Welcome to the December 2017 issue of Food, Culture and Society.
We begin this fine issue with Krishnendu Ray’s 2017 ASFS presidential address, in which he admonishes us food scholars and activists to think carefully about our stances on globalization and the sciences in this current political and intellectual climate. The following five articles deal with food issues over the life span: infancy, school-aged children, college students, and the elderly. Helene Brembeck and Maria Fuentes demonstrate how parents’ notions of “convenience food” are situational and fluid regarding weaning foods for infants. Mette Kirstine Tørslev and colleagues explore the emotional aspects of school meals, including their often fraught and stressful nature. Sidse Schoubye Andersen and colleagues describe the often-conflicting authoritarian and democratic modes of food education at schools and their effect on children’s school meal practices. Mark Hellermann reveals the multidimensional benefits that working-class college students receive from a gardening component in their hands-on food courses. Senja Laasko describes a program that takes a creative approach to food waste and food assistance by providing leftover school meals to the retired and unemployed.
The remaining three articles shift gears somewhat and explore the historical, cultural and rhetorical nature of three phenomena: family meal, domestic goddess, and pastagate. Taking a historical approach, Kelly Urby’s article examines how industrialization and the rise of restaurants contributed to the intensification of the idea of the family meal. Alexandra Rodney and colleagues explore the often conflicting messages within the “domestic goddess” persona in the work of leading female food bloggers. Finally, Stephanie Ketterer Hobbis considers the rhetoric and language use in the 2013 Quebec “pastagate” affair.
Please join me in celebrating the hard work behind this scholarship (as well as that in the book review section), not only by the authors, but also by the anonymous peer reviewers whose careful analysis contributed as well.