Food In Communities

The Cate and O'Donnell articles were about the role of food in certain very specific communities. The Cate article was about a prison in California that experimented with giving the inmates Top Ramen noodles and allowing them to create their own meals by adding different food gleaned from the daily meals or purchased from the canteen, and putting them all together into food they could share and enjoy  and make for themselves with their own touch. The O'Donnell article was about how cultural change, geographical displacement, and overbearing governments can affect peoples' eating habits and cause for  a nostalgia or longing for food that is particular to a certain culture that may have been lost for any number of reasons.

I enjoyed reading these two articles, but the Cate article really struck me the most. I thought it was fascinating that such creativity and innovation could come from a group of people that society has deemed as degenerates and outcasts. Even the simplest of "spreads" as they are called required a lot of work and dedication. Very few ingredients beyond the ramen were readily available, so any additional ingredients had to be rationed from the provided three meals each day and saved, or the inmates had to spend some of their meager funds at the canteen for the ingredients. Some inmates even went as far as to have people on the outside buy ingredients and find ways to get it to them on the inside!

The O'Donnell article was about the hardships that China has seen over the last 100 years and how it has impacted their eating and grasp on cultural eating traditions. The article covered the differences based on the economic and social classes, the language spoken, whether the people were natives to the area, transplants, or foreigners from out of China altogether. All of these factors contributed to how the inhabitants of China reacted and were forced to cope with all of the political changes that took place in China.

These were two very different articles, barring the fact that they were both about the role of food in communities with some kind of restriction. The inmates in Cate's article all did virtually the same thing. They took one base, and added some additions to it to make it their own creation. Some made it and went off to eat it alone, some made as much as they could specifically could it eat with others, friend or stranger. Some were so proud of their creation that they continued to make and experiment with their recipes after they got out of prison! O'Donnell's article stemmed from the opposite concept. Instead of being given an additional catalyst for creativity, the people in these provinces had much of their creativity stripped from them. They had to make do with less than they had before, and suffered greatly both in health and spirit. Once those troublesome times were over, some people still held a stange sort of nostalgia for the "socialist meals" as one interviewee called them. These showed the importance of food in communities, whether it was "breaking bread with the spread" (Cate) or the idea that "humanity takes food to be the highest good" (O'Donnell), the cry of a people who had seen hard times. Food brings us together, and if someone is in a restricted state like prison or socialism, food can be a glimmer in a tough time that not only warms us up, but those around us as well.