Hey all! Who else is excited by watching all the obscure
sports in the Olympics? I know I am. :)So today’s blog entry is going to explore the resistance movements against the
prevalence and normalization of the microwave in modern kitchens. I will touch
on the Slow Food Movement, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, food blogs and television shows and the
rise in appreciation for home-cooking.
For many of these groups of people, microwave use is seen as
unhealthy and “bad”. Their cultural beliefs rationalize this negative view by
stating that microwaves can cause harmful effects on humans (from the
excessive radiation), the food product itself (loss of nutrients, damage to the
food’s proteins and texture) or that they associate, rightly or wrongly, the
microwave with unhealthy processed foods (think Hungry-man Dinners). To them, the microwave can be a symbol of
someone who doesn’t care about their health, is lazy, or lacks moral
responsibility. These groups eschew microwave use in favour of steamer baskets,
toaster ovens or stovetops and in doing so; exert their own agency against the
cultural norms of implicit technology use that are imposed on them.
Some of the countercultures to mainstream “fast” food
include the “Slow” Food Movement (their marketing department did a good job
thinking up a witty name here), Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, as well as
cooking shows and food bloggers who create and post their own recipes. All of
these emphasize learning and caring about the ingredients that you cook with,
and the appreciation of cooking skills.Even the local, organic and raw food
movements that are really popular right now tend to usurp the microwave’s
position in our culture because of their emphasis on freshness and healthy
foods; neither of which the microwave represents in our culture.
Jamie Oliver’s Food Foundation, the Slow Food Movement, food
co-ops and farmers markets are all based around the idea that local, real, home-cooked,
non-processed foods are better for people. Each wants to re-establish a cultural
and physical connection to food that they feel is lost when food is precooked
or simply warmed up. To them, microwave technology has altered our ways of
experiencing food; from intimate knowledge of food and complicated cooking
methods to simply following instructions printed on a box and pressing a few
buttons. They believe that this change in interactions with our food has removed/separated
us from what we eat and how we eat it. This cultural change in eating has
caused a loss of cultural knowledge of food as well as a loss of appreciation
for cooking skills and how food is produced. These groups serve to resist the dominant
ideas that microwaved meals are acceptable and try to teach the importance of
cooking and knowing about your food as a form of cultural capital.
The recent explosion of food blogs and cooking shows help to
feature home-cooks who explore the foods they eat and create their own recipes
for others to try. Both of these forms of media show a new appreciation for
cooking as a form of culinary art and utilize pictures and videos of food to
express and portray it in a sensory way, enticing the viewer to have a more
intimate relationship with it. Also, with the increased value that is placed on health, wellness and taking care of the body, food has been established as a way to establish control over your body and has been used to represent the beliefs and values you have surrounding your health. For example, posting a recipe for an organic salad recipe on a blog shows that you are morally conscious of your own health and the health of the environment, whereas someone who posts a picture about their microwaved Michelina's macaroni shows someone who is irresponsible and lazy.
Websites used in this blog post:
http://www.slowfood.ca/
, http://slowfood.to/
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