FOOD FOR THOUGHT

MUSE AND METAPHOR

A conversation between food studies committee leaders Robin (Lauren) Derby, associate professor of history, and Michael Roberts, founding executive director of the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, inspired them to create a new travel study summer course, “Atlantic Foodways: Culture, Science, Governance.”

“We’ll focus on Italian food history from the medieval period to Mussolini, examining how he used beer to craft a populist face for his regime,” says Derby. “From there, we’ll go into the slow food movement, cooking classes and market visits, and we’ll discuss changing labor practices, including immigration and the current experience of Ukrainians arriving in Italy.”

Derby has long been fascinated by how food shines a light on the historical labor of women, enslaved people and Indigenous people, as well as how Americans have naturalized an unsustainable food system.

“Food’s an inspiring area of study because you can come at it from so many angles,” she says. “I’ve had students who’ve done everything from writing about dumpster diving to completing ethnographies on food labels.”

Even without travel, food inspires creativity and community, both in and out of the classroom.

Continuing lecturer Michelle Huneven — a novelist who spent 15 years as a food writer and whose new novel, Search, features recipes and is narrated by a restaurant critic — was delighted to launch a UCLA course on food writing as creative writing.

“I have been so impressed and enlightened by my students. They are fully attuned to the great pleasures of cooking, serving and eating food while also being painfully aware of how fragile and imperiled food resources are due to climate change and destructive agricultural practices,” Huneven says. “They know they are inheriting a gravely damaged world, and I am struck by their determination to heal it. Their righteous anger and activism find a voice in writing about food. They give me hope.”

EQUALITY FOR ALL

Food justice and activism are integral parts of the movement across UCLA’s campus. Geography major Tori Crisostomo-Rickman, for example, works through the Undergraduate Research Centers and the Center for Community Engagement to study food deserts. 

“My research partners with a local nonprofit to examine food disparities and create strategies for expanding community access to fresh food in South L.A.,” she says. “I’m using GIS and mapping to identify resources like farmers markets, local markets and chain grocery stores while trying to understand what factors prevent community members from accessing these resources and what local organizations can do to help.”

Earlier this year, the UCLA Labor Center published a study on the Los Angeles fast food sector, which employs more than a third of all of L.A.’s restaurant workers. It found that these fast food workers — in frontline pandemic roles — were placed at higher risk of contracting COVID-19 while facing increased violations of labor standards.

“More than half of workers felt that employers didn’t address their needs after they spoke up, and some even faced retaliation for doing so,” says Tia Koonse, report author and legal and policy research manager at the Labor Center. “Only 47% of fast food workers received paid sick leave when they or their coworkers contracted the virus.”

Authors of the report, which is the first on COVID-19 safety compliance through this particular lens, offered recommendations for policy interventions and further documentation by researchers.

“Our study shows that fast food workers face an array of workplace challenges that extend beyond COVID-19,” says Saba Waheed, report author and research director at the Labor Center. “The pandemic lifted up how essential this workforce is, and we need to address the deeper structural problems in the sector.”

Anthropology doctoral student Sucharita Kanjilal, who earned a 2021 Robert B. Edgerton Endowed Graduate Fellowship, studies a different kind of food-related labor. She focuses on digital food media and the large number of women making a living posting online home cooking and recipe content in India and its diasporas.

“My research uses food to understand the relationships between the household, cultural politics and digital capitalism,” she says. “It’s inspired in part by my career as a journalist in India at a time when food and dietary choices became a violent site of state repression and political struggle.”

Reporting on the “beef lynchings” of Muslims, Kanjilal grew deeply aware of both the material and symbolic value of food as well as the importance of recognizing its inherent complexity.

“Food simply cannot be reduced to any one thing. Rather, it can give us a powerful window into thinking about a wider set of political-economic structures,” she says. “Taking food seriously means always being attentive to power, domination, struggle, justice and internationalism. If your passion for food has not radicalized you, you’re not thinking hard enough!”

INSPIRATION AND AWE

UCLA’s food studies minor has had a big impact on countless students already, regardless of their major. For example, transfer student and history major Arianna Sepulveda was always intrigued by the science of nutrition. 

As part of her food studies minor, she completed an internship at a farmers market in Torrance, which resulted in the offer of a full-time post-graduation position. She’s looking forward to gaining more hands-on experience that she hopes to use in graduate school one day.

“I feel so lucky I got to pursue both my passions at UCLA,” Sepulveda says. “Being a part of the food studies minor opened up many doors in this field I’m excited to explore.”

Dana Gillis, another transfer student, knew she wanted to major in philosophy. But as she perused the list of minors, one in particular caught her eye.

“I have always loved food in all aspects — eating, cooking, reviewing and more — and I realized that, like philosophy, food studies is applicable to every subject,” she says. “Whether you are interested in STEM or the humanities (or a bit of both), food connects to any topic or class.”

For her minor capstone project, Gillis wrote a research paper on the impact of industrialization on oral health, which sparked her interest in potentially becoming a registered dietician or dentist.

“Before I transferred to UCLA, I had no idea the subject of food studies even existed,” she says. “I’ll always be grateful I got the opportunity to expand my knowledge, curiosity and drive.”

Like Gillis, Sarah Mejia is a philosophy major who had her eyes opened to an academic discipline she had never considered before.

“I realized that during my K–12 education, I had never been taught anything about food beyond the food pyramid,” she says. “When I saw the food studies minor would have me taking classes across every discipline, I knew this was a rare opportunity to broaden my understanding of our world.”

Particularly inspired by the social justice and creativity angles of studying food, Mejia hopes to get into magazine journalism and design, but says she’ll carry lessons from her minor with her no matter what.

“I learned so much about food justice, food history and even how to grow my own food — Professor James Bassett has a gardening component where students can use the plots at Sunset Rec,” Mejia says. “So much of our lives revolves around food. I will never look at it indifferently again.”

JUST ‘DESSERTS’

No matter the field, UCLA’s food-related research and work encourages us all to be more thoughtful about what we consume. After all, the acts of preparing food and eating remind us how tied we are to the Earth — and to one another.

“Just think of how many imaginative ways food has been cultivated throughout history. Everything we eat and every method of preparation represent so much curiosity, effort and creativity,” says Gober, the aforementioned professor of biochemistry and chemistry. “Can you imagine being the first person to discover how to cook food — and what that first meal must have tasted like to them? Food should remind us all of our ingenuity, our progress and our potential.”