking fat out.” 52

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Taubes’ alternative hypothesis of obesity rests with the assumption that the hormone insulin regulates how much energy we have available to us—it is not simply the amount of food we consume. All food calories are not equal and all are not equally and immediately available as energy. To put Taubes’ hypothesis simply 53: of the food macronutrients protein, carbohydrates, and fat, carbohydrates (especially the simple form) are those that most easily spike the body’s production of insulin. Insulin keeps blood sugars from reaching unsafe levels. Fat energy does not get utilized until insulin levels in the blood drop. Taubes reports, “both dietary fat and a considerable portion of the carbohydrates we consume are stored as fat—or, technically triglycerides—in the adipose tissue before being used for fuel by the cells.” 54 When insulin levels are high, the body does not utilize energy stored in fat cells. In this way it is possible to feel hungry and have low energy, even though there exists plenty of potential energy, though not available until insulin levels fall, in fat cells. Taubes explains, “The fat tissue is not reacting to how much these animals are eating but only to the forces making them accumulate fat. And because increasing body fat requires energy and nutrients that are needed elsewhere in their bodies, they will eat more if they can.” 55 It remains to be seen whether Taubes’ analogical notion of fat cells as a type of wallet, or as a kind of circulating warehouse, responding to hormonal directives is accurate and reliable. Regardless, Teicholz indicates that Taubes’ critical and investigative work has “shattered dogma” 56 and his NuSI studies, overseen by “top nutrition experts,” endeavor to replace nutritional common sense, perpetuated by a problematic analogy, with a new, and better understanding. Regardless of whether Taubes’ alternative hypothesis is proven correct, it nonetheless offers researchers, public health bureaucracies, and the general public a new way—indeed, a new figurative analogy—for viewing our body’s metabolic processes from the perspective of something like, but not exactly like, ourselves. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FOOD INDUSTRY Taubes’ most significant contribution to nutrition science—and especially to how consumers understand it—may well be that all calories, despite the long-popular and orthodox position to the contrary, do not have an equal impact on the human body. There is a substantial industrial interest, especially among corn producers and other affiliated sugar producers, in perpetuating the notion that all calories are equal. Since fat has more than twice as many calories per gram, it has—perhaps mistakenly if Taubes is correct—been vilified as fattening given the assumptions of the energy balance paradigm of obesity research. However, as Taubes and Couzens observe “no consensus exists about sugar’s potential dangers” due to the efforts of those affiliated with the sugar and corn sweetener

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industries to call into question claims about sugar’s role in the doubling of the obesity rate and the tripling of the obesity rate. 57 The sugar industry has benefitted and continues to benefit from a context of uncertainty about the effects of sugar—simple carbohydrates— on the body. If all calories are equal, sugar is simply another “nutrient” among others that make up a body’s fuel source. However, if Taubes’ alternative hypothesis is correct, and simple carbohydrates, which spike insulin production and inhibit the utilization of fat as energy, are especially culpable in promoting morbidity, obesity, and diabetes, then sugar can be regulated as a health nuisance. According to Taubes and Couzens the sugar industry strategically utilizes scientific uncertainty about sugar’s effects to discount research that increasingly points to its harmful effects. The body-as-machine analogy based on the energy balance paradigm has created an environment wherein scientific consensus is exceedingly difficult to achieve. The authors note that “inconclusiveness, of course, is precisely what the Sugar Association has worked so assiduously to maintain.” 58 Epistemic uncertainty, which nutrition science and public health epidemiologists reluctantly tolerate in formulating knowledge amid conditions where many factors and variables are unknown, works to the advantage of industries producing food products of dubious health characteristics. In this regard analogy is a contingent device that while useful as a tool enabling scientific discovery, is far less reliable as an explanatory device elucidating complex processes to a public audience. As Taubes and Couzens tell it, originally the fat critics sought to utilize the analogy to their advantage and blame the other side—those who would ignore fat in favor of sugar as the culprit for obesity. For example, the Sugar Association used the fact that diabetics are highly susceptible to heart disease to advance the claim that such persons should lower dietary fat and increase carbohydrates. 59 Utilizing the assumptions about energy balance, the trade organization successfully convinced the American Diabetes Association that diabetics should be more concerned about losing weight and their obesity-related symptoms—and not take into account that obesity might itself be a symptom of carbohydrate consumption—than in trying to isolate a magic bullet that would prevent diabetes. 60 If Taubes and Couzens are correct, the body-as-machine analogy produced a type of strategic indeterminacy that industries producing carbohydrate-primary food products consistently exploited for their own ends. The inconsistency of available laboratory results maintained the status quo that all calories are equal in their impact on the body. This intuitive, yet likely faulty logic has empowered carbohydrate-primary food producers to continue to market their products under the auspices of healthy eating. This is why the clinical trials at NuSI are so important for consumers who require accurate and verifiable information about the food they

