The Politics Of Street Food

In Bangladesh, the sale of food in public space is often contested: Street food is needed, but not wanted. 100,000 street vendors sell dishes, snacks, fruits, and beverages in the megacity of Dhaka. Street food is important for urban food security as mobile labourers and the poor rely on cheap, readily available and nutritious food. The authorities argue that encroachments of streets and footpaths are illegal and disorderly, and that street food is unhygienic. They therefore evict the vendors regularly. But the hawkers are somewhat protected through the informal rules of the street. While some of them are highly vulnerable to poverty and police raids, most navigate well through these contested governance regimes and can successfully sustain their livelihoods and contribute to urban food security. In this book, different conceptual perspectives are integrated on the basis of Bourdieu's Theory of Practice. It provides fresh insights into the role of street food in urban food system and contributes to a deeper understanding of the vulnerabilities of the urban poor, the informal governance of public space, and the dominant discourses on street vending. From a relational and critical perspective, this book captures "the politics of street food" and sketches innovative solutions towards fair street food governance.

Describes the L.A. street cook's life, including working in his family's restaurant as a child, figuring out what he wanted to do with his life, and his success with his food truck and restaurant.

Artists, anthropologists, activists, and others consider the global politics and ethics of food production, distribution, and consumption. The last decade has witnessed a proliferation of artists and artist collectives interrogating the global politics and ethics of food production, distribution, and consumption. As an important document of new research and thinking around the subject, this book, copublished with Delfina Foundation, offers reflections on food by prominent artists, anthropologists, and activists, among others. In interviews, chefs, policy makers, and agronomists critically assess and illuminate the ways the arts confront food-related issues, ranging from the infrastructure of global and local food systems, its impact on social organization, alternatives and sustainability, climate and ecology, health and policy, science and biodiversity, and identity and community. With texts by Harry G. West, Raj Patel, and Tim Lang Conversations with Ferran Adrià and Marta Arzak, Tamara Ben-Ari and Asunción Molinos Gordo, Mark Hix and Patrick Holden, Michel Pimbert and Tomás Uhnák, Michael Vazquez and Michael Rakowitz Contributions from Kathrin Böhm, Center for Genomic Gastronomy, Leone Contini, Cooking Sections, Chris Fite-Wassilak, Amy Franceschini and Michael Taussig, Fernando García-Dory, Melanie Jackson, Dagna Jakubowska, Nick Laessing, Jane Levi; Poppy Litchfield, Candice Lin, Christine Mackey, Taus Makhacheva, Elia Nurvista, Senam Okudzeto, Thomas Pausz, Daniel Salomon, Vivien Sansour, Standart Thinking, Serkan Taycan, Lantian Xie, Raed Yassin Copublished by Delfina Foundation and Sternberg Press

Prepared foods, for sale in streets, squares or markets, are ubiquitous around the world and throughout history. This volume is one of the first to provide a comprehensive social science perspective on street food, illustrating its immense cultural diversity and economic significance, both in developing and developed countries. Key issues addressed include: policy, regulation and governance of street food and vendors; production and trade patterns ranging from informal subsistence to modern forms of enterprise; the key role played by female vendors; historical roots and cultural meanings of selling and eating food in the street; food safety and nutrition issues. Many chapters provide case studies from specific cities in different regions of the world. These include North America (Atlanta, Philadelphia, Portland, Toronto, Vancouver), Central and South America (Bogota, Buenos Aires, La Paz, Lima, Mexico City, Montevideo, Santiago, Salvador da Bahia), Asia (Bangkok, Dhaka, Penang), Africa (Accra, Abidjan, Bamako, Freetown, Mozambique) and Europe (Amsterdam).

We all witness, in advertising and on supermarket shelves, the fierce competition for our food dollars. In this engrossing exposé, Marion Nestle goes behind the scenes to reveal how the competition really works and how it affects our health. The abundance of food in the United States--enough calories to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child twice over--has a downside. Our over-efficient food industry must do everything possible to persuade people to eat more--more food, more often, and in larger portions--no matter what it does to waistlines or well-being. Like manufacturing cigarettes or building weapons, making food is big business. Food companies in 2000 generated nearly $900 billion in sales. They have stakeholders to please, shareholders to satisfy, and government regulations to deal with. It is nevertheless shocking to learn precisely how food companies lobby officials, co-opt experts, and expand sales by marketing to children, members of minority groups, and people in developing countries. We learn that the food industry plays politics as well as or better than other industries, not least because so much of its activity takes place outside the public view. Editor of the 1988 Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health, Nestle is uniquely qualified to lead us through the maze of food industry interests and influences. She vividly illustrates food politics in action: watered-down government dietary advice, schools pushing soft drinks, diet supplements promoted as if they were First Amendment rights. When it comes to the mass production and consumption of food, strategic decisions are driven by economics--not science, not common sense, and certainly not health. No wonder most of us are thoroughly confused about what to eat to stay healthy. An accessible and balanced account, Food Politics will forever change the way we respond to food industry marketing practices. By explaining how much the food industry influences government nutrition policies and how cleverly it links its interests to those of nutrition experts, this path-breaking book helps us understand more clearly than ever before what we eat and why.

