Defense of Fast Food Labor Conditions

I stumbled on this short position paper published in something called Opus1: The Journal of Undergraduate Research. In it, the author (whose name is not given) makes an argument in defense of the fast food industry's focus on hiring teens and praises the "extreme division of labor into simple repetitive tasks" (in other words, the Fordist model of food production we've been discussing in class) as a way "to tap inexpensive footloose labor." Since this is precisely the opposite of the position most people in the class took in response to the "Behind the Counter" chapter of Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, I thought it would be useful to post it here.

By the way, Opus1 is a strange publication -- I'm not sure what to make of it. Apparently it publishes papers by college undergraduates, though strangely none of the papers are attributed to individual authors. There is an editorial board that apparently selects the work published in the journal, and the board includes mostly people who work at universities -- but none of their credentials are given, and the site doesn't give any details about the editorial process. The site seems to focus primarily on economics, with a bias toward neoliberal or free market economics.

Fast Food Map of NYC

This is a Google Maps mashup that shows the fast food restaurants in New York City, broken down by chain. I'm not sure if they're all represented or not. Still, this could be useful if you were doing research on the density of fast food restaurants or their placement.

Freddy Krueger Eats a Hamburger

For those of you who remember the old "Nightmare on Elm St." movies, and for those of you who will be going to see the "Nightmare on Elm St." remake later this year, I present Freddy Krueger Eats a Hamburger.

Sample Blogs

Here are links to some blogs that I think are good. They're not related to the cluster topic (which your blog should be) but each of them has a theme and actively engages with that theme through regular posts. Some of them might be run by more than one person, so don't be intimidated if the volume or frequency of the posts seems very high.

Gaping Void
Yellow Menace: Asian Pop Culture Upside Your Head
Strange Maps
Arbogast on Film
I Love Typography
Motomachi's Vending Blog

The last one (a favorite) requires some explanation: this person in Japan photographs a particular vending machine every day, tracking changes in the products sold in the machine and their placement, the advertising campaigns that are featured on the machine, and the price of the goods. It's a great, crazy, obsessive project.

Grading Student Blogs

Note to my Ethics of Food students:

During Monday's ENG103, I talked a little bit about how your overall performance on your blogs will figure in the "low stakes writing" part of the course grade (30%). The grade for "low stakes writing" includes all of the grades for weekly responses and informal presentations, but it also includes an evaluation of the quality and interest of your blogging activity as a whole. Having an active, creative blog will positively impact this portion of your grade; having an inactive blog will negatively impact the grade. One of you has emailed to ask me for some clarifiction on what counts as an active, creative blog, and I thought the answer should be posted here.

What I mean is that you should work to make your blog active by posting informally about topics related to the class on your own, instead of just posting assignments. For example, look at my Ethics of Food blog: I post at least three times per week, and there are posts on a variety of subjects related to what we're talking about in the cluster. Some of my posts (about 40%) are course materials: assignments, feedback, etc. Most of the posts (about 60%) are related to our cluster topic, but are not course materials: links to news items, videos, images, small pieces of informal writing on the fast food industry or industrial agriculture. Some of my blog entries are short and very informal: for example, the posts on "The Invincible Happy Meal" or today's post on George Lopez. Others are longer and more developed, but they're still just me "thinking out loud."

Keeping an active blog should be about the same for you. Post a few times every week. For each formal assignment you write (40%), do a few informal posts (60%). Your blog doesn't have to look like mine or read like mine, but it should demonstrate some engagement with the cluster topics. Use the blog as a tool to bring your course-work into your everyday life.

For example, you might post informally about a food-related experience: a meal you ate, something you noticed on a trip to the grocery store, a job you had, a crazy adventure you had trying to fulfill a food craving late at night, etc. Or you might draw a picture of your lunch once a week for the rest of the semester and post the drawings. Or you might post a Youtube video that you think relates to the class and say a little about it. ("Here's a great George Lopez routine on immigrant labor in the fast food industry...") Or you might investigate the food options you find in your neighborhood or at school.

