Food, Glorious Food...

One aspect of a country or a region that defines it is its FOOD.
This can be explored thanks to a new interactive site at the British Library site called FOOD STORIES.You'll need FLASH 8 to explore this site in full.

The site was put together in association with another, more involved, project called CULTURES OF CONSUMPTION (which has a nice barcode logo...) and is produced in association with Birkbeck College, University of London.
There's a very useful report on 4 and a half lessons learnt HERE (PDF download) and you can also download summaries of some of the RESEARCH PROJECTS.
There are also TEACHERS' NOTES, CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES and an INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS' NOTEBOOK to help students investigate the site.

There are useful short reports on a huge range of food related topics including:
  • Chinese Restaurants and their impact on 1950s life
  • Someone eating Indian food for the first time in the 1960s
  • the politics of Caribbean food
  • eating spaghetti for the first time
The site also looks at the rituals of food, school dinners and the impact of changing technology.
Also involved in the project was Peter Jackson from University of Sheffield, who is another person closely associated with consumption patterns. The FOOD STORIES site grew up out of a project to explore the PRODUCTION CHAIN.
From the page above, you can download a 2 page PDF document which summarises the findings of the project.

This fits in nicely with a book I'm reading at the moment called "Moveable Feasts", which is all about how food is moved around the world.

There are various cultural aspects to food:
  • its production - transport around the world
  • the cultural aspects of certain food items related to festivals and religion
Coming soon: FASHION, MUSIC and GAMES CONSOLES... and more FOOD...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Jonathan Meades on Sustainability

On the trail of the 'Detectorists'