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eat, its ideal proportions, and its role in promoting health or in contributing to its opposite. DISCUSSION Taubes’ research, at minimum, reveals the epistemic uncertainty of researchers attempting to map how macronutrients directly and indirectly interact with the sophisticated, and heretofore inscrutable human metabolic system. But it also reveals how analogies of how human metabolism works are likely to be deeply misleading. Consumers rarely benefit from such a discursive formation; the food industry and its marketing arm, however, are able to capitalize on the elucidating appeal of the analogic form. Analogies employ “familiar images” 61 to help us grasp those things that baffle us, but they do not offer good reasons to draw a particular conclusion, especially on matters as unknown as how our environments, genetics, and food choices collectively establish scenarios of wellness or illness. Neither do they explain nor can they predictably track the variability of these scenarios even among similar persons. As critics of public health messages we need to be cognizant of the mutually-dependent role epistemic uncertainty and the analogical form play in shaping our health and wellness knowledge. Public discourse and health researchers need to direct more research to understanding how to refute argument from analogy. Livnat observes that simply disregarding an analogy—especially one that is hegemonic— is dangerous because “a successful analogy can have considerable argumentative force, and that fact often makes it impossible to ignore and leave it unaddressed without paying a high price.” 62 A critic can either accept the conceptual scheme upon which the analogy is based and offer a revision—the body is a machine, just one that prefers different fuel blends over others, for example—or reject it and in so doing possibly “bolster the conceptual scheme that the analogy is based on, possibly resulting in an outcome that is just the opposite of what is desired.” 63 Of course, critics can suggest a counter-analogy and hope it will disarticulate the hegemonic one. This is difficult with nutrition science because, as this chapter has demonstrated, the energy balance paradigm featuring the body-as-machine analogy with its intuitive, though likely simplistic, notion that “we are what we eat” and that too much caloric fuel contributes to bodily fat accumulation has become common sense. Livnat offers another way to refute a dominant analogy via “indirect rejection through irony.” 64 This approach, much like reductio ad absurdum, disrupts the directionality of an analogy; introduces dissonance in the inferential leap made between the initial and terminal fields of an analogy. While ironic ridicule can be rhetorically effective without offering an alternative analogy, it remains to be seen how such an approach would work in nutrition

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science. If the career of Gary Taubes is any indication, outsider science researchers and journalists, especially those gadflys who routinely ridicule perceived wisdom, tend to remain on the margins of mainstream scientific opinion. It is quite possible that the worst response to the energy balance paradigm would be to replace it with a different causative analogy. If Taubes is correct and the human metabolic system is infinitely complex and difficult to predictably map, then perhaps another analogy explaining cause and effect will simply serve to perpetuate and prolong the urgent problem of obesity and related illnesses of energy imbalance. Regardless, the heuristic functions of analogy are valuable to consumers attempting to make healthier food choices. Why science-derived analogies persist in public discourse and how they become articulated as common sense merits future research. Though scientific analogies function different than strictly political ones, it would nonetheless be a mistake to assume that scientific analogies are somehow free of political influence or somehow do not have political implications. These mutually-reinforcing styles, as this chapter has attempted to show, reveal the complexity in understanding the multitudinous ways food-based analogies impact audiences. Analogies are composed around seemingly parallel cases. It is imperative that we be open to part from an “easy point of consensus” regarding a handy analogy and consider a conclusion with which we may be “less than eager to agree.” 65 Food communication scholars must continually ask whether those analogies animating public understanding on nutrition provide useful, accurate, and ultimately humane, enough concepts for our deliberation. NOTES 1. Robert C. Atkins, Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution: The High Calorie Way to Stay Thin Forever (New York: D. Mckay Co., 1972). 2. Peter H. Gott, Dr. Gott’s No Flour, No Sugar Diet (Sanger: Quill Driver Books, 2006). 3. Fed Up, directed by Stephanie Soechtig (2014; Beverly Hills: Anchor Bay, 2014), Blu-Ray and DVD. 4. Bryan Walsh, “Don’t Blame Fat,” Time, June 23, 2014. 5. Walsh, “Don’t Blame Fat,” 31. 6. Nina Teicholz, The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014), 3. 7. Teicholz, The Big Fat Surprise, 3. 8. Teicholz, The Big Fat Surprise, 4. 9. Teicholz, The Big Fat Surprise, 5. 10. Teicholz, The Big Fat Surprise, 47. 11. Nina Teicholz, “Our Fear of Fat is Melting,”Cnn.com, September 7, 2014, http:// www.cnn.com/2014/09/06/opinion/teicholz-fear-of-dietary-fat-melting/. 12. Elizabeth Kolbert suggests that low-carbohydrate diets like the trendy “Paleo Diet” are faddish due to the appeal of all things retro in 2014. See Elizabeth Kolbert,