This should be an easy way to raise your grade, and it should be fun. Note that not everything has to be writing, because I'm not grading these posts individually. If you're an "okay" writer but a good artist, you can use your art to make an exciting blog. The point is, you should try to make your blog more than a place where you deposit homework. Instead, it should be something I and your classmates want to check in with.

I know someone is going to ask exactly how the blogs will be graded. You'll find a description of how the grades will be assigned here.

George Lopez on Fast Food + Immigrant Labor

Here's a great George Lopez routine on immigrant labor in the fast food industry. I think Lopez is really funny, but I also find his stand-up work insightful when it comes to thinking about issues of labor and immigration in the U.S.

Thinking about today's class discussion, I wonder if what Lopez is saying contradicts Schlosser's emphasis on teens in the fast food workplace. Is Schlosser out of date on this topic?

Research Assignment #1

Due: Thursday 3/25
Requirements: 1 quotation

There are several steps to this assignment:

1. Critical Reading: Choose an issue, problem, or topic that interests you from your reading of Eric Schlosser's "Behind the Counter." Your topic may come directly from Schlosser, or it may be taken from class discussion or chosen in response to a classmate's blog entry. It is okay to use the same issue you wrote about in Response #2.

2. Independent Research: Using LexisNexis Academic or LexisNexis Academic (New York York News Search), find a good article that relates to your issue. In other words, find an article that provides new and useful information or a new and different perspective that helps you understand the issue better. In general, longer and more comprehensive articles are better sources for this kind of research.

3. Writing with Outside Sources: Write a blog post about your issue, using the article you found to address it. Remember to use your best skills in quoting and/or paraphrasing the source.

4. Citation: Cite your source at the bottom of the post using the following format

Last Name, First Name. "Title of Article." Title of Publication. Date of Publication.

Later in the semester we'll be using MLA format, which is very similar to this. You use MLA here, if you are already familiar with it.

Assignment: Comments

Due: Tuesday 3/23 by noon

Before class on Tuesday, please read and comment on one of your classmates blog entries for Response #2. Remember our discussion about commenting on blogs today: you should be opening a dialogue with your classmate about what he or she has to say, not responding to the form of the writing alone. Consider the observations made in the post and the conclusions that are drawn from them; consider the ideas, analyses, and responses presented in the post.

Your role as an active reader is to test what the writer has said against your own ideas, observations, analyses, and conclusions. Your role in providing written comments is to respond to the writer using what you've discovered in reading his or her work.

Grades + Feedback

By now, everyone should have received feedback on Response #1. It may be worth making a few comments about that feedback here.

This round of feedback includes a series of written comments that address each stage of the assignment (response to reading + field work) from a compositional perspective, considering topics such as organization, development, and the use of outside sources or experiential evidence. I've provided fairly extensive written feedback this time because this is the first graded assignment.

Following my comments, I've given a list of the compositional and the sentence-level issues I noted in the work. One example is listed for each sentence-level issue (usually the first one) but you should keep in mind that the same issue may occur several times in the piece. My advice for working through sentence-level issues (and therefore avoiding them on the next assignment) is to take printed copies of your assignment and my feedback to the Writing Center in E-111.

A few of you will discover that I've given you specific instructions for using the Writing Center, such as "I want you to visit the Writing Center *once per week* this semester." As I said in class, it's been my experience that students who follow these instructions show dramatic improvement in their work (and therefore in their grades!) over the course of the semester.

The grade for this assignment is shown at the bottom of the page. As it states on the syllabus, responses cannot be rewritten; however, all of your response papers for the semester will be averaged together (along with the overall grade for your blog) to account for 30% of your course grade. If you're concerned about your grade on this assignment, the best thing to do is to work out the issues I've noted in my feedback so that you can get a higher grade next time.

Logical Fallacies

The web site that Dr. Rizzieri presented during this weeks LIB110 can be found here. It defines and provides examples for a great number of logical fallacies (errors in reasoning) that frequently occur in advertising and in writing. They even show up in student papers! so it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with some of the most common ones, such as "Appeal to Authority," "Post Hoc," and "Appeal to Tradition."

