Essay 1: Profile

The Concept
We opened our class with Brillart-Savarins aphorism, Tell me what kind of food you eat, and I will tell you what kind
of man you are, because food choices are intimate matters that have far-reaching implications. Weve considered,
and will continue to study, what foods say about the people who eat them. For instance, in the past, cornbread could
be seen as a symbol of class in Appalachia because it was made from ingredients people grew themselves rather
than purchasing. Today, whether people buy organic vegetables or oversized sodas, free range or conventional meat,
even whole wheat or white bread, can be interpreted to suggest all sorts of things about them, ranging from their
economic status to their values.
Now, in this paper, its your turn to analyze what food choices reveal or represent about a specific person. In an essay
of three to five pages, profile a member of our class. To gather material for your profile, conduct an interview and
spend some time with your subject. (Like breaking bread togetherand you may wish to meet over mealswriting
the profile is also a way to get to know each other and create a kind of table fellowship within our classroom.)
As you talk to your interviewee, consider various possibilities for your profile. Do you want to write about a food
choice he makes for cultural reasons? (Certain foods help him feel connected to his Hispanic heritage.) Aesthetic
preferences? (Her exuberant personality carries over into her eating habits; she puts hot sauce on every dish.)
Ethical reasons? (Hes a vegetarian because hes been concerned about animals rights ever since he visited a feed
lot.) Health? (Since developing food allergies, he learned to cook for himself and has become a great chef.)
Situation? (She grew up on a limited budget, so she learned to like fast food.)
The Requirements
Include the key features of a profile: Choose an interesting, unique, and focused angle. Your angle should suggest a
sort of thesis, a dominant interpretation about your observations. Support this interpretation with details as evidence.
Provide necessary background information, deciding what kind of contextual information needs to be included to help
the reader understand the subject.
This first essay is also our opportunity to focus on the basic elements of essay writing: proper grammar, strong
sentence and paragraph structure, and well-planned organization. (Refer to the text books section on organizing
essays as descriptions for ideas on how to order you content.) While profiles can be informal, creative pieces, for this
assignment, you should practice an essay form that will serve you in future academic papers. Develop an
introductory paragraph with a thesis or dominant interpretation. Begin paragraphs with topic sentences that tie into
the thesis and end them with transitions into the next paragraphs. Craft a compelling conclusion.
As you work on the essay, you will also have the opportunity to work on writing processes such as drafting, analyzing
your writing, and revising.
In Summary
Subject:Profile of a classmate, with an aspect of their eating choices as an angle.
Task: Include the key features of the genre and focus on the essential elements of essay writing such as grammar
and paragraph structure.
Length: 3-5 pages.
Dates:

Essay 2: Reporting Information

The Concept
Foodways are food production, cooking, and eating practices of a group of people. In this class, weve looked at
some foodways such as culinary traditions in our Southern Appalachian region and how they were shaped by
mountainous terrain that made travel difficult, and indicators of contemporary American food culture as seen in food
marketing, the local food movement, and modernist cuisine. But the world has a much greater diversity of foodways
than this; every region and time period has its own. The research essay is your opportunity to gain expertise in one of
the many food cultures.
For your research essay, choose an aspect of food culture and research it. Develop a focus for your research and
report your findings in an essay of three to five pages.
Think about foods that interest you. You could address foods that are a part of your own heritage or characteristic of
the place from which you come. If your town has a ramp festival, you could research traditions associated with ramps.
If you come from a city that allows the food cart business to flourish, you might look into an aspect of street foods in
various places. Or, you could inquire into foods that simply intrigue you. How did fermented soy products come into
use in Asia? If an article on differing interpretations of frybreadas a traditional symbol of the Navajo people or as a
symbol of white influence because its made from wheat flourcatches your eye, you might research the role of
European culture in the evolution of Native American cuisine, looking for a related topic.
Be inquisitive, and prepared to shape and adapt your topic depending on your findings. (Though anthropological
research often relies on first-hand observations of cultures, our objective in the reporting essay is to conduct research
using sources from the library. You will need to identify a topic that can be supported by this kind of research.)
The Requirements
There are three areas of emphasis for this assignment. The first is research: looking for sources and evaluating
them. Identify three to four good sources. Use at least three different of types of resources. Your options include web
resources, books, scholarly journal articles (electronic or hard copies), newspapers or magazines, and field research.
Additionally, you may choose to conduct field research and gather data from sources other than published sources by
interviewing, surveying, or observing people involved in food choices. (Field work may be most realistic if you are
writing an essay framing certain eating habits present on campus as foodways. Is there an identifiable cuisine
developing in the co-op kitchen or among the dumpster divers in your dorm?)
The second area of emphasis is on documenting sources. Present your reporting in a finished, trustworthy way; take
care to properly apply MLA citation style.
The third emphasis is on organizing your researched information into an effective essay. Essays that report
information should be factual and maintain an objective tone. Make sure your essay includes these key features: a
focused topic; organizing strategies such as defining, comparing, and explaining information; and clear definitions of
your terminology.
In Summary
Subject:A focused topic about a foodwaya specific aspect of a food culture.
Task: Research the practice. Using 3-4 good sources (of 3 different types), present factual information on the practice
in an essay and document your information correctly. Include key features of the genre.
Length: 3-5 pages
Dates:

Essay 3: Arguing a Position

The Concept
Increasingly, food choices have become social issues. Rather than wondering what we can do with the few
ingredients available to us during a given season in our climate, or deciding whether were in the mood for something
salty or sweet, we may ask which purchase best supports our beliefs about world hunger, nutrition, GMOs, organics,
food subsidies, trade policies, economies of scale, carbon outputs, pollution, packaging, animal rights, feminism, or a
host of other concerns.
In his article, The Food Movement, Rising, Michael Pollan ultimately argues that our many concerns with the current
food system are coming together into a coherent social movement. But he also notes that the food movement is a
big, lumpy tent, and sometimes the various factions beneath it work at cross-purposes. For example, activists working
to strengthen federal food safety regulations have recently run afoul of local food advocates, who fear that the burden
of new regulation will cripple the current revival of small-farm agriculture. Joel Salatin, the Virginia meat producer and
writer who has become a hero to the food movement, fulminates against food safety regulation on libertarian grounds
in his Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front. Hunger activists like Joel Berg, in All
You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America?, criticize supporters of sustainable agriculturei.e., producing food in ways
that do not harm the environmentfor advocating reforms that threaten to raise the cost of food to the poor. Animal
rights advocates occasionally pick fights with sustainable meat producers (such as Joel Salatin), as Jonathan Safran
Foer does in his recent vegetarian polemic, Eating Animals. Even if we agree that we care about sustainability, there
is not a single, agreed upon way to achieve it.
That means theres opportunity for you to consider your food choices and articulate your point of view. Choose an
aspect of a food movement. Is this movements philosophy effective, relevant, practical, possible, meaningful?
Research it and develop an informed opinion on the matter. Write an essay of four-five pages that makes your
argument.
Successful arguments focus on topics that are clearly defined, allowing the author to address them thoroughly and
interestingly. So, refine your argument carefully. Setting out to write an argument in favor or opposed to the local food
movement in general is an overwhelming task. But, you could write a successful argument about how Warren
Wilsons dining service is or isnt meaningfully addressing students demands for local food, or how programs such as
those to accept food stamps at farmers markets counteract issues of elitism associated with local food, for instance.
To give another example, if you want to find a way to argue against vegetarianism, you might develop an essay that
claims eating grass fed beef is as an effective of a response to environmental concerns as some other diets.
The Requirements
Be sure to include these key features in your argumentative essay: a clear position, background information,
reasoning for your position, evidence, and appeals to the reader. Also, develop a trustworthy tone and consider other
positions.
In order to gather evidence and cultivate the readers trust, you will need to do research and cite your findings.
In Summary
Subject: An aspect of a food movement.
Task: Argue whether the choices this movement advocates are or arent effective. Include key features of the genre.
Length: 4-5 pages
Dates:

Essay 4: Memoir
The Concept
"People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for
power and security, about love, the way others do?. . . The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I
am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs for food and security and love, are
so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when
I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it. . .-M. F. K. Fisher
In her prologue to The Gastronomical Me, M. F. K. Fisher offers an excellent explanation of how powerfuland
purposefulwriting about food can be. Fisher uses the theme of food to tell the story of her own life, and as a lens
through which she looks at subjects such as World War II and racism, her unconventional relationships and sexism,
and traditional cooking and classism. Yet, Fisher works to craft beautifully refined, descriptive prose as much, if not
more, than she works to argue any point.
The subjects and stances of memoirs vary widely. Some possibilities for food memoirs include writing about how
products you eat are part of forming contemporary food culture, how immigrants foods connect them to their places
of origin, how some associate food with body image issues, how others see food as a symbol of pleasure or another
metaphor, and so on. Choose a topic of importance to you, one that youve thought about and have some
perspective on, and write a memoir of four to six pages.
What will be at the heart of your memoir about food? In what formative moment of your life has food played a role?
What associations do you have with a particular food? Which foods appearance, texture, history, or preparation
technique draws you to describe it and why?
The Requirements
Choose a topic that will be significant to the reader. Does it have a conflict and resolution to create tension and
interest? Or, does the story help the reader uncover meaning? Think about how you will organize your memoir. How
will you introduce the conflict? How will you move the reader through the essay? Be conscious of maintaining
interest. How much background information do you need to provide? How can you shape the factsedit them to
make them most effective? How will you resolve the tension or reveal the meaning?
Make sure your memoir includes these key features: a good story, vivid details such as description and dialogue, and
clear significance. Also, focus on crafting strong beginnings, endings, and transitions in this assignment.
In Summary
Subject: Your experience with food.
Task: Tell your story, communicating its significance and appeal to readers. Include key features of the genre.
Length: 4-6 pages.
Dates: