“French custard passed through a sewer”

Durian (from Google Images)

“French custard passed through a sewer” is how one Westerner described durian in a book. Durian, known as the “King of Fruits,” is mainly grown in Southeast Asia and is the size of a soccer ball, has a spiky husk, and a distinct smell.

Southeast Asia (from Google Images)

A number of people from Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China love its almond-sweet flavor and smooth texture. The last time I had the fruit was this summer and it is always a delight. Some compare the taste to aged cheese, rotten fish, and fermented onions, but it is not true and the pungent smell is actually suppose to lure animals in the forest to eat the pulp and spread the seed. Thiol, found in durian, may be the cause of the strong odor because it’s also in the nasty odor created by skunks.

Durian is in the Malvaceae family and means “thorny fruit” in Malay. Of the thirty Durio species in Southeast Asia, nine are only edible: D. macrantha, D. zibethinus, D. lowianus , D. oxleyanus, D. grandiflorus, D. graveolens, D. kutejensis , D. testudinarum, and D. dulcis. The fruit is very popular in Southeast Asia, but not so much in America. Even in prehistoric times, it was consumed by natives. In the 1400s to 1800s, durian was mentioned in a couple of writings on its unique shape, smell, size, and taste. A German botanist classified the genius Durio and Alfred Russell Wallace, a British naturalist and anthropologist, wrote “to eat durian is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East to experience.” I encourage anyone who has never eaten durian to try and see how you like it. The flesh is creamy, custard-like, and is wrapped around a seed that is about the length of a pinky finger. I am so glad the fruit can be shipped to the United States, so I would not have to travel half way around the world to enjoy it. In Wallace’s days, it would have taken months!

Different types of Durio are made into milkshakes, cakes, Yule Logs, Malay candy, and ice cream. The seed is also eaten when sliced and fried in oil. A classic durian dish is cooking it with sugar and sticky rice in coconut milk, which is supposed to lighten the pungent aroma.
Once in a while, I go to Marco Polo, an Italian gelato shop in San Francisco, to get a pint of durian gelato and it is so good. Other flavors include sesame, jack fruit, vanilla bean, arcobaleno, red bean, lychee, green tea, pistachio, and guava. Marco Polo is a favorite in San Francisco and it is rare to come across such exotic flavors. I mean where would you hear someone say, “I had a durian gelato today”?

During the summer my mom went to a Chinese supermarket and randomly chose two durians and hoped that both would be appetizing. One of them was one of the most delicious durians I’ve had in a while and the second one was sadly overripe. It was watery and disgusting. We left it in the fridge and eventually threw it away. To prevent future episodes of bad durian, I decided to look for some helpful hints on how to pick a ripe durian. A ripe durian has a hollow sound when you tap the fruit lightly and you should hear the sound of pulps moving inside. The sap from the stem is should also be clear and sweet. I haven’t tested these methods out, but I definitely will try it.

Durian is incredibly nutritious jammed with minerals, fats, and proteins. It has high levels of potassium, vitamin C, tryptophan, and sugar. I’ve been eating it since I was a little girl and I could never imagine how healthy it is. The roots and leaves are even used as medicine to reduce fever by putting leaf juice on the patient’s head. Wow!

The “World Durian Festival” last year was held in Chanthaburi, Thailand. The name is not the official title of the festival because it also celebrates other fruits in season, such as mangosteens, rambutans, longkong, and jackfruit. Chanthaburi is known as the durian capital of the world. Why? The city contains 120,000 acres of durian orchard and produces more than 900,000 tons of durian a year! That’s about half of the world’s total harvest. There were truck-loads of durian, floats decorated with fruits, dances, fruit monuments, parades, and displays of community folk art.

Durian Float (from Google Images)

Reflection of Class

When I decided to take Anthropology of Food, all I wanted to have was fun and I had no high expectations. I also wanted to take a chance, so I chose a class that I usually would not take. I remember a staff member telling me he would rather have a student to "break a few glasses" than have none broken. College is a time to explore various fields.

On the first day, I said I chose this class because we would get to go on field trips and I like eating. I wanted a healthy start in college and insight on how I would not gain the Freshman 15. I thought we'd learn about food of different cultures and its history, influence, and significance and we did, but we also read, discussed, and saw the foods we eat today and how it effects the government, food industry, and us. This intricate, world-wide web of food connects us all.

I thought eating was a normal, regular routine in everyday life. Am I wrong! Picking up an organic, honey-glazed ham or farmed shrimp from China means approving organic farms or monoculture farms. I am frugal with my money considering my parents work long hours to earn it. Organic and local food is more expensive, but it tastes better (unlike those sprayed with pesticides and herbicides, which travel down into the ground into lakes or streams and making people living nearby sick.)