The Invincible Happy Meal 2

Ryan Vera, who is blogging for Dr. McCormick's "Eat, Read, Write" class this semester, passed on a link to this Morgan Spurlock video in a comment on my earlier post. In the video, Spurlock tests the decomposition time of various McDonald's foods against that of a hamburger and fries purchased from a mom-and-pop restaurant. The results are startling, particularly in the case of the french fries, and may give us some insight into the use of preservatives in the fast food industry. These foods are designed to appeal to our senses of taste and smell, so it's easy to forget that they're also designed to fit the needs of industrial production, to sit in warehouses for long periods of time, and to be transported over long distances before they reach the walk-in freezers of local franchises.

You can catch a glimpse of that production process in this post about a McDonald's factory in Russia. Don't miss the McDonald's Bun Guide and Bun Troubleshooting Tool!

McDonald's Training with the Nintendo DS

The Japanese branch of McDonald's is reportedly preparing to extend its collaboration with the Nintendo Company, expanding the use of the Nintendo DS portable game system to employee training.

McDonald's already has a "synergistic" relationship with the Japanese video game company as one of only two providers for its wireless "Nintendo Zone" service (available only in Japan). "DS owners who visit McDonalds shops with their system... have access to such free services as character distribution, digital stamp rallies, coupons for McDonalds food items, comic distribution, and exclusive game demos" (Nintendo Partners With McDonalds for New DS Service). The other provider is the "third sector" Tsukuba Express rail system.

Now, the fast food corporation is developing game software for the Nintendo DS that will be used to train its new employees. "Using the new DS software, McDonalds believes it can cut training time by half over conventional methods, in part due of the familiarity of the DS system" (McDonalds Uses DS To Train Part Time Workers). The US military has been using video games for combat training for decades (in recent news, see here). The corporate sector has made also been using games technology for training. But, to my knowledge, both military and corporate efforts have focused primarily on games developed in-house: this seems to be the first time that an existing game system will be used to train employees in partnership with the corporation that developed the game system. As such, the McDonald's-Nintendo partnership represents a significant new development for the gaming industry. One thing will remain the same, however: as legacy games, the end products of this collaboration will undoubtedly become the horrid "training videos" of the future.

I'm curious to see how far McDonald's will take this effort if it turns out to be successful, for example whether they will retool their own equipment along the lines of the Nintendo DS gaming system or its controller in order to create a more fluid transition for new employees. Again, such efforts have long been under discussion within the military-industrial complex (for example).

Finally, I can't end this post without making some kind of reference to the popular 1984 film "The Last Starfighter," in which a teen boy discovers that his favorite arcade game is actually a training tool that an alien civilization is using recruit pilots for a battle in space. (No kidding.) Imagine how he would have felt if he'd been training for a job at McDonald's all along.

The Invincible Happy Meal

"The picture you're looking at above isn't of just any Happy Meal. It's a Happy Meal that's an entire year old. Yup, author Joann Bruso decided to undertake a little experiment with McDonald's most recognizable icon (besides that bizarre man-clown, that is). So she bought a Happy Meal, took out the hamburger, and plopped down in her office. For a year. This is what happened."

You can read the rest of the brief article and find a link to Bruso's web site here. You can read Bruso's "Happy Meal Blog" here, although you may have to try several times: according to the blog, "My Happy Meal posting went viral with multiple blogs and news sites picking it up. The Baby Bites’ site is having a hard time handling all the hits. We are working on this issue. If you experience difficulty on the site or do not see your comment posted, please check back."

It's worth noting that several people who commented on Bruso's post report similar (usually accidental) experiments with other processed foods. One reader tells of an open "Lunchable" that sat unchanged in her kitchen for several months. Another describes how her young daughter left an uneaten Dairy Queen ice cream cone sitting in her closet for two weeks: "I was hanging up some clothes in her room [and] I noticed a perfect looking unmelted ice cream cone." Apparently the so-called ice cream shrank slightly during that time, but there was no melting and none of the foul odor you'd expect from dairy products gone rancid.

Of course none of these are scientific experiments, but they do make me uneasy!

Wendy's Training Video from the 80s

Over at Dr. McCormick's "Eat, Read, Write" blog, she has posted a Wendy's training video that makes truly embarrassing/hilarious use of rap music and dated MTV-style special effects to explain how to flip burgers. Not to be missed!

