Bread plays a crucial role in Egypt, profoundly impacting identity, family, and public interactions. Made from wheat, bread is not only a vital component of the national diet but also a focal point of Egypt’s social policy. Ensuring its affordability remains a central aim of the government. Despite these efforts, the availability and affordability of bread have continued to be points of debate and tension within Egyptian society. More than just a material good, bread in Egypt functions as a significant social indicator that affects and establishes relationships between people. It signals various states such as prosperity, distress, anxiety, and social and political mobilization. Bread is a remarkable commodity that provides nourishment while also serving as a potent symbol, encompassing spiritual, cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions.
Throughout Egypt’s political history, bread has emerged as a potent symbol in political discourse. Bread-related protests and movements have often signaled dissatisfaction with food policies and government actions. Shortages or price fluctuations in bread have frequently triggered public outcry and served as catalysts for social and political change. The political history of bread in Egypt encapsulates themes of division and cruelty as much as generosity and fulfillment. This was starkly evident during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, when bread became a powerful symbol of protest. Women held up pieces of bread, and men made helmets from it, emphasizing the slogan, “Bread, Dignity, and Social Justice.” Though bread may appear mundane, it is far from trivial. It represents power structures, human agency, and patterns of social relations. Bread is a gift that satisfies hunger, provides pleasure, evokes memory, and creates attachments. It acts as a link between the powerful and the powerless and between abundance and scarcity on family dining tables across Egypt. Bread’s presence at the core of daily life, the desperate measures families take to secure it, and its role in moments of crisis all underscore its significance.
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Bread as a Social Indicator in Egypt
Nefissa Naguib
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Children’s Food: Historical, Sociocultural, and Public Health Perspectives
Tina Moffat
The category of children’s food was invented in the 20th century with the rise of nutrition sciences, the industrialization of food, and changing societal attitudes to children and childhood that resulted in newfound autonomy and food purchasing power for children in middle- and upper-income countries. Studies of children’s food can be found in both the public health and social sciences. There is some transdisciplinary overlap among topics such as children’s first foods, the marketing of unhealthy food to children, school food, food allergies, and children’s food security. Studies in public health sciences have been more concerned with the nutritional aspects of children’s food, whereas the social sciences literature has taken up the examination of children’s food as a reflection of adult preoccupations with children and childhood within neoliberal and capitalist societies. To date, there is a dearth of studies that include children’s perspectives, though the field is changing with more calls to include children as active participants in studies of children’s food.
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Family Farm Myths and the Effacement of Labor
Adam Calo
The debate on the role of family farmers in global food security often overlooks deep mythologies that shape our understanding of the food system and constrain our policy imagination. Two dominant myths present family farmers as either noble stewards of the land or as struggling, inefficient peasants. Both myths obscure the critical role of labor in agriculture. Labor relations in farming, whether involving unpaid family members, local knowledge-intensive practices, hired exploited workers, or mechanization, are the forces that shape the social-ecological balance of the food system. The myth of the family farm forces attention on who manages the land rather than the social-ecological relations that ultimately determine the fate of the food system. While objective measurements of family farm contributions are valuable, they cannot resolve the underlying power of myths. Instead, food studies in this area should focus on constructing new myths that highlight the labor and laborers in the food system, fostering a narrative that supports sustainable and equitable agricultural practices.
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Fat Stigma in the United States
Amy Erdman Farrell
Fat stigma has deep roots in US and Western cultures, dating back centuries. Whatever leniency or even valorization given to a fat body for its sign of wealth or healthy fecundity was largely replaced by a colonial abhorrence of fatness linked to processes of racialization, white supremacy, and the legitimization of slavery. Fatness became a powerful signifier of an “uncivilized” body, one unfit for modern life. These ideas continue to resonate in the early 21st century, fueling a $90 billion diet industry, causing discrimination in every institution and organization, and creating untold harm in the lives of fat individuals and communities. Significantly, however, these ideas are not uniform. Not only are there varied perceptions of fatness (the idealization of a fat baby’s body, the enjoyment of fatty foods, the pleasure in the curves and flesh of a lover), there is also an organized and decades-old fat activist and fat studies movement that challenges fat stigma on every layer.
