Lecture 5: The Politics of Food

Question 1

What is intersectionality?

Answer 1

The ways in which people experience discrimination, as a consequence of overlapping dimensions of identity.

Question 2

When or why may the 12 tips to be healthy be questionable?

Answer 2

When considering socioeconomic status and when the health problems they have arise from issues that are out of their control.

Question 3

What is neoliberalism?

Answer 3

Political philosophy where an individual is a good citizen if they do everything possible to help support the economy

Question 4

What is healthiest

Answer 4

Being a good citizen is dependent on you taking full responsibility for your health

Question 5

What are the downstream determinants of health

Answer 5

Access to provision of hospitals, doctors clinics, pharmaceuticals, medicines, surgeries and treatments. Things that happens once you are already ill or injured

Question 6

What is the social determinant of health approach to downstream determinants of health?

Answer 6

Instead of focusing on what we can do once they are ill, we should focus on the upstream determinants of health. Keep people from being ill.

Question 7

What determinant of health does healthism focus on?

Answer 7

Downstream in that it encourages an individual ideology and individual responsibility towards health

Question 8

What could be done with 30% of tossed food?

Answer 8

redirected to feed people

Question 9

What has been taken up as the gold standard of good mothering?

Answer 9

the organic child

Question 10

what does mothers making choices but not under circumstances of their own making mean?

Answer 10

mothers are making choices based on what they think is best for their children based on the idea that children are pure as organic food being the way to go. these pressures are not their making, but they still go through them.

Question 11

what does food security mean?

Answer 11

when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life. includes both physical and economic access to food that meets dietary needs and preferences

Question 12

what is the problem of why lower income parts of towns have less grocery stores and where they do, they are very spread out?

Answer 12

a lack of attention by mostly municipal politicians

Question 13

what does municipal politicians need to recognize?

Answer 13

the positive correlation between affordable and accessible food and population health

Question 14

What responsibility is disproportionately given to women?

Answer 14

Feeding the family.

Question 15

What is meant by “organic child”?

Answer 15

Idealized notion of al pure child that is kept safe from the harmful impurities of an industrialized food system.

Question 16

What is almost mandatory when middle-class women are shopping for their children’s food and feeding them?

Answer 16

A negotiation with the “organic child” ideal

Question 17

Who do I (Alessandra) love so so much?

Answer 17

Akshat <3

Question 18

What is childhood idealized as?

Answer 18

the natural starting point within narratives of individual development and social progress

Question 19

an ethical food discourse relies on a ‘win-win’ narrative that links what?

Answer 19

personal well-being to social and environmental improvement.

Question 20

while research on organic foods is constantly changing, what is one thing that stays constant?

Answer 20

women are its main supporters.

Question 21

What does the organic child have to do with neoliberalism?

Answer 21

If a mother is trying to feed their child only organic foods, the mother is both practically and emotionally negotiating neoliberal expectations about childhood and maternal social and environmental responsibility.

Question 22

What are the four themes related to mothers following of the organic child?

Answer 22

1. Protecting purity
2. Feeding the future
3. Gendered labour/Emotional labour
4. Access and inequality

Question 23

what does the organic child ideal invite mothers to do?

Answer 23

consume in ways that will not only nourish healthy and ethical consumers of the future, but also improve the ecological and social context in which they live.

Question 24

Parents following the organic child ideal need to have extensive what?

Answer 24

amount of time, energy and resources. you need to search for organic foods.

Question 25

the responsibility of feeding the organic child is not only gendered labour, but also creates work for women on an ______ level

Answer 25

emotional

Question 26

True or false: e observe how women actively balance competing emotions: they must manage feelings of frustration and anxiety about their child’s well-being, as well as the fear of evaluations by others should they be perceived as ‘crazy’ or ‘obsessed’

Answer 26

True

Question 27

buying organic is harder for low-income class why?

Answer 27

not enough access. they may not live close enough, or may not have enough income to purchase organics at a higher price.

Question 28

In a focus group, what does Tammy say about the organic child ideal?

Answer 28

she agrees with parts, however, organic child is like a status symbol. she said a lot of people cannot afford to feed their children like that so she tries not to wear it like a badge of honour.

Question 29

make the linkage of neoliberalism, healthism, food systems and their politics and the organic child ideal

Answer 29

In a neoliberal context where mothers are positioned as individually responsible for ensuring their child’s optimal development, the idealized figure of the organic child is a product of mothering practices, ‘organic/local/natural’ food markets and a discourse of ethical consumption. ++++ way more

Question 30

How do we treat the organic child if its not as a static ideology?

Answer 30

as an idealized figure that involves multiple ideological processes where power inequalities are obscured or naturalized.