Sometimes I feel sorry for the 80s.

"Flooded McDonald's" Video

"Flooded McDonald's" is a short video in which a "convincing life-size replica" of a McDonald's is gradually filled with water. Prepared food, wrappers, drink cups, toys and trays float through the restaurant; the furniture and trash cans begin to float; the "restaurant's" electrical grid short circuits; "eventually the space becomes completely submerged."

Watching the clip several times, I found myself experiencing a range of feelings -- at some moments it seemed comical and prank-like, at others calming and serene, at still others disturbing. Almost inevitably, it made me think of T.S. Eliot's famous poem "The Wasteland," which treats the "new" landscape of modern life (the poem was written in 1922) as an object of suspicion and despair because it undoes the cultural certainties that supposedly came before it, particularly through the development of "mass" or pop culture that is such an important part of the Modern world. The poem includes a section which describes the river Thames, which runs through London, as one of many featured "waste lands":

The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.

In contrast to Eliot, "Flooded McDonald's" seems to relocate the river itself inside the landscape of pop culture. The water is both a destructive force and completely contained or controlled by the pop culture environment it's introduced into, since the "restaurant" is sealed. In this sense, the video expresses a desire to destroy this environment and an inability to do so. Of course it's the floating trash that made me think of Eliot, but it also strikes me that to make such an elaborate replica of a restaurant and then flood it and destroy it says something about American "fast food culture" -- the culture of instant gratification and disposable goods that is larger than fast food, but easily represented by it.

Anyway, I came across this piece and thought I'd throw it out there. Whatever you make of the video, it's a strange and interesting response to one of our main topics of discussion this semester.

The video was made by the art collective Superflex in 2009. You can see film and production stills, and read about the project at the Superflex web site.

Scientific Management and the "Deskilling" of the Fast Food Worker

During today's class discussion, several students raised the point that the fast food industry promises teenagers "work experience" but doesn't provide any training, skills, or knowledge that can be used outside of the fast food industry itself. To paraphrase Claude, the industry can give teens a line on their resume, but it doesn't give them the opportunity to develop new skills that they can take forward to the next job -- let alone challenging them to develop as people. Fast food workers don't even learn to cook!

We're going to talk more on Tuesday about the industry's assembly-line model of food production, but in light of today's discussion I dug up the following reference to the work of the labor sociologist Harry Braverman. Braverman's pioneering work in "labor sociology" was one of the first examinations of the effects of assembly-line labor on the workers who are subjected to it. As Martin Slattery explains in Key Ideas in Sociology:

The purpose of new technology, however, argues Braverman, is not only to increase productivity, but to increase management's control of the work force... The traditional craftsman of the early Industrial Revolution was, in a sense, self-employed and independent. He owned his own tools and place of work, bought his own materials and sold the finished product directly to the consumer. He alone possessed the necessary skill and knowledge required for the whole production process, from conception through to execution. He had a certain status and power in relation to the employer... Scientific management, argued Braverman, deskilled the industrial worker and left him helpless, powerless, and skill-less, controlled from above by factory managers and reduced on the shop floor to simply a unit of production. The epitome of scientific management was Henry Ford's giant assembly lines and the mass production of the early Ford motorcar (98).

You can read the rest of Slattery's chapter summarizing Harry Braverman's critique of scientific management and the "deskilling" of the worker in modern industrial labor at Google Books.

Assignment: Response #2

Your assignment for Response #2 follows directly from our group presentations this afternoon. However, you should not feel bound by your group work: if you want to make a different point than the one your group presented to the class, feel free to do so. Even if you are making the same point that your group made, you will need to discuss it in a more formal and more developed way in order to produce a sophisticated piece of writing.