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Food and Ethnicity
Krishnendu Ray
Ethnic food is a slippery concept, used in various anglophone publications by the 1960s, peaking in the 1980s, and no longer used in major US metropolitan newspapers by the 2020s. It came into play in other parts of the world about a generation later and continues to be used unevenly. It is typically used to identify cuisines that are not considered mainstream or archetypical of a region or a nation. Inferiority (or lack of class), cheapness, spiciness, and authenticity are the typical tropes used to judge such cuisines. It has always had the stench of primitivism and Orientalism attached to it and is increasingly considered outdated, such as terms like “Negro” or “Oriental.” The term was historically used to describe a cuisine that is different horizontally, such as Thai, Indian, or Chinese, but it also carried a hierarchical connotation, where French or Nordic cuisines were hardly ever named as ethnic anywhere in the world. New York City offers a case study in examining the history and hierarchy between food and ethnicity.
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Food and Literature
Gitanjali Shahani
Writers from different historical periods and literary traditions have turned to food as a symbol, a metaphor, a thematic element, a plot mechanism, a polemic, or a point of departure for the exploration of identities, relationships, and locales. The analysis and exploration of these literary devices in secondary texts is referred to as literary food studies. This type of reading and writing about food may approach food as theme or form in relation to a particular body of literature, a time period, a genre, or another conceptual framework. Conversely, this field may also approach food genres as literature, examining thematic concerns, literary devices, or narrative techniques in the writing of recipes, menus, travelogues, or dietary literature. Any consideration of food and literature thus entails thinking of food in different genres, just as much as it calls for an engagement with food genres themselves.
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Food in Anglophone Children’s Literature
Kara K. Keeling and Scott T. Pollard
Food is an important touchstone for both children’s literature authors and scholars, as it functions as a key material object and cultural construct within an aesthetic context in texts written for children. A full understanding of the significance of food and children’s literature draws from the interdisciplinary field of food studies, with its bases in anthropology, sociology, history, and literary studies. Food studies provides an approach to show how pervasive food is in children’s literature and how it operates as a complex cultural, political, and aesthetic signifier in myriad ways. The major approaches and uses of food in texts aimed at children divide into eight groups: eating or being eaten; the empowerment and agency of the individual; socialization, manners, and rebellion within family and community; taste; food preparation; food production, famines, and feasts; place and culture; and identity.
While food is fundamental to all human life, it occupies a particularly important place for the young. Children require food to fuel their survival and growth; adults use it daily as a socialization tool to teach children manners and social values, so that, in essence, they become civilized beings within the context of their culture. Such socialization creates emotional responses within children: They learn to develop individual tastes which they must balance with familial and cultural group identity, in the process of which they may experience anxiety or comfort. Thus, food consumption is foundational to a child’s developing sense of self. Children’s and young adult literature explores the growing identities of its protagonists; thus, the pervasiveness and complexity of food representations within it is equally unsurprising. The ways that food is used by writers of children’s literature within their texts mirror real world cultural manifestations of food in children’s lives, both past and present, locally and globally. Ultimately, children’s literature is a microcosm of how food functions generally as a multivalent cultural signifier. Its presence and treatment within texts reveal existential anxieties; individuation through developing skills, abilities, and tastes; socialization into group mores and manners as well as resistance to them; and connections between individual experiences and location: all factors that go into shaping the identity of individuals, families, and communities.
