The Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Food and Gastronomy

Philip Sloan, Willy Legrand, Clare Hindley, Philip Sloan, Willy Legrand, Clare Hindley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781134457403
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

The issues surrounding the provision, preparation and development of food products is fundamental to every human being on the planet. Given the scarcity of agricultural land, environmental pollution, climate change and the exponential growth of the world's population where starvation and obesity are both widespread it is little wonder that exploring the frontiers of food is now a major focus for researchers and practitioners.

This timely Handbook provides a systematic guide to the current state of knowledge on sustainable food. It begins by analyzing the historical development surrounding food production and consumption, then moves on to discuss the current food crisis and challenges as well as the impacts linked to modern agriculture and food security. Finally, it concludes with a section that examines emerging sustainable food trends and movements in addition to an analysis of current food science innovations. Developed from specifically commissioned original contributions the Handbook's inherent multidisciplinary approach paves the way for deeper understanding of all aspects linked to the evolution of food in society, including insights into local food, food and tourism, organic food, indigenous and traditional food, sustainable restaurant practices, consumption patterns and sourcing.

This book is essential reading for students, researches and academics interested in the possibilities of sustainable forms of gastronomy and gastronomy's contribution to sustainable development.

The title includes a foreword written by Roberto Flore, Head Chef at the Nordic Food Lab, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Part 1
Anthropology of food

The sheer novelty and glamor of the Western diet, with its seventeen thousand new food products every year and the marketing power – thirty-two billion dollars a year – used to sell us those products, has overwhelmed the force of tradition and left us where we now find ourselves: relying on science and journalism and government and marketing to help us decide what to eat.

Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (Penguin, 2007)

Consumer food decisions and the role of history and self-identity form the content of the first chapter. Alice Brombin provides a case study of an Italian ecovillage where sustainability combines environmental practice with concern for the land, the self and others. The initiative combines the concept of luxury and simplicity with new interpretations of luxury and individualism, terms both normally associated with the globalized modern world.

The food choices we make are part of our ever-evolving social identity. Peter Varga highlights how postmodern societies, for example, use health and wellness to replace the former spiritual and religious taboos on food. Moreover, today’s sustainable consumption appears to be based on the search for well-being and personal development. In the past, as today, food choice is an attempt at survival and social-identification; the parameters may change, but objectives remain the same.

The concepts behind consumer food choices have become more public, more debated and correspondingly more complex. Clare Hindley contrasts 1980s London and twenty-first-century Germany, highlighting the influences that play a major role in young people’s food decisions. Music, politics and role models are just some of the issues forming the framework within which self-identity is sought and moulded.

Paul Cleave’s examination of regional culinary tastes and fashions in Devon, UK, analyses how the past can help us understand today’s hospitality industry. History is seen as an important tool to explain the experiences of today’s consumers and producers. Devon provides a vivid example of traditional culinary highlights and local and external interest.

1
“Luxurious Simplicity”

Self-sufficient food production in Italian ecovillages

Alice Brombin

Introduction

Luxury and simplicity are concepts usually considered contradictory especially in the context of food consumption and food products. The success of Italian culture is undeniably linked to the production of luxury goods known worldwide. Products associated with Italian brands and labels are indicators not only of quality but also of distinction. In the field of food, wine is a good example of these associations. The Pinot Gray, Tuscan Chianti, and Prosecco di Valdobbiadene fall within the category of luxury not only because of the high prices for which they are sold but also for the fame associated with the brand and with a specific design, making these wines immediately recognizable. The consumption of these products requires a distinguished knowledge that is frequently a prerogative of expertise requiring an educated taste. Conversely, simple food is non-label associated and locally produced in farms. It is inexpensive food, carrying with it the ability to enter any household. It is anonymous, with no character or specific taste corresponding to it. Simple food is not associated with luxury, therefore it does not offer any relevant history or reputation to the consumer and is not associated with rituals or narratives that add meaning to personal identity.

