Stomachs on legs are proud to present

Coffee entrepreneur David Lynch lets us in on his dining secrets:

You famously used to have a milk shake at Bob’s Big Boy almost every day for lunch—what do you eat for lunch now?

I have something called Dr. Bieler’s broth. It is parsley, zucchini, green beans and celery, and you cook it and then blend it into a thick, green soup. Dr. Bieler invented it as a kind of purifier, I think, in the 1960s. Then I have seven almonds with that.

Why seven?

Well, I like the number seven, and so, you know, it just seems like the right amount.

Via Food and Wine

Whiteness and Farmers Markets: Performances, Perpetuations … Contestations?

Alison Hope Alkon1, Christie Grace McCullen

Academics and activists highlight the potential for alternative agrifood movements to contribute to the evolving coalescence of justice and sustainability. This potential, however, is constrained by what scholars have identified as the prevalent whiteness of such movements. This paper uses ethnographic research at two northern California farmers markets to investigate how whiteness is performed and perpetuated through the movements’ discourses and practices. We found that many managers, vendors and customers hold notions of what farmers and community members should be that both reflect and inform an affluent, liberal habitus of whiteness. Although whiteness pervades these spaces, we have also witnessed individual discourses and acts of solidarity and anti-racism, as well as fledgling institutional efforts to contest white cultural dominance. We conclude by discussing the potential of farmers markets to create an anti-racist politics of food.

available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00818.x/abstract

This paper explores the everyday politics and lived experiences of young people who identify as fat, obese or overweight. Situated within the emerging interdisciplinary fields of fat studies, critical weight studies and critical geographies of body size, this paper gives voice to young people who are often marginalised and frequently stigmatised. I draw attention to the embodied relationalities and intersectionalities evident with the young people's narratives of body size as well as the structures of constraint that operate to reinforce the marginalisation they feel. I conclude by outlining the challenges that exist in transforming the everyday politics of fat.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2011.00962.x/abstract

Abstract

Happiness is an elusive concept, it brings about ideas of ecstasy, contentment, delight but also health and strength, pouvoir and puissance ... a state of mind and body that is precarious and contingent. How to give form and substance to an idea that is otherwise difficult to conceive? What is happiness for a chicken? What is it like to be a chicken today? Free-range certification offers a powerful interpretation of animals' happiness in the context of farming, and it does so by providing a particular translation of the `natural' in the domesticated environment of farming. But it also offers a specific definition of materiality, in the form of the body of the animal, presented as an expression of her/his quality of life in the juiciness and other organoleptic qualities of her/his flesh or eggs. In this paper, I present the results of an on-farm assessment of the welfare of free-range chickens in the UK, carried out by adopting the Welfare Quality protocol. This is a new evaluation of the on-farm welfare of animals that encompasses many aspects of animals' lives, including animals' negative and positive emotions. It suggests that animals' `happiness' can be measured and can become part of an overall score of welfare, but it also addresses the complexities of the interpretation of the emotional states of animals. I propose that this case contributes to the debate on `material politics' and the invention of animals' happiness can be seen as a political technique that affects human ^ non-human
animal relations.

Miele M, 2011, "The taste of happiness: free-range chicken" Environment and Planning A 43(9) 2076 – 2090

It reminds me of the Posh Nosh episode. I can't help but feel that we've gotten our priorities all wrong.