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“Stone soup: How the Paleolithic Life Style Got Trendy,” The New Yorker, July 28, 2014, 26. 13. “The Case for Eating Steak and Cream: Why Everything You Heard about Fat Is Wrong,” The Economist, May 31, 2014, http://www.economist.com/news/books-andarts/21602984-why-everything-you-heard-about-fat-wrong-case-eating-steak-andcream. 14. Sam Apple, “All You Can Eat: An Audacious New Research Effort Aims to Discover What Actually Makes Us Fat.” Wired, September 2014, 102. 15. See Gary Taubes, Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011). 16. The science of adiposity is explained in greater detail in Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories (New York: Anchor, 2008) and Why We Get Fat. 17. Richard Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 140. 18. Lanham, A Handlist, 140. 19. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Susan Schultz Huxman. The Rhetorical Act: Thinking, Speaking, and Writing Critically, 3rd ed. (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing, 2003), 78–79. 20. Campbell and Huxman, The Rhetorical Act, 78–79. 21. James Jasinski, Sourcebook on Rhetoric: Key Concepts in Contemporary Rhetorical Studies (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2001), 34. 22. William L. Benoit and John S. France, “Analogical Reasoning in Legal Argumentation,” Conference Proceedings—National Communication Association/American Forensics Association (Alta Conference on Argumentation), January 1979. 23. Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 20–21. 24. John Kozy, Jr., “The Argumentative Use of Rhetorical Figures,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 3, no. 3 (1970): 143. 25. James R. Wilcox and H.L. Ewbank, “Analogy for Rhetors,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 12, no. 1 (1979): 2. 26. Kozy, “The Argumentative Use of Rhetorical Figures,” 142–143. 27. Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945), 503–504. 28. Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives, 504. 29. Benoit and France, “Analogical Reasoning,” 50–51. 30. Wilcox and Ewbank, “Analogy for Rhetors,” 16. 31. Little, “Analogy in Science,” 69. 32. Apple, “All You Can Eat,” 102. 33. Alan Gross, “Analogy and Intersubjectivity: Political Oratory, Scholarly Argument and Scientific Reports,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 69, no. 1 (1983): 38. 34. Gross, “Analogy and Intersubjectivity,” 45. 35. Gross, “Analogy and Intersubjectivity,” 44. 36. Louise Cummings, “Analogical Reasoning as a Tool of Epidemiological Investigation,” Argumentation 18, no. 4 (2004): 427. 37. Cummings, “Analogical Reasoning,” 430. 38. Cummings, “Analogical Reasoning,” 432. 39. Cummings, “Analogical Reasoning,” 434. 40. Teicholz, The Big Fat Surprise, 44, emphasis original. 41. Taubes, Why We Get Fat, 13. 42. Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories, 276. 43. A representative sample of these lectures can be found at http://garytaubes.com/ lectures. 44. Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories, 286. 45. Taubes, Why We Get Fat, 97. 46. Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories, 293, emphases original. 47. Benoit and France, “Analogical Reasoning,” 50.

