food

An article about heirloom tomatoes and questions about the snobbery surrounding their consumption have graced the pages of the Washington Post and the Star Tribune in recent weeks. About the rise of the heirloom tomato…

“Heirloom” has become another buzzword, like “farm to table,” complained Jeremy Fox, the chef at vegetarian restaurant Ubuntu in Napa, Calif., which serves farm-to-table heirlooms as well as hybrids invented by the restaurant’s full-time gardener. “It’s about quality,” he said. “If a tomato tastes good, it’s a good tomato. Nothing else matters.”

That wasn’t always the case. Once, only serious back-yard gardeners swooned over heirlooms. Some, undoubtedly, were concerned about flavor. But for most, growing heirlooms — which they defined as any variety that can reproduce from seed and existed before World War II — was more about preserving biodiversity. Only within the past decade did chefs and trend-crazed food writers latch on to the term: NewsBank, a database that tracks more than 2,500 sources, found 1,097 references to heirloom tomatoes in 2008, up from 77 a decade earlier.

The article draws heavily upon research by sociologist Jennifer Jordan…

Indeed, heirloom tomatoes rose to such prominence that sociologists began to study them as a cultural phenomenon. In a 2007 article in the journal Sociologia Ruralis, Jennifer Jordan examined the pressing question of why a growing number of consumers had acquired a taste for $7-a-pound “bug-eaten, calloused, mottled and splitting tomatoes that may or may not taste good.”

Jordan concluded it was because heirloom tomatoes had evolved into a “marker of distinction.” The lumpy, imperfect fruit had become a kind of mascot for the good-food movement that is against industrial agriculture’s embrace of pesticides, against the development of genetically modified foods, in favor of preserving small farms and in support of local and seasonal food.

Some people sought out heirlooms for their flavor, a reaction to the pretty but insipid industrial hybrids. (Jordan reports that university labs were instructed “to imagine the tomato as a projectile” in their efforts to develop fruit that could survive long-distance shipping and extended refrigeration.) But for many, the growing or purchase of heirloom tomatoes was about making a statement.

Read more.

Yesterday The Guardian (UK) ran a story about a new trend documented by sociologists at Oxford University. The Guardian reports:

More families are eating together at home as a result of the recession, a report by Oxford academics has found.

A quarter of parents questioned say they are trying harder to ensure that everyone in the household eats the same meal to help keep costs down, while 48% of parents say they are eating out less frequently. One in six cited more family time as a side effect of the downturn.

Changing Plates, based on research by the department of sociology at Oxford University and YouGov, and commissioned by Birds Eye, found that 67% of UK adults eat a meal with their families at least three times a week. Almost half do so every day.

The study’s author notes,

Jonathan Gershuny, from the Department of Sociology at Oxford University, said: “The findings of this report suggest that while the family meal is adapting and becoming more relaxed, the social significance of eating together remain.”

Read more.

With the recent panic about the salmonella poisonings resulting from tainted peanut butter, The Star Press (Central Indiana) ran a story about moms who struggle with deciding whether or not to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their children — once a household staple for meals and snacks.

Who better to quell this fear than a sociologist?

It’s reasonable for parents to react strongly to the initial news of the recalls, said Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California, but unnecessarily avoiding peanut butter in the long run could teach children to be afraid of food.

Many more children will die from being hit by lightning than tainted peanut butter, said Glassner, author of The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food is Wrong.

“Are you going to prohibit your child from going outside every time it rains?” he asked. “If you’re rational, what you’ll do is, if there’s lightning outside, you’ll keep them in, and when that’s done, you let them go out safely and go to school in the rain. I think this is the same thing. It’s very reasonable to take peanut butter off the menu until we knew what was going on, but then it’s not anymore.”

Read more.