Don T Ask Just Eat Gish Jen Summary

Thinking about the importance and significance of food respective to our health, ethnic culture and society can cause cavernous, profound, and even questionable thoughts such as: “Is food taken for granted?”, “Is specialty foods just a fad or a change in lifestyle?”, and even “Is food becoming the enemy.” Mark Bittman, an established food journalist, wrote an article called “Why take food seriously?” In this article, Bittman enlightens the reader with a brief history lesson of America’s appreciation of food over the past decades. This history lesson leads to where the social standing of food is today and how it is affecting not only the people of America, but also the rest of the world.

Anthony Bourdain is a critically acclaimed chef, writer, and television star. He has appeared in shows such as “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations”, “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown”, and “Top Chef,” and published works such as “Don’t Eat Before Reading This”, “Medium Raw”, and “The Nasty Bits.” Trained at Vassar College the Culinary Institute of America, Bourdain is known for his love of food. In 2000, he wrote a book called Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, and his first chapter is entitled “Food is Good”. In the chapter, Bourdain discusses his trip to France with his family, and how the trip transformed from hating the exotic food to loving it. Through his structure, descriptive language, and childhood stories,

Paula J. Johnson, a curator at the National Museum of American History, says that foods such as wasabi, Sriracha, and hummus would have been considered “foreign foods” 50 years ago, but today they are common, everyday staples for many people across America. Ramanathan briefly states before this that the only constant in American foods is global influence and then goes on to say that it’s not uncommon in modern times for people to eat, for example, Thai food for lunch and then Italian for dinner. She writes that America has people from all backgrounds, cultures, and countries and their influences are present everywhere, especially the food. In America today, there are so many influences on our foods that using the term ethnic to describe them makes it sound foreign when the food is something people eat every

With all of these points being made from the factual information to the personal experience to the decoding of a healthy fast food meal we can see that this essay is indeed an effective argument that make the reader think and wonder about what they’re

Indeed, Pollan’s views appear to be convincing since the different cultures in America offering a large variety of traditional food dishes causes a problem in food choices. As a consequence, Pollan mentioned, the mindset of American’s about, “what should we eat for dinner?” is caused by the food options in America being very diverse and not limited.

People may have different views about foods depending on their cultural background. Providing range of familiar foods can help make individual feel at home, safe and welcomed.

Berry uses rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos to demonstrate his main objective that he wants to get across. Berry establishes credibility by saying, “Many times, after I have finished a lecture on the decline of American farming and rural life, someone in the audience has asked, “ What can city people do?” (47). He does this because he is proficient in food agriculture and that they can have faith in him for all the evidence he provides for understanding food production. He is a credible writer, farmer, and poet who has awards and delivers lectures, which displays his ability to influence the audience. He also has done research in his field and has more than thirty books of his material. berry also uses appeal to emotion is demonstrated by Berry stating, “Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality. And the result is a kind of solitude, unprecedented in human experience, in which the consumer may think of eating as, first, a purely commercial transaction between him and a supplier and then as a purely appetitive transaction between him and his food” (49). This can effect the reader by having particular emotions and

My earliest memory of food is lentils and rice cooked in a pressure cooker. Lentils were cooked at least three days a week. Other days we had different vegetable curries, curd and more rice. This was what I took to school as my lunch every day. As I grew older and started caring more about my social life and people around me, I started noticing what my classmates brought for lunch from their homes. I started understanding how food reflected different cultures and communities. One day, in our

The Omnivore’s Dilemma written by Michael Pollan, contrasts how humans and rats eat. Pollan shows that compared to humans rats don’t have traditions. Rats decide what to eat by tasting it. If they get sick, they won’t eat it. Rats don’t have anyone telling them what to eat.

In the an article called ‘The Pleasure of Eating’ by Wendell Berry talks about how consumers should know where the food they eat comes from and learning to adapt in producing their own food. His main idea is really focusing on the

In Mark Strands “Eating Poetry,” the author tells a story of an altered view of a mundane task, taken with a view not normally experienced by restrained society. Right or wrong as the author’s actions may be, the poet’s description of his interactions is quite engaging. Expressed in three six line stanzas, the writer flows through the highs and lows of an exceptionally intense literary experience.

“Who’s Irish” by Gish Jen is a story of an elderly Chinese woman, the narrator, who lives in America and tries to help raise her granddaughter Sophie. The grandmother cultural background causes tension in her relationship with her daughter, Natalie, who was born in America and is now married into an Irish-American family. The elderly Chinese woman struggles to adapt to her daughter’s lifestyle and After spanking her granddaughter, the Chinese woman is asked to move out of Natalie’s house. The elderly woman finds a new home at her daughter’s mother-in-law.

In “The Pleasures of Eating” Wendell Berry wants the reader to recognize that eating is a cultural act. He believes we are eaters not consumers and that we should have more knowledge about the food we eat. Berry wants the reader to questions where the food is coming from, what condition is it produced in and what chemicals may it contains. He has found that the food industries blind us to what we are consuming and the effect it has on us. At last Berry believes that we must eat responsibly to live free.

During the first week of class, four readings were assigned. One of the readings, “Food and Eating: Some Persisting Questions,” by Sidney Mintz, discusses the paradoxes of food. Although food seems like a straightforward concept, it is actually extremely complicated. According to Mintz, there are five paradoxes, including: the importance of food to one’s survival, yet we take it for granted, how people stick to their foodways, but are willing to change, whether the government should allow people to freely choose food or if they should protect the people through regulations, the difference in food meanings according to gender, and the morality of eating certain foods. All of these paradoxes give people questions to think about, making this an extremely philosophical look at food studies. It also mentions that food must be viewed through the cultural context that it is in, which became important in “The Old and New World Exchange”, by Mintz, and “Maize as a Culinary Mystery”, by Stanley Brandes. These discuss the diffusion of foods after 1492 in different ways. The Mintz reading gives an overview of all of the foods spread from the Americas to the Old World, and vice-a-versa, but does not go terribly in depth on the social changes and effects of specific foods. Brandes focuses on the cultural impact of specifically maize on the European diet, noticing that most Western Europeans shunned it. He studies the cultural implications of this, concluding that maize was not accepted

I believe that it is essential to experiment as we develop our literacies, and that is what M.F.K. Fisher was attempting to do each time she failed. As a result of Fisher not being content with the ordinary pudding, she decorated her pudding with the berries to make it more extraordinary. Similarly, her Hindu Eggs were a failure because she prioritized the visual image of her meals more than the taste. As Fisher goes on to explain, she desires to portray rarity and uniqueness in her culinary creations. The only means we have of creating an original, individual work of art is to experiment by means of trial-and-error. A chef experimenting with a recipe may determine that he needs more, or perhaps less, of a particular ingredient. As writers,