Due: March 22 by noon

Response #2 is a highly structured, three-paragraph response paper in which you:

* State and explain one point that you want to make in response to Schlosser's chapter "Behind the Counter." This should be your idea, not a paraphrase of Schlosser. Refine and define your point, walking the reader through it step by step so that that your reader has the opportunity to understand it thoroughly. Good development and clear, specific language are key to this step. (Paragraph 1, 5+ sentences)

* Choose a quotation from Schlosser to illustrate your point. In no less than four sentences, explain the quotation and how it relates to your point. Introduce your quotation by giving the author's name and the title of the chapter or the book you are quoting from; give the page number so that your reader can find the passage you are quoting. As you discuss the quotation, consider the information it contains and the author's particular choice of words. Why does he use the language that he does? Is that the language you would choose, or that people usually use to discuss the same idea? What attitude or information does the author convey in his choice of words? (Paragraph 2, 5-8 sentences)

* Describe a personal experience that illustrates your point. Your description should be detailed, and it should employ clear and specific language, so that the reader is able to imagine the situation or event you are describing. In no less than four sentences, explain how this personal experience relates to your point.

This response is due on your blog by Monday at noon. Don't forget to label it "response" so that it will be easy to find later.

Blog Check + Notes on Titles

I've set up a list of blogs from the "Ethics of Food" cluster to the lower right. The list is sorted so that the most recently updated blogs will always float to the top. Each entry lists the title of the blog, the title of the most recent post, and the time of that post relative to the present (for example, "7 hours ago"). If you don't see your blog in the list, that means I do not have the address of your blog, and no one in the class can read it right now. If you see the title of your blog, but not the title of your most recent post or the time of that post, that means you haven't posted anything yet! In either case, you've missed the due date of your first homework since both of these things were supposed to be done by midnight. Uh oh.

Now let's notice a few things:

1. Some of the blogs have titles that don't tell the reader anything about the theme of the blog. Remember, the title of a piece of writing has two jobs to do: first, to give the reader a sense of what to expect from the work, and second, to attract her attention so that she'll want to read your work. Because you're publishing your writing for this class in the real world, we're playing by real world rules: an ineffective title can mean the difference between someone choosing to click on your blog or going elsewhere. With this in mind, some of you may want to think about changing the title of your blog to something more effective and intriguing. (To change your title, click on "Customize" at the top of the page, then "Settings.") You can use any phrase that fits the theme of the course. Be creative!

2. Similarly, we need to work on giving our posts descriptive titles. Look at the titles of your classmates posts: Which of them sound interesting? Which of them are you likely to read when you give comments on Tuesday morning? By thinking about what makes these titles attractive, you can learn to title your own posts more effectively.

In both cases, we're dealing with titles. It's easy to ignore them or to lose sight of their purpose in a classroom situation, where among other things you learn to take it for granted that the teacher is always going to read your work. But in the real world, the title is one of the most important parts of a piece of writing. It can make or break you. If you think about your own reading habits, both online and in print, you'll probably see that this is true: Who wants to read a magazine article or a web page (or go see a movie or play a video game) with a boring or obscure title?

Let's make that our first big writing lesson: Work on your titles!

Homework for Tuesday 3/16

1. By midnight tonight: mail me (my address is on the syllabus) your name, the email address you actually use, and your blog address

2. By midnight tonight: post Response #1 to your blog

3. Before class tomorrow: use the links on the right hand side of my blog to visit a few of your classmates' blogs; post a comment in response to at least one other person's post

Assignment: Response #1

This assignment combines a response to your reading and independent "field research." Before you write, you will need to complete two other steps:

1. Finish reading Eric Schlosser's "Your Trusted Friends," focusing on Schlosser's remarks on marketing and "brand essence" in the fast food industry. Take notes as you read: What is a "brand"? How do the companies Schlosser discusses construct or maintain a "brand image"? Pay attention to the use of advertising, but also to the development of characters, fantasy worlds, and stories or narratives that figure in the branding of these companies, their use of "interactive" elements like clubs or online games, and their use of attractive "synergistic" materials like promotional toys. Who is the primary audience for this brand, and what strategies does the company use to capture the interest of that audience?