The objective of this article is to show how the concepts of luxury and simplicity within the ecovillages assume different meanings respective of those described above and how these categories can be adapted and manipulated according to specific contextual needs. In the ecovillages, luxury and simplicity are not seen in opposition. On the contrary, they shift these categories and offer new frameworks for understanding how the production of food, shared consumption, and communal living contribute to an ethic of care such that simplicity and reciprocity are the new luxury. Simple food and self-production concerns not only the idea of good and healthy eating, it is also linked to a set of practices that help create an aesthetic based on the observation of nature and on the attitude of care. Sustainability is not just about environmental practice but also about the ethos of caring for land, self, and others.

Ecovillages propose creative solutions to develop alternative social microsystems based on self-sufficiency. The goal is not only the maintenance of material needs but also personal satisfaction and happiness, originating from the food that is produced and consumed.

Both anthropological and sociological studies on nutrition recognize the centrality of food in the social field. By adopting a specific diet, each community defines its own way of interacting with nature and territory, revealing criteria and cultural conventions that determine the economy and technology of its own productive system (Poulain, 2008; Douglas, 1999). Everyday life is organized with reference to food and the techniques adopted to produce it, transform it and eat it. For this reason, food is the template for symbolic representations in every culture (Levi Strauss, 2008; Douglas and Isherwood, 1979).

Gastronomy represents a privileged interpretative key for socio-cultural analysis. In this field of studies, a fundamental contribution to the theme of nutrition comes from the sociologist Claude Fischler. According to Fischler, food distinguishes itself from other typologies of consumption because, once incorporated into the organism, it becomes part of the self (Fischler, 1980: 948). Fischler (1980) identifies the increasing influence of the global market on social life and the tendency to consume standardized and anonymous food as distinctive traits of modern society. He coins the concept of “gastro-anomia” to describe the consumers’ alimentary anxiety as an oppressive condition resulting from their lack of awareness of the contents of their food. By adopting the principle “I am what I eat,” Fischler points out that if you don’t know what you are eating, consequently you don’t know who you are. This ignorance reflects itself upon the social actors who internalize this unknowing and the related doubts concerning personal identity.

The trend of studies which rises from these ideas (Flandrin and Montanari, 1997; Lupton, 1996; Warde, 1997) proposes an additional body of concepts in which the imaginative and symbolic aspects of alimentary practice are interpreted not only as a means of social identity affirmation (Bourdieu, 1983), but also as variables that are fundamental to the creation of individual identity. Such concepts contribute to overtaking the current perception of gastronomy and taste as “confined in a process of distinction by means of which elites affirm their difference from rising classes” (Poulain, 2008: 147).

Frequently, contemporary society is described as characterized by the growing trend for individualization in the field of alimentary choices, the fragmentation and the simplification of the composition of meals, and the progressive loss of knowledge and control over what is eaten.

However, there is an increasing amount of evidence that points to alternative forms of consumption that underline a critical and responsive approach on the part of the social actor. Alternative food consumption modalities that express the demand for authenticity, tradition, taste, and wellness contribute to restoring and preserving the value of scientifically unmodified, non-industrial local food and cuisine.

These choices also enhance the pleasure of meal sharing, and the importance of intimacy and familiarity in the food preparation and consumption process (Pollan, 2006; Sassatelli, 2004).

In this context, the debate concerning the relationship between nature and science has strong relevance and heavy symbolic significance. Alimentary styles such as veganism and raw-food diets, which utilize nature as a symbol to which the images of purity and goodness are emotionally assigned, are increasingly growing (Lupton, 1996: 139). From this perspective, food is defined as good and healthy if it respects specific characteristics associated with an idea of nature that is often mythicized and uncontaminated: food is healthy if not manipulated by science, if local, and therefore “near” to consumers. This allows them to know its origin and to re-establish the proximity and control over the entire production chain. Conversely, food characterized as “bad” consists of artificial ingredients and processing and evokes the artificial context of culturalized urban life. Those who embrace nature differentiate themselves by a highly emotive ideological position, collocating alimentation and food in an aesthetic and holistic approach that values eating as an expression of a moral, philosophical, and political attitude (Lupton, 1996: 143). The formation of taste is thus the consequence of a continuous process of negotiation and reflection in which the declaration of personal choice has fundamental value (Leonini and Sassatelli, 2008: 118).