What makes me really upset and bitter is our government assists these ruthless, multi-million companies. Subsidies are given to farmers, since they make less than the cost of growing the crop. Companies, like Monsanto and ConAgra Foods, modify seeds by adding genes to the genetic make-up of cells so they can put a patent and own that type of seed. It becomes a mess if farmers unintentionally have the crop in their field because it’s the company’s property, not the farmers and some farmers have had to destroy their entire crop.

The government does not do anything to prevent the actions of these companies. Part of the company’s profits go to the government from owning patents and some top officials in D.C. are either sponsored by them or worked for them as directors, presidents, or executives in the past. The companies have a big influence. However, we can stop them and the organic movement s growing strong.

The Bounty Around Us by Harley Soltes for The Seattle Times wrote about different people eating local and organic. Author Barbara Kingsilver researches on the means of getting local food without it being shipped from far away. Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon bought food within 100 miles of their apartment. Western Washington University students are demanding a healthier alternative of fresh, local foods compared to processed foods and collaborating with Fred Berman, an organic farmer, on possible ways to incorporate it on campus.

It’s exciting to hear students my age want to change their food options at school. The problems they face are the University does not have staff to chop all the vegetables and fruits and a $5 million insurance requirement for all providers, which is a huge sum small farmers don’t have.

I’ve gained invaluable knowledge throughout this course and I have no regrets. My views have changes for the better. I know how pigs, cows, chickens, and other animals we eat are poorly treated and the image of a green, lush landscape with a red farmhouse and animals roaming freely is an ideal in which only a handful of farms achieve. I can assure you that Real California Cheese does not come from happy cows.

Punk Cuisine and Dumpster Diving

Pigs in Factory Farms (from all-creatures.org)

Large-scale stock-raising (cattle, chickens, pigs) and agribusiness are issues pointed out in The Raw and the Rotton: Punk Cuisine, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and The Meatrix. The workers in monoculture factory farms add extra anti-biotics to sick animals caused by forcing them into tight areas and inhumane living conditions. Manure ponds left in the farms are disgusting and add to the misery of life.

The Black Cat’s Café, where punks would gather, is very authentic and completely opposite from mainstream eateries. The yard is littered with “benches, tables, and cigarette butts” with some plants and inside the café are posters, run-down furniture, and art. The silver lining is the emphasis punks put on living a life they truly believe in. While I won’t regularly eat at Black Cat’s Café, I do applaud the punks’ drive and motivation against agribusiness. I like that they are taking action in what they believe compared to others who talk the talk, but not walk the walk. As I kept reading this section of the article smacked me right in the face.

“Like yeah: people are free to eat meat. But actually, in this day and age, they can’t eat meat because it’s killing animals. Because some is eating meat, land that could potentially benefit all of us is being destroyed. I have a lot of problems with that line: I don’t want to impede people’s freedom, but what everyone does affects everyone else….I honestly believe that people have to stop eating meat now. Now! I’m not gonna force anyone to stop eating meat, but they’re hurting me, my children’s future, my friends, my family—because they’re eating meat. And they’re hurting the Earth, which is most important of all.”

By eating meat, I am “hurting me, my children’s future, my friends, my family?” What!? In the beginning, that sounded absurd, but when I was reading this I slowly understood what Clark is saying. I’m sorry that I can’t stop eating meat. However, I am more informed of what I’m putting into my body and how animals are severely abused from ingesting GMO, number 2 corn (which they do not naturally eat), fat, and antibiotics to having their body parts sliced off (due to fights and diseases).

I genuinely like the ideology of punks and how they try to change by eating “raw” food, which means collecting food from dumpsters and buying/growing their own food so they aren’t wasting the large amount of calories needed to ship and package food and destroying the environment. They have that hunter-gatherer spirit.

How would you like to eat food gathered from a garbage dump? Would you dare eat it? David Giles, our guest speaker, came to our class and talked about dumpster diving and the reason behind it. Out of all the people he knew that ate from the dumpster, only one got sick and it’s more likely to get sick eating at a fast food restaurant. Before, I thought David was going to bring in fresh orange juice squeezed from oranges he found at the dumps, but he brought us Naked orange juice and blue machine, a concoction of blueberry, blackberry, and banana, from one of Seattle’s dumps. The date was a day or two expired, but it tasted like it normally would. He mentioned Food Not Bombs, an organization sharing food to those in need, which served a hot meal each week from the food collected and delivered the food to homeless shelters, food banks, and soup kitchens.

Dumpster divers, who are acting against global warming, wasting perfectly edible food, and corrupt corporations, gather food from dumpsters in a variety of neighborhoods. 96 billion pounds (1/3 of all produced in the U.S.) of food are thrown away and some are not even expired. Our society looks for perfection and cans of food with bents or distorted are wasted. Foods past the expiration dates are not spoiled or rotten until a while later. Some managers of supermarkets don’t like dumpster divers to come because they want shoppers to spend their money and rather keep the food as property than give it to others who distribute the food to the homeless.