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48. Taubes, Why We Get Fat, 73. 49. Taubes, Why We Get Fat, 77. 50. Taubes, Why We Get Fat, 78, emphasis mine. 51. Taubes, Why We Get Fat, 79. 52. Taubes, Why We Get Fat, 115. 53. For a full discussion of adiposity and the metabolic and endocrinal processes behind Taubes’ alternative hypothesis of obesity, please see Why We Get Fat, pp. 89–133 and Good Calories, Bad Calories, pp. 89–448 54. Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories, 383, emphasis original. 55. Taubes, Why We Get Fat, 104. 56. Teicholz, The Big Fat Surprise, 313. 57. Gary Taubes and Kristin Kearns Couzens, “Big Sugar’s Sweet Little Lies.” Mother Jones, November/December, 2012, http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/ 10/sugar-industry-lies-campaign. 58. Taubes and Couzens, “Big Sugar’s Sweet Little Lies.” 59. Taubes and Couzens, “Big Sugar’s Sweet Little Lies.” 60. Taubes and Couzens, “Big Sugar’s Sweet Little Lies.” 61. Zohar Livnat, “Making Analogy Work in the Public Arena,” Journal of Language and Politics 10, no. 2 (2011): 229 62. Livnat, “Making Analogy Work in the Public Arena,” 231. 63. Livnat, “Making Analogy Work in the Public Arena,” 231. 64. Livnat, “Making Analogy Work in the Public Arena,” 237. 65. Samuel McCormick, “Arguments from Analogy and Beyond: The Persuasive Artistry of Local American Civic Life,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 100, no. 2 (2014): 193.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Apple, Sam. “All You Can Eat: An Audacious New Research Effort Aims to Discover What Actually Makes Us Fat.” Wired, September 2014, 102–120. Atkins, Robert C. Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution: The High Calorie Way to Stay Thin Forever. New York; D. McKay Co., 1972. Benoit, William L., and John S. France. “Analogical Reasoning in Legal Argumentation,” Conference Proceedings—National Communication Association/American Forensics Association (Alta Conference on Argumentation) (January 1979): 49–61. Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945. ———. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs, and Susan Schultz Huxman. The Rhetorical Act: Thinking, Speaking, and Writing Critically, 3rd ed. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing, 2003. Cummings, Louise. “Analogical Reasoning as a Tool of Epidemiological Investigation,” Argumentation 18, no. 4 (2004): 427–444. Fed Up. Directed by Stephanie Soechtig. 2014. Beverly Hills: Anchor Bay, 2014. Blu-Ray and DVD. Gott, Peter H. Dr. Gott’s No Flour, No Sugar Diet. Sanger: Quill Driver Books, 2006. Gross, Alan. “Analogy and Intersubjectivity: Political Oratory, Scholarly Argument and Scientific Reports,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 69, no. 1 (1983): 37–46. Jasinski, James. Sourcebook on Rhetoric: Key Concepts in Contemporary Rhetorical Studies. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2001. Kolbert, Elizabeth. “Stone Soup: How the Paleolithic Life Style Got Trendy,” The New Yorker, July 28, 2014, 26–29. Kozy, John Jr. “The Argumentative Use of Rhetorical Figures,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 3, no. 3 (1970): 141–151. Lanham, Richard. A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Little, Joseph. “Analogy in Science: Where Do We Go from Here?” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2000): 69–92.

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Livnat, Zohar. “Making Analogy Work in the Public Arena,” Journal of Language and Politics 10, no. 2 (2011): 227–247. McCormick, Samuel. “Arguments from Analogy and Beyond: The Persuasive Artistry of Local American Civic Life,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 100, no. 2 (2014): 186–212. Taubes, Gary. Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. ———. Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health. New York: Anchor, 2008. Taubes, Gary, and Kristin Kearns Couzens. “Big Sugar’s Sweet Little Lies.” Mother Jones, November/December, 2012. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/ 10/sugar-industry-lies-campaign. Teicholz, Nina. The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014. ———. “Our Fear of Fat is Melting,” Cnn.com, September 7, 2014. http:// www.cnn.com/2014/09/06/opinion/teicholz-fear-of-dietary-fat-melting/. “The Case for Eating Steak and Cream: Why Everything You Heard about Fat Is Wrong,” The Economist, May 31, 2014. http://www.economist.com/news/books-andarts/21602984-why-everything-you-heard-about-fat-wrong-case-eating-steak-andcream. Walsh, Bryan. “Don’t Blame Fat,” Time, June 23, 2014, 30–35. Wilcox, James R., and H.L. Ewbank.”Analogy for Rhetors,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 12, no. 1 (1979): 1–20.