Ralph Nader and his family share recipes inspired by his parents’ commitment to the healthy diet of their homeland of Lebanon. “More than just a collection of recipes, though, this is a window on a culture and a family. Nader’s description of his mother convincing 8-year-old Ralph to eat radishes speaks volumes about this persuasive matriarch and the tireless activist she raised.” —Washington Post Book Club Ralph Nader is best-known for his social critiques and his efforts to increase government and corporate accountability, but what some might not know about him is his lifelong commitment to healthy eating. Born in Connecticut to Lebanese parents, Nader’s appreciation of food began at an early age, when his parents, Rose and Nathra, owned an eatery, bakery, and delicatessen called the Highland Arms Restaurant. The family eschewed processed foods and ate only a moderate amount of lean red meat. Nowadays, the Mediterranean diet is considered one of the healthiest on the planet, but in the 1930s and ’40s of Nader’s youth it was considered by many Americans as simply strange. Luckily for Nader and his siblings, this didn’t prevent their mother, Rose, from serving the family homemade, healthy meals—dishes from her homeland of Lebanon. Rose didn’t simply encourage her children to eat well, she took time to discuss and explain her approach to food; she used the family meals to connect all of her children to the traditions of their ancestors. The Ralph Nader and Family Cookbook shares the cuisine of Nader’s upbringing, presenting Lebanese dishes inspired by Rose’s recipes that will be both known to many, including hummus and baba ghanoush, as well as others that may be lesser known, such as kibbe, the extremely versatile national dish of Lebanon, and sheikh al-mahshi—”the ‘king’ of stuffed foods.” The cookbook includes an introduction by Nader and anecdotes throughout. The Ralph Nader and Family Cookbook will entice one’s taste buds, while sharing a side of Ralph Nader that may not be commonly known, though will not surprise anyone familiar with his decades of activism and involvement in consumer protection advocacy.

What's wrong with the US food system? Why is half the world starving while the other half battles obesity? Who decides our food issues, and why can't we do better with labeling, safety, or school food? These are complex questions that are hard to answer in an engaging way for a broad audience. But everybody eats, and food politics affects us all. Marion Nestle, whom Michael Pollan ranked as the #2 most powerful foodie in America (after Michelle Obama) in Forbes, has always used cartoons in her public presentations to communicate how politics—shaped by government, corporate marketing, economics, and geography—influences food choice. Cartoons do more than entertain; the best get right to the core of complicated concepts and powerfully convey what might otherwise take pages to explain. In Eat Drink Vote, Nestle teams up with The Cartoonist Group syndicate to present more than 250 of her favorite cartoons on issues ranging from dietary advice to genetic engineering to childhood obesity. Using the cartoons as illustration and commentary, she engagingly summarizes some of today's most pressing issues in food politics. While encouraging readers to vote with their forks for healthier diets, this book insists that it's also necessary to vote with votes to make it easier for everyone to make healthier dietary choices.

The Cultural Politics of Food, Taste, and Identity examines the social, cultural, and political processes that shape the experience of taste. The book positions flavor as involving all the senses, and describes the multiple ways in which taste becomes tied to local, translocal, glocal, and cosmopolitan politics of identity. Global case studies are included from Japan, China, India, Belize, Chile, Guatemala, the United States, France, Italy, Poland and Spain. Chapters examine local responses to industrialized food and the heritage industry, and look at how professional culinary practice has become foundational for local identities. The book also discusses the unfolding construction of “local taste” in the context of sociocultural developments, and addresses how cultural political divides are created between meat consumption and vegetarianism, innovation and tradition, heritage and social class, popular food and authenticity, and street and restaurant food. In addition, contributors discuss how different food products-such as kimchi, quinoa, and Soylent-have entered the international market of industrial and heritage foods, connecting different places and shaping taste and political identities.