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History of Food Advertising
Sarah Elvins
Food advertising offers an intriguing window into the cooking and eating habits of a society, is shaped by the culture in which it is produced, and plays a role in creating and reinforcing attitudes about food. Food advertisements reflect and refract larger societal changes in gender roles, racial attitudes, kitchen technology, and more. American food manufacturers in the late 19th century were pioneers in strategies to connect with the public, using advertising to create a new, direct relationship with buyers. This was most prevalent with regard to processed and packaged foods. Ads encouraged consumers to look for specific brand names and to purchase items which might have been made within the home previously. Food manufacturers used a variety of means to encourage and shape consumer practices. Messages emphasizing convenience or modernity were often key to persuading the public to try new products. The strategies developed by American food advertisers were influential around the globe; in some cases, US food products expanded to foreign markets, and in others, local manufacturers employed similar approaches to food advertising.
Advertisers in the early 20 century targeted White, middle-class women as the “ideal” consumer. Gender stereotypes about food have often been mobilized by advertisers, creating a vision of family life where a woman’s primary role was to select appropriate foods to serve to her family. In times of change or crisis, advertisers played on anxiety and a longing for stability to encourage people to buy. Company mascots helped to make brands appear friendly and familiar but have also reinforced racist stereotypes about people of color. Critics have blamed food advertisers for changes in eating, which have caused health problems, and for manipulating consumers, particularly children. Although food companies pay millions of dollars for advertising budgets, there is no guarantee that all food ads will be effective. Consumers retain some agency in resisting or reacting to advertisements.
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Identity, Ideology, and the Language of Food
Cynthia Gordon and Alla Tovares
Linguistic and discourse analytic studies of food-related communication demonstrate how people construct identities and (re)create and contest ideologies that focus on food but extend well beyond it to issues of socioeconomic class, culture, gender, and privilege. Scholarship in this area considers how people engage in food-related communication across contexts, including in mealtime conversations, on restaurant menus and food packaging, in recipes, on social media, and as represented on infotainment food television. Analyzing the details of human interaction and texts also illuminates the role of specific linguistic and other communicative strategies—such as use of adjectives and metaphors—in constituting the food-related discourse that helps constitute human experience.
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Latinx Immigrant Workers’ Challenges and Collective Responses in the Rural US Food System
Diego Thompson
A large body of literature has shown immigrant workers in the US food system experience and deal with significant problems that are often worsened in rural areas. The state and the private sector have created conditions that rely on cheap immigrant labor in the food industry. Paradoxically, this same much-needed labor force is subjected to strict immigration policy and enforcement—including raids, detentions, and deportations—and poor and living conditions. Immigration control and struggles experienced by immigrant workers in different sectors of the food chain, are more pronounced in rural areas where immigrants often lack of supportive resources. The struggles of historically marginalized groups in the food system and rural communities in the US are well-documented but more attention is needed on how rural immigrant workers deal with their challenges. Furthermore, more research is needed to examine immigrant workers’ collective actions and the development of alliances. Studies have shown that collective agency does not necessarily need to come from traditional labor organizing or unions which may face barriers in working with immigrants in rural contexts. There are some experiences in the poultry and dairy industry, showing that worker-driven organizations with focus on immigration, human rights, and/or social justice issues, have been able to create solutions for immigrant workers’ needs and challenges in US rural contexts. Some of these cases have shown how Latinx immigrant workers have been able to develop and foster resilience in times of uncertainty and challenges, working with immigrant organizations and allies. Experiences from different regions of the US have shown that there are complex and vulnerable realities that immigrants in rural areas often experience which require special attention and need to be addressed before unfair or precarious labor conditions are challenged. It is important for scholars and community practitioners to pay more attention to how immigrant workers and communities can develop resilience and the capability to adapt and create better conditions in times of increasing anti-immigration political rhetoric and uncertainty.
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Low-Wage Labor in Distribution Sectors of the Food Economy
Jennifer Parker
Low-wage distribution workers are essential to the food economy. In a globalizing world, the distance between sites of production and consumption expands as firms search the world for more diverse and profitable sources of food. Truckers, seafarers, and warehouse employees dedicate their working hours to the safe transport and storage of food, often in dangerous and treacherous conditions, yet they remain largely invisible to consumers. Many of these workers face precarious employment conditions—temporary, unstable, and insecure work with little or no employer-provided benefits—emblematic of jobs in the neoliberal labor market.