Index

agrarian ethics, 1–2 alternative hypothesis of obesity, 260–261, 262. See also Gary Taubes analogy, 254–257; body-as-machine, xi, 251–254, 255, 258–264 Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 2, 4, 14–20 animal welfare, x, 186 Appalachia, 93–114, 115n4; stereotypes about, 93–101 Atkins, Robert. See Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution Bakhtin, MM, vii–viii. See also heteroglossia The Big Fat Surprise, 252 Bizarre Foods America, x, 73, 75, 77–86, 89n46–90n77 Bourdieu, Pierre. See habitus CAFO. See concentrated animal feedlot operations carnism, 143–144, 146, 147, 151 Charleston Gazette, x, 98, 107, 113 Chipotle Mexican Grill, xi, 201, 203–210, 211, 212–219 concentrated animal feedlot operations (CAFO), 203–204, 206–207, 208, 217 consumizens, 201, 209–211, 214, 215–219 corn allergy, x, 155–177 corporate colonization, 231–232, 235, 244–245 corporate propaganda, ix corporate-speak, 201, 216 cosmopolitanism, 71–72, 75 counter culture, 10–11, 11–12, 13, 15 culinary slumming, 71, 73, 75, 82

Deetz, Stanley. See corporate colonization See systematically distorted communication discursive closures, 227, 228, 231–232, 236, 236–238, 239–241, 244–245 Doctor Gott’s No Flour, No Sugar Diet, 251–252 Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution, 251–252 Eating Animals, 28 ecocriticism, 204, 207–212, 215–219 energy balance paradigm. See body-asmachine analogy epistemic uncertainty, 256–257, 262, 264 euphemism, vii–viii, 144–152; conscientious omnivore, 144–145, 149–150, 151–152; “conventional” meat, 202–204, 211–212, 213, 214, 216, 217 exoticism, 72–74, 74–78, 80, 82–86 farm, 141–146, 193–194; factory, 141–146; family, 193–194 fat hypothesis, 252–254 FDA. See Food and Drug Administration Fisher, Walter. See narrative paradigm Foer, Jonathan Safer, 143; See also Eating Animals food, vii, 2; consumption, 15, 71, 73, 79–86, 93–95, 104–114, 131–132, 132, 142; culture, 16, 73, 79–86, 94–95, 98, 103–114, 123–127, 128–132, 134–137, 170–171, 211, 228; desert, 126, 129, 130, 136, 233; insecurity. See poverty; journalism, 47, 48–49, 50–62; labeling, 146, 150, 158–162, 169–170, 171–175, 183–186, 187, 188, 229–230, 231, 233–234, 238–244; 269

270

Index

local, 240–243, 244; organic, xi, 132, 174, 183–196, 227, 228–230, 231, 233–234, 235, 236–240, 241; politics, 10, 21, 28, 34, 54–56, 56–62, 71–74, 84, 85–86, 101–114, 123–127, 128–132, 135–137, 141–146, 147–152, 155–159, 167–168, 175–177, 184–188, 190–196, 201–204, 210–212, 213, 228, 230–232, 233–234, 251–254, 261–264; preparation, 15, 49, 82–86, 94–95, 101, 102, 106–107, 107–114; production, 15, 21, 79–82, 82, 84–85, 93, 100, 102, 103, 104–114, 141–144, 145–146, 148–149, 186; tourism, 71–74, 75, 78 Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 156–157, 161, 168, 177 genetically modified organism (GMO), 207, 217, 241 GMO. See genetically modified organism Gott, Peter See Doctor Gott’s No Flour, No Sugar Diet greenwashing, vii, xi, 201–203, 227, 228–232, 233–234, 235–236, 238–241, 244–245 habitus, 127, 135–137 heteroglossia, vii–viii Horizon Organic Dairy, 184, 187–196 How the Other Half Lives , 7 hunger, 124, 125–126 hyperindividualism, 16–17 idiom, vii–viii Jefferson, Thomas, 1–2 Kingsolver, Barbara. See Animal, Vegetable, Miracle language (food), vii–xi, 46–48, 50–52, 52, 54, 60–62, 78, 79–86, 93, 133–137, 155–159, 160–162, 162–177, 183–187, 189–190, 201–208, 209–219, 227, 229–232, 233–234, 236–245, 251–254, 258–264

