“Most popular writing on food and nutrition today exudes reverence not only for a particular bodily aesthetic standard but also for a certain kind of science: clinical, technical, quantifiable. People who write about food come from societies that enjoy plenty. They are themselves well fed. While the historical flux in ideas about proper diet and nutrition sped up with dizzying effect in the late twentieth-century West, these rapidly changing orthodoxies do not appear to have weakened popular faith in the scientifically calibrated diet. “
Starving on a Full Stomach – Hunger and the Triumph of Cultural Racism in Modern South Africa
We are reading
South Africa is the most unequal country in the world according to this World Bank report. This should worry all of us. We, as a country, continue to struggle with practically addressing structural determinants of inequality that the World Bank previously called out in its 2019 diagnostic report.
This interview explores how entrenched societal power dynamics play out in the new-age wellness industry. Emily Contois unpacks how in our broader eating culture; it’s often “expected that health be performed in these “white” ways, including thin, lean, young bodies, plates full of vegetables, and a particular open-mouthed laughter, often performed with one’s head thrown back and eyes blissfully closed“.
South African Foodways are complex, poorly understood and the nature thereof is contested. However, everyone agrees that informal traders, especially those selling out of transport hubs are a strong contributor to their resilience. This is largely due to South Africa’s apartheid era spatial legacy. Carol Counihan describes foodways as “the study of what we eat, how we eat, and what it means.” Could it be that these regular, everyday flashpoint stories are the sort of small changes that change the shape of foodways over time?
If you are a Ghanaian boy Akan origin, chances are you share the power ful name with the bitter medicinal plant whose importance in the food and beverage sector is unrivalled”. Quassia Amara aka “Kwasi Bita” is the girl the beverage world thinks she is. What a story!
Beyond Food Deserts: America needs a new approach to mapping food insecurity. There are lot of takeouts for South Africa in this article, which shares many commonalities with America. One of those commonalities is our strong and historical affinity for outshopping.
We are eating
Eat Out published its “Eat The World” list last month. And you know what? We are not mad. This kind of list will always divide opinion and there are restaurants we would have liked to have seen on the list. To be honest though, we are just happy to discover new South African restaurants. We can’t wait to dig in!
We are listening
Mogau Seshoene aka The Lazy Makoti is a power house. From building a successful business, championing African cuisine, mastering impostor syndrome and nurturing deep jollof rice love, we enjoyed this relatively old podcast interview.