2. Visit a McDonald's or Burger King. Go by yourself or with a classmate, so that you won't be distracted from your task, and stay for at least one full hour. Observe the restaurant as closely as you can. Don't involve yourself: maintain an ironic distance. You are here to do research, just like an anthropologist might research an unknown, mysterious culture. Take notes on what you see and hear: How is the restaurant arranged (the placement of the furniture, the counter, the work stations visible behind the counter, etc.) and why is it arranged that way? How is the restaurant decorated, and why is it decorated that way? Note all of the places where you see the restaurant brand being invoked: list them all in your notes, without missing anything. What are the different kinds of branding or promotional materials you see? Describe them. Do they address the same audience or different audiences? Where are they placed, and why? Are there any fantasy elements present in the restaurant, either physically (in the design of the restaurant) or in the form of promotional materials? Describe them. What "brand image" is this company trying to construct?
          Now pay attention to the customers. How are they interacting with their environment? Is anyone reading the promotional materials or otherwise engaging with the brand elements of the restaurant? Are there any children present? Are they interacting with the brand elements of the restaurant? Describe what they are doing. How is this environment affecting you? Are you nervous, hungry, excited, grossed out? How do you feel about the brand you are encountering? Does it appeal to you? In what specific ways? Before you leave, pick up copies of any brand-related or promotional materials that you can: coupons, pamphlets, brochures, placemats, etc. Visit the website of the chain you've chosen and look for clues about the companies "brand image" and their marketing strategies there.

Now, using your reading notes and your field research, write a 300-600 word response (1-2 pages typed and double-spaced) in which you take an idea from Schlosser, explain that idea, and show the reader how that idea helps you to understand what you discovered in your field research.

This response is going to be your first post to your blog for this course. Anyone with internet access will be able to read it. As I mentioned on the syllabus, we'll be doing some collaboration with other LaGuardia classes this semester, so you can be sure that other LaGuardia students and professors will read your blog this semester!

Because you are writing to people from outside this class, you'll need to think about audience when you write -- in other words, you'll have to think about how to write for someone you don't know, who isn't in your class and hasn't read what you've read. For example, if you refer to "the essay we read in class" or "the reading" without mentioning the author or title, your readers won't have any way of knowing what essay you're talking about. If you refer to an idea from your reading without thoroughly explaining that idea using paraphrase and/or quotation, your readers won't have any way of knowing what you mean. As you write and revise your work, keep your audience in mind. In addition, you'll want to "polish" and correct your response: this is going to be a public document with your name on it, so you'll want to put your best foot forward.

Bring an electronic copy of this response to class on Monday so that you can post it to your blog.

FoodNYC on The Brian Lehrer Show

Right this minute, The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC is doing a program on problems in the New York City food system and
FoodNYC, Scott Stringer’s plan for sustainable food in New York City.

You can see the description of the show here at WNYC's web site.

You can read Scott Stringer's FoodNYC plan here.

Grading Student Blogs

Prof. Gallardo just posted a link to Christopher Long's excellent rubric (description of how grades are assigned) for grading student blogs over at Community 2.0. I'll be using this rubric for my grading this semester, so students in my ENG101/103 classes should read it over.

First Day

Off to a rocky start yesterday with room assignment problems, but we did manage to hold a solid get-acquainted session in LIB110. I put together a quick questionnaire for the students re their eating habits, and we asked them to interview and introduce each other. Aaron and I did the same. As expected, there were tremendous variety of diets represented -- everything from "fried stuff" to whole organics purchased at the Union Square Greenmarket. It will be interesting to see if there are any changes in people's diet as the semester continues, and in what direction.

Interview Questionnaire

Instructions: Choose one of your classmates as a partner (someone you don’t know, please) and interview that person using the questions provided on this sheet. Then, using what you’ve learned, introduce your partner to the rest of the class. Save this sheet so that you have contact information for at least one of your classmates.

Basic Info on Your Partner

Name:
Major:
Borough:
Neighborhood:
Email address:
Phone/txt:

Questions for Your Partner

1. What did you eat over the weekend? Try to list everything!

2. What’s your favorite fast food chain? Why?

3. What’s your favorite meal at that chain? Why?

4. How often do you eat there? Do you always get the same thing?

5. Do you cook? How often? What kind of food do you usually cook?

6. Where do you shop for groceries? Why?

7. At the grocery store, do you buy mostly “processed foods” (frozen food, instant foods that you mix together and cook, heat-and-eat food) or do you buy mostly “whole foods” (raw meat, dairy products, grains, vegetables)?

