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Assistant Professor Talks About Food, Society at Conference |
| By
Kimyette Finley |
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Mar 19, 2002 |
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There’s a popular phrase that says “you are what you eat.” But is that really the case? What if, like millions of American families, your evening meal is “American chop suey,” a dish of macaroni, sauce and ground beef that doesn’t hold much nutritional value, but it stretches a dollar and makes a large pot that feeds the entire family? Last week a UT assistant professor presented a paper about food and society at an international conference.
Dr. Glenn Sheldon, an assistant professor in the department of interdisciplinary and special programs in University College, teaches a class on food, eating and labor. He presented a paper in Toronto on Saturday, March 16, at the American Culture Association/Popular Culture Association conference. Entitled “What’s on Their Plates? Or Feeding the Hungry Mouths: Laborers, Families and Food in the Late 20th Century,” Sheldon investigates ways that class and food and eating collide. He examines some of the representations of the ways laborers fed and feed their families, as well as the history of food and eating in the late 20th century as it relates to class, immigration, migration and labor histories.
“Food has class issues connected to it. I come from a working-class family, and I began to explore the subject. What I found was that the meals nutritionally are less sound than what we have as standards now, but they were big potted dishes of food. It was an attempt to empower themselves in one of the only areas they could,” Sheldon said about working-class families and the food on their tables. He said his own family regularly ate “American chop suey.”
For preparation, Sheldon conducted Internet research, reviewed journal articles that focused on popular culture real-world findings vs. media representations, and searched through more than 50 books related to food and eating from a food and culture bibliography. The early ’90s sitcom “Roseanne” and her foray into the “loose meat sandwich” business is just one example cited. In the 12-page paper, he looks at everything from Campbell’s soup to the book White Trash Cooking.
Sheldon contends that what people eat today is often a reflection of both the past and the present, and is rooted in history as well as cultural influences. He also cites that the reception of food is influenced by social trends and marketing strategies, as well as economic factors. For example, Sheldon points to a classic marketing campaign of Campbell’s soup to middle-class families. The marketing strategy was then extended to working-class families. “It was an attempt to show they could change class” by purchasing that particular brand of soup to prepare a casserole, Sheldon explained.
“It’s been fun because people don’t perceive the topic as deep or scholarly,” he said about his research. “But everyone eats, and food has some meaning; there are even some taboos and symbolism connected to certain foods.”
Following his 20-minute presentation at the conference, Sheldon planned to get feedback from colleagues as to whether he is on the right track, and then he will work his findings into a research article. He said the Journal of Popular Culture is likely the first one he’ll approach, but added more scholarly journals devoted to food and eating are emerging.
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