Professor: Food plays a role in politics

Food plays a role in the life of every student, which is why it is no surprise that H204: Politics of Food is a popular choice for Hutton Honors College students.\nFood editor at Bloom Magazine and H204 professor Christine Barbour developed the idea for the course four years ago, after her husband suggested that she combine her passions for politics and food. She said the government could be doing a better job of giving advice on healthy eating to the public.\n“A lot of the wording that comes from the federal regulations about eating is a result of being worked over by many different groups who have a vested economic interest it what we eat,” Barbour said. “It is not for our good health, it’s for the good of these different groups.”\nDanielle Wilks, a junior who took the course two years ago, said she already knew there was a connection between food and politics because she had done a project about it in high school. But the course reinforced the idea that “so much more of food, hard facts, and politics really has a hand in what we’re eating,” she said.\nThe idea of combining politics and food may sound strange, but Barbour said it’s perfectly normal.\n“This course is a good way of understanding the political process through reading about something that we all need for our basic lives, which is food. So it takes politics which sometimes seems like it is removed from us, like it is way out there, like its not related to our lives, and it brings it home,” said Barbour.\nStudents in H204 learn about food and policy, the food lobbying industry and the Slow Food Movement, which emphasizes eating local and seasonal foods. Above all, Barbour said she wants students to think more critically about the food they eat.\n“In a perfect world, I would think that students should eat food that is not processed, that is made from ingredients that come roughly within 100 miles and that tastes really delicious so that they can start to develop a taste for great food,” Barbour said. \nBarbour said the class also emphasizes the relationship between family and food. Frequently, people establish an emotional connection with the food they eat based on personal experiences and traditions, she said.\nTo emphasize that fact, Barbour created an assignment where students make a “food tree diagram” of foods they ate when they were growing up.\nSophomore Sara Whitmer, another former student of the class, said that was her favorite part of the course.\n“It was interesting, I got to learn about food traditions and my family and how we look at food and special recipes that have been passed down to my family,” Whitmer said.\nWhile students define their own history with food, Barbour also emphasizes the history of food politics in the U.S.. For instance, immigrants used to be told to abandon their own culinary traditions and embrace more Americanized foods, she said.\nBy the end of the course, Barbour hopes that her students have a better understanding of the complexities of food.\n“If they’re interested in knowing how food plays out in our political process as one of the stakes that people are after,” Barbour said, “then this would be a good course to take.”