8. What’s your favorite meal to cook at home? Why?

Lost in the Supermarket

Although I think the topic of fast food provides students with a terrific entry point into talking about industrial food production, I'm disappointed that we won't have time this semester to cover the industrial food chain that leads backward from the modern supermarket. At some point in the future, I may re-tool the course to include that material. The best article I've found so far is Raj Patel's "Checking Out Supermarkets" from his amazing book Stuffed and Starved. I think this article would work extremely well with a unit on supermarket design.

Here is Stuffed and Starved at Amazon.com. No preview, unfortunately.

Food Additives

Just stumbled on this slight, but fascinating article from the Daily Mail. The article covers a 2007 report by the British Food Standards Agency's Committee on Toxicity about the health effects of food additives, particularly their effects on young children. Very useful chart, though I'd like to see the original report as the details of the research are pretty sketchy. Since this is a 2007 article, I'm sure it's been published by now.

Notes on Course Development

Over the past few weeks, I've been planning my syllabus for the ENG101 (Composition I) and ENG103 (Research Paper) sections of the Ethics of Food cluster, which I'll be teaching with Dr. Rizzieri of Humanities (Philosophy). In my courses, we're going to focus on three broad areas of the theme:

1. The "political economy" of food: How does the food industry function as an industry? How has the capital from that industry shaped our way of eating, our thinking about food, our public policy, even our *bodies* themselves? If our food is produced by massive production chains, where do we as consumers fit into those chains? My hope with this thread is to push beyond individual ethics or moralizing and examine how the systems involved in food production encourage and sometimes even force individuals to make the choices they do, making alternatives invisible or very difficult to pursue.

2. The health effects of industrially-produced food: How does industrial food impact our bodily health, both through the content of individual foods and the overall content of the typical diet?

3. The environmental effects of industrial food production: How do the current practices of the food industry impact the planet ecologically? Are these models "sustainable," and if not, why not? What would have to change?

Having established the problems with industrial food production, towards the end of the semester we'll discuss individual and collective responses to those problems -- in other words, what we can do about it. At this point, it looks like I'm going to be relying mostly on Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, with some excerpts from Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle, William Cronon's great chapter on the rise of industrial meatpacking in Nature's Metropolis, and a few other items. Because of the ENG103 component, my courses will be heavily research-based, so I'm going to be asking the students to really dig into the issues they encounter in these readings. And of course all the usual lessons of college-level writing will be at the center of how their arguments and their findings.

Dr. Rizzieri will teach an Environmental Ethics course as a part of the cluster, which that seems to be leaning toward an exploration of the origins of the human/animal divide and the question of "business ethics" in food production. I'm very excited to see that he'll be teaching Peter Singer and Jim Mason's The Ethics of What We Eat, as I have usually taught portions of that book in my food-related courses. I think the cluster format is going to work well for this highly complex material, because the students will be able to approach these issues through several different frameworks without any one course feeling "overstuffed" (pun intended) as mine sometimes has.

The Ethics of Food

Announcing a new cluster: The Ethics of Food!

Here's the description:

Where does our food come from? For most of us, the obvious answer is the grocery store, the bodega, or the restaurant on the corner. But it’s also obvious that there is more to the story: someone grows the food, someone cleans and prepares it, someone brings it, and sometimes, someone cooks it. You may have bought that burger at a cart on Thompson Ave., or that apple at the cafeteria, but each of those foods came a long way to reach this neighborhood, moving across the U.S. or half way across the world from the place where it was first produced. On the one hand, that tells us that the way we eat is shaped by forces much larger than we might think. On the other hand, it tells us that the choices we make when we eat have an effect on the lives of people—and other animals—very far away from us. In this cluster, we will examine both of these ideas from a variety of perspectives, through writing and research, ethical inquiry, historical study, and literary reading. Our studies will focus on how food is produced and how its production has changed over time; how the way we eat affects our environment and how it affects the people who grow and prepare our food; how it affects the plants and animals we grow as food; and how it is influenced by economic interests, technological developments, and political relationships. Readings may include work by Eric Schlosser, E.F. Schumacher, Peter Singer, Raj Patel, Upton Sinclair, William Cronon, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Marion Nestle, Vandana Shiva, and Michael Pollan.