Mmmm...Pizza

BAM!

An colorful array of red, green, yellow, and white filed my awesomely delicious, fresh-made pizza. The zucchinis, tomatoes, garlic, cheese, tomato sauce, and green bell peppers were combined on top of the pizza dough and baked in a clay oven. My first bite was sweet, warm, and chewy. This was the best pizza I've tasted in a while. It's too bad that I forgot to bring my camera to show how my pizza looked, but Mrs. Anagnost posted some pictures on flickr. All the ingredients available came from either the organic UW Medicinal Herb Garden or Trader Joe's. Some students made calzones and it looked equally appetizing. I do believe that fresh vegetables make a difference in quality and many cooks agree.

Pizza Line (from Mrs. Anagonost)

Standing in line for my pizza to get baked, I looked around and saw about a group of 20 people talking away and enjoying each others company. It felt like almost a Thanksgiving dinner and there was a good vibe from everyone. Preparing and cooking food brings many people together and I got to know my classmates a lot better compared to the other food activities.

Some say Cosco pizza is nasty with the grease, but I thought it was pretty good until I was introduced to California Pizza Kitchen (CPK). The pizzas we made are now better than CPK! This was my first time making pizza and I'm sure I will do it again. The more I think about it, the more I enjoy fresh food.

The Meatrix...Dun Dun Dun

When I heard Mrs. Anagnost tell the class that we were going to watch The Matrix, I though it was so cool...but I heard wrong and she actually said The Meatrx. Once I though about it, why would we watch The Matrix. The movie has no connection to what we have been doing in class until now.

The Meatrix has a similar storyline where Leo, a pig, has to decide to either take the blue pill and live an ignorant life or the red pill and learn the truth about the meat industry. Of course he goes ahead and takes the red pill and sees chickens de-beaked to stop themselves from pecking each other to death, tons of manure left in factory farms, and health problems arising from pollution caused by an industry that has no concern for anything but money.

The creators thought of an ingenious and clever approach to spread the truth. By putting their movies online with over six different languages and over 15 different subtitles in other languages, millions of people have access and the right to know where and how their food is produced.

I really enjoyed watching The Meatrix and it clearly states the negative effects to our health and the planet, which in some cases are not reversible. Looking at Leo reminded me of Frankie in All Over Creation when he was trying to increase consumers’ awareness and had to decide if he wanted to stay in Ashtabula or travel with the Seeds of Resistance.

"Organic" Food

Shopping at Safeway, I saw that it has a new line called O Organics, but is it really organic? Before I read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I thought organic meant fresh foods without the use of chemical fertilizers, GMOs, food additives, and synthetic chemicals. I pictured animals, including cows, chickens, sheep, goats, pigs, and rabbits, roaming the field and taking in the fresh air, but I was wrong. Companies still are forcing thousands of animals into cramped areas with little or no sunlight. The USDA has defined organic chicken and cows to have “access to pasture,” which can have an indefinite and loose meaning to it and is an advantage to the big corporations. It is a shame to see our government succumb to them.

Joel Salatin owns Polyface Farm, which is the ideal farm I would like to see rather than the big corporations. He is planting seasonally and fulfilling the natural cycle from the sun providing the plants to grow to the chickens eating up the parasites. The reason chain supermarkets buy from the large companies is because they produce at a larger scale and cost less in transaction costs, according to Michael Pollan. In the future, these practices need to change in order to save diminishing fossil fuels and the environment. A way to start is buying locally at farmer markets or planting foods in the backyard or community gardens.

Supersize Me!

Morgan Spurlock (Photo from http://www.imdb.com)

Morgan Spurlock set out on a 30-day diet eating only at McDonalds. He started this experiment to see what would happen and if McDonalds was responsible for the obesity of two girls that were suing the fast food company. The rules were:

1. Supersize the meal on if asked
2. Walk 5,000 steps (the average Americans walk) a day
3. Eat three meals at McDonalds each day

The documentary exposed the realities of eating such unhealthy and dangerous food. In the end, he gained almost 25 pounds, encountered chest pains, and experienced mood swings and a diminishing love life.

It’s scary (and somewhat disgusting) to know that some people eat fast food everyday. I know that it is cheap, but when you really think about it the food is garbage loaded with calories and sugar. Can you call it food after all the processing and various ingredients are put into it? Judge Robert Sweet even called chicken mcnuggets "a mcfrankenstein creation of various elements."

I still do not get why the guy who ate thousands of Big Macs is still so skinny compared to the majority of Americans.

Fast food is much more popular compared to nutritious food and it does have to do with how much the government is spending. It was hilarious, but also a shock to see that kids know who Ronald McDonald is but not Jesus and George Washington.