Food and Diaspora Reading

To what degree does the cosmopolitan nature of the city help individuals affirm their own ethnic identity?

The Food and Drink of New York Reading

Did the expansion of the sugar trade create greater inequality between the various classes?

In the chapter from Eat the City by Robin Shulman, sugar is brought to the forefront of food culture, and specifically many ways in which sugar and the sugar industry has affected Puerto Rican society. That “sugar-culture” is highlighted in part by the slang sayings people from that society might have used, incorporating food and industry into their speech (172-173). Food, especially when it is so prominent as sugar was to Puerto Ricans, has a way of permeating many more aspects of society than just the dinner table or the kitchen. Food sticks its nose into industry, social status, and even speech. Where does food get this ability to enter into so many aspects of society? Why do people bring food into so many areas of culture, many of which, at least on the surface, seem to not have much to do with food at all?

As I was reading Chapter 4 of Eat the City, I could not help but reflect on how rightfully we think of the presence and use of sugar in modern society. Our mentality is that sugar is a staple in virtually every meal we consume, whether it is available in a container on our tables or already added into our food. From the perspective of laborers who toiled their childhood and even adulthood away to produce sugar, the refined crystals are result of their sweat and tears that do not affect their profit much.

I wonder how the lack of return from working for sugar companies affected the mindset of the laborers, particularly those from Central America, regarding the food that the rich ate, adorned with sugar, and the food that they themselves ate, more likely with less sugar.

So, despite this course being food-based, I was a bit shocked in seeing that the Lenapes weren’t very patriarchal, not nearly as much as I’d have expected a society thousands of years ago. In one paragraph, it’s stated that the women were given large roles in communal affairs and were able to get a divorce without much hassle, as well as retain their lineage and their children. I found that rather revolutionary. So, were the Lenapes just one of the odd groups that held women to an equal/almost-equal standard as men, or was it just that, at that time period, males and females weren’t treated in such an unequal manner?

Also, as a side comment, I think it’s rather ironic that the Lenapes were apparently barbarous and primitive, yet their progress in gender division appeared to be much better than societies of nowadays.

Were the bow and arrow or different farming advancements a result of a need for more food based on an increasing population, or was the resulting increase in population an outcome enabled by the technology? (It article implies that if they really required more food, then men could have been more active food acquirers and that the ecosystem was plentiful, but also there are only so many people that can be sustained without such technologies.)

This leads to a very general approach to the question: When a population acquires a new advancement in the ability to eat new foods, is it this advancement that helps to progress their development, or is it their development that requires them to discover new food habits/ food- acquiring technology so that they may sustain their new growth?

Is there a pattern to such developments/ has this pattern changed over time?

Note: It seems to me that now western culture mostly develops new food-technology due to desire, not requirement.

The article on the Lenape seems to put Lenape culture before European influence on a pedestal, with the European’s painted as haughty and almost bent on destroying Lenape culture, either intentionally or unintentionally. Though it is true that European colonization was destructive to the pre-existing Lenape culture, and that Europeans looked down on the Lenape, could the article’s attempt to downplay many positive aspects of European society in comparison to Lenape society be in some ways, a skewed response to previous notions that European society was “better” than Lenape society?

I know we can’t tie heath of Lenapes solely to food, since  their are many other variables that determines the outcome, but how can a diet that consist mainly of meat and fat not be adverse to the body?