language (political), vii–xi, 45–46, 50–52, 54–56, 56–62, 71–74, 78, 85–86, 95–98, 99, 101–102, 103, 105–114, 123–132, 135–137, 141–146, 147, 150–152, 155, 156–159, 161–162, 166, 184–187, 190–191, 192–196, 201–205, 206–212, 213–219, 229–232, 233–234, 236–245, 251–254, 261–264 Living the Good Life , 2, 4, 9–14 low-carbohydrate diet, 251–254 masculinity, 6, 8–9 meatwashing, xi, 201, 203–204, 207, 208–210, 212–217 Morris, Edmund. See Ten Acres Enough narrative paradigm, 187, 195, 196 Nearing, Helen and Scott. See Living the Good Life New York Times, x, 98, 102–107, 112–114 NuSI. See Nutrition Science Institute Nutrition Science Institute (NuSI), 253, 255–256, 262 obesity research, ix, 258 Occupy Movement. See social movements Orwell, George, vii–viii. See also language (political) Oswald, John, 27, 29–40 otherness, 71–72, 75–77, 82, 84, 86, 104 poverty, x, 71–77, 83–86, 93–94, 95, 128–137 poverty cuisine, 78–81 Protestant work ethic, 5, 7 ramps, x, 93–95, 98–114 resistance, 51–52 social class, 110, 113–114, 124–125, 126–137 social movements (food-based), ix; food justice, 227; locavore, 227; occupy movement, ix, 45–62; rhetoric, 45, 47, 48–49, 52–56, 57–59; Slow Food, 227 sustainability, 110–112, 112–113, 130, 136–137, 195, 196, 213, 233

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systematically distorted communication, 228, 231–232, 236

USDA. See United States Department of Agriculture

taste, 123–128, 130, 131–137 Taubes, Gary, xi, 253–254, 255–264 Teicholz, Nina. See The Big Fat Surprise Ten Acres Enough, 2, 4, 9–14 tolerance, 71–73 trope, ix; back to the land, ix, 1, 2, 3, 18, 19, 20–22; concept of family, 192–195; feel-good, 78; of sympathy, ix, 27, 30, 36–40

vegetarianism, ix, 27–33, 38, 39–40, 148–149

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 130, 184–186, 188, 195–196, 206, 233, 238, 241, 251

waste, 123–128, 130–131, 136–137 wild leeks. See ramps Zimmern, Andrew. See Bizarre Foods America Zuccotti Park, 45, 46, 47–48, 52, 53–54, 55, 63n15

About the Contributors

Joe Abisaid is currently a visiting assistant professor of communication at Northern Illinois University. His research interests include political communication, public opinion, media effects, and animal studies issues. His work has appeared in Communication Research, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, and in edited collections on human-animal studies. His current research focuses on the effects of animal advocacy films. Jennifer Adams is an associate professor of communication studies at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana where she teaches courses in rhetorical theory, environmental rhetoric, public discourse, and interpersonal communication. Her research is focused largely on historic private and public discourse from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. She has published book chapters on letter writing as memory and American neo-homesteads as acts of protest, and has written about the radical women’s suffrage activist Helen Gougar in Traces: Indiana History Magazine. Her work has also appeared in Sage’s Encyclopedia of Green Culture and the Southern Communication Journal and the Review of Communication. She is a regular speaker on topics of environmental politics at the Monday Night Lyceum series held at the Good Life Center in Maine, the former home of self-sustaining homesteader Scott Nearing, and she has also presented research about the rhetoric of food labels as part of a daylong seminar at the 2010 National Communication Association Convention pre-conference. Her current research explores the rhetoric of American socialist and anarchist women who were prosecuted for their protests of WWI. Melissa Boehm is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Theatre at Montana State University Billings. Her research interests include the framing of poverty in news media with a specific focus on the intersections of gender, race, and place; the media reform movement; and alternative media. She is currently researching the framing of women of Appalachia in mass media. Her areas of teaching are: media studies, public relations, research methods, law and regulations, broadcast and cable programming, and women and media. Samuel Boerboom is an assistant professor of media studies in the Department of Communication and Theatre at Montana State University Billings. His research interests include political communication, rhetorical theory, mobile media, and media ecology. His work has appeared in 273

