Jessica Galen scrutinizes current cheese consumption recommendations for pregnant women to elucidate their semantic and scientific shortcomings. She also provides a framework for authorities to develop a new set of recommendations that gives pregnant women a clear path for making safe and delicious cheese selections.
To understand how restaurants are catalysts for cultural adaptation, Noah Allison uses GIS software to map Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, New York City’s geographically largest borough and the nation’s most ethnically and racially heterogeneous county, where over 150 different languages are spoken.
In this Food-Stuff piece, Emely Vargas writes a letter to her mom: “Let me tell you why my brother David, a man growing up in our Hispanic family that frequently practices stereotypical gender roles, would voluntarily take the chance of burning rice, undercooking chicken, and hearing all the criticism that comes with using a pan…”
In this Food-Stuff piece, Jonathan Biderman reviews the documentary film, “Tsukiji Wonderland,” and shares his own experiences visiting Tsukiji Market in Tokyo, “the ultimate pilgrimage destination for all cooks.”
Sarah Huang reviews Nora McKeon’s “Food Security Governance: Empowering Communities, Regulating Corporations,” which provides a food system analysis to understand the history of food issues from World War II to present time, from local food systems to global commodity chains.
Rituparna Patgiri writes that Utsa Ray’s “Culinary Culture in Colonial India” is an attempt to understand the relationship between the urban middle class in colonial Bengal and its cuisine.
Food studies matters, now more than ever. And while the articles featured in this issue of the Graduate Journal of Food Studies were not solicited under the banner of food’s vast and varied politics, it is now impossible to read them outside of our current political moment. Emily J.H. Contois, Editor-in-Chief
Alexandra Rodney reviews “Gender, Class and Food: Families, Bodies and Health,” in which Julia M. Parsons draws from 75 interviews to examine everyday foodways and how they contribute to the reproduction of inequality in the United Kingdom.
Daniel Shattuck reviews Ronda Brulotte and Michael Di Giovine’s edited volume, “Edible Identities: Food as Cultural Heritage,” which brings together food scholars from a variety of fields including anthropology, gastronomy, history, and architecture as well as from American, French, and Latin American studies to consider what happens when food is labeled “cultural heritage.”
This is my last issue as editor of the Graduate Journal of Food Studies. The past two years and three issues have been an invaluable part of my graduate education. I can’t begin to express how much I’ve learned from our authors, artists, readers, and advisors. It’s been a joy to work with you all.