Ecovillages are the tangible translation of the concepts expressed above. In Italy, these communities are located mainly in rural settings, the dimensions are generally finite, and they often consist of around 20 to 25 people. The shared goal is to adopt a lifestyle based on self-management, self-sufficiency, and the collectivization of economic resources in order to create economies of subsistence that are sustainable from both an environmental and social point of view. Food and energy self-sufficiency are common goals as well as the establishment of relationships of reciprocity with both the land and surrounding territory. In the ecovillages, consumption dynamics are characterized by a frugal hedonism based on the moral imperative of ethics and sobriety. This entails progressively reducing consumption while fully embracing the principles of reduction—by turning to self-production—when possible. The underlying aim is personal satisfaction and the diffusion of alternative micro-economies (Fabris, 2003; Leonini and Sassatelli, 2008; Latouche, 2007). The will to valorize the local dimension is crucial, not only for what concerns alimentary choices but also for the many movements that insist on local control of cultural resources that see going-back-to-earth and communitarian, auto-managed lifestyles as the best solution to the disrupting tendency of contemporary society (Castells, 1999).

Ecovillages: new frontiers of sustainability?

By changing the way we cultivate our food, we change our food, our society, our values. Natural farming, which has its origins and its end in respect, is everywhere human and sustainable. The real aim of agriculture is not to grow crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings: to be here, to take care of a small field, in the full possession of the freedom and the fullness of every day, daily. This must have been the original way of agriculture.

(Fukuoka, 1978: 15)

In modern society, different social movements exist that attempt to gain control over cultural resources that contrast with the large-scale standardized food production system. These ethical and political aspects of consumption gain a high symbolic value. Among these movements, ecovillages seek to regenerate social and natural environments through communal living.

Ecovillages are intentional and experimental communities that embrace environmental sustainability manifested in daily practices through the concept of green consumption, considered the best response to the global ecological crisis and the main indicator of an ecological identity. Environmental ecology is primarily concerned with self-sufficient food production and alternative farming methods, such as permaculture and organic or biodynamic farming practices, aimed to achieve a sustainable food style. Moreover, the use of these methods represents a way to criticize the economic logic of equivalent exchange, preferring instead a culture of gifting and the establishment of relations of reciprocity and solidarity on a small scale. These local communities are able to build networks in territories that lead to rational and pragmatic action, both in relation to the way of eating and the use of products, by interacting with related networks, such as groups of joint purchasing.

For ecovillagers, consumption is never separate from production. This logic of eco-compatibility is carried out in several ways: through the preference for local short chain food production, the recovery of native food species, and the possibility of reusing, recovering, and recycling. Therefore, the duties of the consumer come full circle: to him- or herself, to nature, and to the others. These new forms of intentional communitarianism propose the adoption of a lifestyle in which the shared collective dimension of being together paired with an attitude of caring for and attention to the environment—which have strong emotive connections—have fundamental value. To choose to live in an ecovillage requires reflection and pragmatic action, which are the consequences of the necessity to redefine the nature of both individual and collective needs that rise from the tensions and the contradictions that permeate the society we are living in.

It is difficult to describe this particular social phenomenon by using the categories and the conceptual forms particular to the literature quoted thus far. Starting from this premise, it is useful to move towards different theoretical and conceptual formulations in order to interpret and comprehend the nature of the ecovillage movement. This particular kind of intentional communitarianism is distinct from the phenomenon of neotribali...