274

About the Contributors

the Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Journal of Mobile Media and Communication, Sage’s Encyclopedia of Mobile Media and Politics, as well as in various scholarly anthologies and is forthcoming in Sage’s Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods. He is currently researching rhetorics of NeoLuddism. Kathy Brady is an associate professor of media in the Communication Department at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Her wide-ranging research interests include corporate culture, radio drama, radio advertising, feature writing and copywriting. Her work has appeared in Technical Communication Quarterly, Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, Journal of Radio and Audio Media, Journal of Military Experience, Journal of Practical Consulting, Journal of Media Education, and Fandemonium: Experiences of Fan Power, Identity and Socialization (A.C. Earnheardt, P.M. Haridakis, and B. Hugenberg, Eds.) She is an awardwinning radio dramatist. Dr. Brady is a corn allergic herself, and is very active in an online corn allergy community. Cristin A. Compton is an organizational communication student pursuing her PhD at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Under the guidance of her advisor, Dr. Debbie Dougherty, Cristin’s research centers on how sexuality, gender, power, and identity are communicated. She is currently researching how gender, sexuality, and identity are communicated in all-girls’ rock camp. Leda Cooks is a Professor in the Department of Communication, UMass Amherst, where she teaches community based learning courses in food, culture and identity, as well as courses in dialogue, interracial communication, performance studies and critical pedagogy. She has co-authored and co-edited special issues in journals (Text and Performance Quarterly, Feminist Media Studies) and a book on race, performance and pedagogy. She has published widely in Communication and Community Based Learning journals and volumes. Professor Cooks is currently working on a co-authored book project for the Peter Lang Publishing Lifespan Series, entitled Food Makes a Family. Ellen Gorsevski researches and teaches about contemporary peacebuilding rhetoric, focusing on persuasive political and social advocacy for peace and justice. Dr. Gorsevski’s research focuses mainly on emphasizing the undiscovered, less well known, or often forgotten rhetorical records of diverse activists in socio-political and environmental justice movements. Her recent articles have appeared in Quarterly Journal of Speech; Western Journal of Communication; and Environmental Communication. Her books are Peaceful Persuasion: The Geopolitics of Nonviolent Rhetoric (SUNY Press, 2004), and Dangerous Women: The Rhetoric of the Women Nobel Peace Laureates (Troubador Publishing, Ltd., 2014). Casey Ryan Kelly is an Associate Professor of Media, Rhetoric and Culture at Butler University. His research explores the rhetorical dynamics of neocolonialism in contemporary film, television, and U.S. public

About the Contributors

275

culture. His other areas of research include American Indian rhetoric, post/feminism, and ideological criticism. He is currently completing a book titled Abstinence Cinema, which explores the emergence of pro-virginity rhetoric in contemporary U.S. film. His research has appeared in journals such as Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Feminist Media Studies, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Western Journal of Communication, Communication Quarterly, Women’s Studies in Communication, Argumentation and Advocacy, and Advances in the History of Rhetoric. Justin Killian is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at St. Cloud State University. He studies political rhetoric, feminist theory, and gender. He teaches courses in rhetorical theory, argumentation, and political communication. Megan A. Koch is an organizational communication doctoral student at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her research interests include food insecurity, social class, and identity. She is a member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Food Security helping map hunger and food insecurity in Missouri’s twenty-nine counties. She is currently researching community supported agriculture (CSA) and community-building at local farmer’s markets. Amy Pason is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, specializing in Public Advocacy and Civic Engagement. Her research interests focus on social movement and counterpublic theory, and she has written on women’s peace movement work, Occupy, and student activism, which has been published in edited collections. Her research on academic labor has been published in the International Journal of Communication and Ephemera: theory and politics in organization. Her current research focuses on different tactics and campaigns developed from the Occupy Movement including Occupy Homes and Occupy Food. Jessica Prody is an assistant professor of rhetoric and communication studies at St. Lawrence University. Her research interests include environmental communication, citizenship, and environmental pedagogy. She has work forthcoming in Argumentation and Advocacy, the 2013 Alta Proceedings, and Voice and the Environment (edited by Jennifer Peeples and Stephen DePoe). She is currently researching the local food movement and climate change.