This post is part 3 of a series of reflections on the readings from the food learning group headed by Danielle (mysillylittletasks) on Instagram. Shoot her a DM if you’d like to join - everyone’s welcome :)
In chapter 2 of Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, Sidney Mintz sets out a loose framework to categorise the broad conditions that affect and change how we consume our food.
He labels the daily life conditions of consumption that change people’s food habits as “inside” meaning. These are things like daily domestic life, work. The economic, social, political and military context in which these changes occurred are referred to as “outside” meaning.
The book focusses on the relationship between food and power, how the association of one with the other can cause shifts in power, change habits and the economic as a whole.
(all fantastic themes fit for a master’s thesis rather than this post)
Having these themes labelled and categorised on the page made me reflect on the structures that have changed the way I eat, cook and consume food.
And in saying that, I mean work.
I mean my 9 to 5.
(because I’m privileged and fortunate enough that work is the predominant stressor on my time - I feel it’s important to recognise that here, especially given this pandemic which has exacerbated every other stressor peoples’ lives and pushed it to the extreme).
Hell, if anything, the fact that this post is three weeks late speaks of how much work has pervaded my choices.
Here’s the thing.
The stress and the routines in my life are largely built around the fact that my contract dictates that I should be in the office by 8:30am, can only take a one hour lunch break, five days a week all in order for me to pay the bills that keep the roof over my head, the water running through the taps and the lights on.
And while my contract is supposed to be limited to work, it seeps into the cracks in between the 9 to 5 and changes my routines in ways that I hadn’t consciously appreciated.
My contact is silent about Sundays.
Yet, I reserve Sunday nights for meal preparation, with multiple stovetops boiling with different stews, soups and meats to be packed and frozen for the upcoming week. The oven is filled with hearty root vegetables - things that maintain their integrity when microwaved five days later.
I’m cutting up vegetables so that on Monday evening all I need to do is to toss them into a frypan. Sunday mornings are spent at grocery stores. I make sure I buy a balance of leafy vegetables that will be eaten earlier in the week, to canned and frozen ones later in the week.
And once the countertops have been wiped down and the burners turned off, I pass the stocks through a sieve, careful not to spill any into the sink, and then pack them for later.
(it also makes me wonder who are locked out from the aspirational model of health when the concepts of health and nutrition are framed in the lens of ‘home cooking’, sparkling bench-tops, colourful and fresh produce)
In saying that, my diet has probably changed to reflect these circumstances. Time, finances and sheer physical exhaustion. I wonder how these pressures will make themselves known in the future - will it be in the form of early onset dementia, arthritis, the crack in my back and the ache at the bottom of my spine each time Winter rolls around?
…and am I happy with the “outside” factors that are influencing my life right now?