History 2158A/B Study Guide - Summer 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Wheat, Spanish Empire, Rice
12 Oct 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
History 2158A/B
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Introduction
●Looking at history through food is essential because food is fundamental to human beings
●Food is more than a biological necessity
○One of the biggest industries
○One of the most frequently indulged pleasures
■Need food to live but a lot of what we eat contributes to death
○Food is tied to who we are and where we come from and how we relate to people
●“Food is what matters most to most people for most of the time.”
○Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Food: A History
(2002)
●“For what is food? It is not only a collection of products that can be used for statistical or nutritional studies. It is also,
and at the same time, a system of communication, a body or images, a protocol of uses, situations and behavior.”
○Roland Barthes, “Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption”
Underlying Themes and a Few Caveats
●Themes
○Influence of food in the global transition to modernity
○‘Food is always about more than what simply fills the stomach’.
●Caveats
○The past isn’t the present
○Answers to questions about who invented what food when don’t tell us anything
■Context matters
Jell-o
●Flavoured gelatin as dessert food
●Primarily for the wealthy because making it was time-consuming and expensive
●Industrialization changed jell-o
○Cough syrup manufacturer combined with gelatin to make it taste good
○Sold recipe to food company
○People began to link industrial changes of efficiency to households and jell-o fit the bill for being cheap,
quick, and simple
○Jell-o was seen as the perfect feminine food
○Downfall: diet and health campaign emphasizing less sugar
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Vegetarians and Cannibals
What is Vegetarianism?
●A diet that excludes the flesh of animals
○Self-conscious decision
●Types of Vegetarians
○Semi-vegetarian
○Pollo-vegetarian
○Pesco-vegetarian
○Ovo-lacto vegetarian
○Lacto-vegetarian
○Ovo-vegetarian
○Vegans
■Raw foodists
○Fruitarians
●Most people throughout history who ate vegetarian diets did so because they were poor
Religious Basis
●Hinduism
●Buddhism
A2 + B2 = vegetarianism
●Pythagoras (c.570 - c.495 BC)
○Regarded as the largest Western influence on vegetarian thought
○Pythagorean diet
●Other thinkers were worried about the impact of slaughtering animals on humans
●Early Christians thought meat was a sexual stimulant, and therefore restrained from meat to stay pure
Renaissance to the Enlightenment
●Thinking shifted and meat-eating was desirable
●Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)
○Concern about animal suffering
○Why not grow more food instead of growing food to feed animals and kill them
●René Descartes (1596-1650)
○Argued that because animals lacked souls they didn’t feel pain
●Thomas Tryon (1634-1703)
○The Way to Health, Long Life and Happiness (1683)
■How shall they but Bestial grow/That thus to feed on Beasts are willing?/Or why should they a long
life know/Who daily practice Killing?
●Constant exposure to slaughtering animals would make you a violent person
■Argued that meat was fundamentally unhealthy and indigestible
●Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
○The question is not, Can they reason? Nor Can they talk? But Can they suffer?
○Increased advocacy for animals
○Utilitarianism
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Looking at history through food is essential because food is fundamental to human beings. One of the most frequently indulged pleasures. Need food to live but a lot of what we eat contributes to death. Food is tied to who we are and where we come from and how we relate to people. Food is what matters most to most people for most of the time. It is not only a collection of products that can be used for statistical or nutritional studies. It is also, and at the same time, a system of communication, a body or images, a protocol of uses, situations and behavior. Roland barthes, toward a psychosociology of contemporary food consumption . Influence of food in the global transition to modernity. Food is always about more than what simply fills the stomach". Answers to questions about who invented what food when don"t tell us anything.
