I began my rhetoric of food journey without a map. I signed up for the course because I love food and I generally like writing. After looking at the syllabus, I figured we’d be learning how to effectively critique food, food writing, cookbooks, food blogs, so on and so forth. Of course I was wrong, and thankfully so. I’ve come to understand how food can be an entry point into larger talking points like power, politics, history, conflicts, and so much more.

Food goes far beyond satiating hunger. It defines cultures. It brings people together. It can pull people apart. The rhetoric of food helps us understand food’s connection to our world and how other people view it through different lenses. Who is talking, what they’re talking about, and who they’re talking to all have major impacts on writing on both sides of the spectrum. As a reader, one must be conscious of who the author of a text is and whether or not they are a qualified speaker. As a writer, one must be aware of who he or she is speaking to.

As the semester comes to a close, I think that I am able to sufficiently define the rhetoric of food. When I first signed up for this class, I had no idea what to expect from it. I had no idea how much effort and thought goes into writing the simplest of recipes, whether the author is trying to show the true historical roots of the recipe, or just a blogger trying to portray his/her passion for food and food writing. I think the rhetoric of food also encompasses the connection between different cultures—there are so many ways to prepare a certain dish and each culture has a different way of doing so. It is so interesting that the authors of these recipes will include the how and why of each preparation. Food texts represent so much more than food; it represents the history, culture, and passion for food and preparing food from different human beings. I think that recognizing food as more than just something humans eat to live or to enjoy and turning it into a text is the best definition I can think of for the rhetoric of food.

This semester, I gained knowledge about the different ways to analyze food texts through many different varieties of texts including recipes, blog posts, and food reviews. I never knew that the “rhetoric of food” would be so interesting and deep; I now know how much effort and deep thought goes into writing even just the simplest recipe. For this reason, I chose the true Italian pesto recipe as my favorite piece of assigned writing during the semester. I was inspired dedication to writing the recipe as close to its Italian roots as possible. The author truly had a passion for her recipe for pesto and wanted to share it with the world, which is one of the most crucial techniques to writing a meaningful piece of food text.

Secondly, my favorite food text that was not assigned for the class to read would be the food blog “North Wild Kitchen.” I used this food blog as my mentor text when creating my own food blog and I am so thankful that I did; the parts of the blog that I chose to mimic from this blog were some of my audience’s favorite parts about my own blog.

I really loved all the intricacies of the various recipes from the class reading, however my favorite piece of writing I read would be the Farm to Fable piece regarding the restaurants in Tampa. I enjoy not only when a piece is well written, but when I learn something new from it. The Farm to Fable piece really opened my eyes to issues I was completely unaware of. How is it legal to serve pork as veal? I had so many questions after reading this piece. Maybe I was interested in this piece, because I am interested in the things it was sharing. I love the boldness of this piece and that it was very research based. You could definitely tell the author worked really hard to gather data and organize it. She did a great job presenting her information and still making her writing interesting. I also enjoyed her direct quotes of questions she asked various restaurants as well as her ability to highlight the hypocrisy of the various Tampa restaurants.

Of the readings I did myself, my favorite was probably The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food. It was very informative and exposed a lot about the food industry, not unlike the Farm to Fable piece. The piece showed me a lot of surprising information about the way the food industry makes its food, and it gave information directly from first hand sources. While very lengthy, the author revealed so many things that were unknown to me. I couldn’t help but want to know more.

Rhetoric of food is very idiosyncratic and personal to the individual author. However food is what connects us to each other. Every human being likes and needs food. Regardless of the type of rhetoric an author uses in his or her writing, every one can relate to the writing because food ties us all together. Driven by what we eat and where we eat it, food rhetoric is often beautiful because of all the cultures involved. Whether you’re from Indonesia or South Africa, you enjoy eating food. Rhetoric of food is about unity, because it unifies all cultures, races, genders, and political views. Rhetoric of food is a tool or a vehicle. Food writing is used as a vehicle to share something personal (opinion piece), as a tool to promote activism (investigative pieces), or even as a tool to teach (recipe).

Two of the best things I read this semester are:
– Tipton-Martin’s The Jemima Code for the way that it was able to tell a story through the context of food writing in a historical sense. This was the text that really drove home to me the idea that we all have a connection between ourselves and the food we make and eat. There is a reason we eat the way we do.
– Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health implications for the 21st century (http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/81/2/341) for the way that this text explained so well the crisis that the world faces if we continue to move towards a globalized diet modeled off of the Western diet. Essentially, this text explains, our bodies are not meant to consume this type of food. We have not had the time to adjust to this high calorie, low nutrient diet, and we might not ever. This text allowed me to explain why this type of diet is so bad for our health and has inspired a lot of thought in me about an issue in which I am very interested.

To me, you really have to break down this topic word by word. First, rhetoric. I took a course on rhetoric last semester and the general impression I got was that rhetoric is, in simplistic terms, modes of persuasion. Next, of. This was the word that brought me the most difficulty at the beginning of this course. I knew the definition of rhetoric and food, but the rhetoric OF food just didn’t make sense. At the end, now, I can look back and say that here “of” refers to two things. There is the food’s rhetoric. The food itself has a story, and like art is there for a reason whether you understand that reason or not. In a way, the existence of the food is trying to persuade you of that reason. But second, there is the food writing in which people try to persuade others of their own personal connection to food, whether that be through the way that they perceive the pain of a lobster in the same way as their own pain, or how arguing for the authenticity of their own hummus as some representation of the validity of their culture. And food? That includes everything from the most basic sources of what we would commonly perceive to be food – the ingredients, crops, origins, production, history – to the process of forming those ingredients into dishes, to eating.

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