Capitalist features of the modern food chain, including advancements in technology, the growth of e-commerce, and the logistics revolution, tend to prioritize speed and efficiency over workers’ well-being. From a political economy perspective, the pursuit of profit is reflected in ever-intensifying efforts to extract value from labor, introducing flexible, neo-Taylorist, algorithmic forms of employee monitoring and adopting just-in-time management logics. These changes have accompanied a deterioration of workers’ rights and conditions, making it critical in the 21st century to spotlight the human cost alongside “progress” in building a sustainable global food system.
The neoliberal ideology of individual responsibility increasingly pervades managerial practices, often contributing to labor suppression and absolving employers, including Walmart, Whole Foods, and other giant food retailers, of any obligation for employee welfare downstream in their supply chains. The conditions of workers in the global food economy are complicated by demographic inequalities, with the most socioeconomically vulnerable groups experiencing the most precarious, dangerous, and demanding conditions. This highlights the need for an intersectional approach to understanding hierarchies of exploitation in the global food economy.
Key theoretical frameworks provide insights into broader implications for labor in the food economy. Racial capitalism explains how economic development inherently pursues racialized directions, perpetuating inequalities, and employing a predominantly black, brown, and immigrant workforce at the bottom rungs of distribution sectors. Segmented labor market theory helps explains dual hiring practices, divided between “hegemonic” and “despotic” workforces, and influenced by multitier ownership structures with the rise of subcontracted “perma-temps” in warehouses, lease-to-purchase contracts/debt peonage in trucking, and agency-based competitive bidding in the unregulated international maritime market.
Theories of masculinities explain gender dynamics within male-dominated sectors like trucking and seafaring where men struggle in bottom-level, precarious jobs in order to maintain their breadwinner status back home. The concept of gendered-racial capitalism has shown to be a formidable research framework for examining how distribution labor is organized, exploited, and shaped by gender, race, and class. The structural power of distribution workers at critical “choke points” in the global supply chain is an important area of interest in discussions around low-wage food workers’ rights to basic human dignity and the potential for improvement in their conditions. Finally, it is essential to question what progress truly means and for whom it benefits.
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Mezze and the Lebanese Table
Aïda Kanafani-Zahar
[This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies. Please check back later for the full article.]
The study of mezze in Lebanon is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in rural and urban contexts, in the mountains and along the littoral. It explored the foundations of this tradition and prompted the analysis of the Lebanese cuisine.
One of the most appreciated culinary traditions for the Lebanese people is to partake in a restaurant-prepared meal that includes an assortment of appetisers, grilled meats or the day’s special, and dessert. Mezze is generally understood as the diversity of hot and cold vegetable and meat dishes served along with the main dish. In a particular type of meal, the gourmet meal, however, mezze is the prelude to the main dish, generally consisting of grilled meats followed by fruits and sweets, the three courses articulating in a continuous and fluid movement. Enjoyed in renowned establishments to celebrate festive events or simply to share an agreeable moment with family and friends, the gourmet meal is destined to seek a particular emotion, kaif.
Mezze is composed of a large number of starters brought to the table in groups of dishes appearing one after the other in a precise order. Each group displays distinct ingredients, flavours, modes of cooking and temperatures. Guests indulge in the dishes as they come along. The wide range of starters shapes a specific time sequence and devises a pattern of eating, that of “tasting”, of “savouring”. The study of the sensorial complexity regarding its sequencing, scenography, and gustatory structure, reveals the representations of appetence in the culinary Lebanese culture. It provides insight into the visual requirements that a gourmet table must display and the flavour hierarchy aimed at kindling appetite and at preserving it throughout the meal. Further, it brings to awareness the categories of foods that necessitate the application of precise techniques to neutralise odours that cause inappetence. These elements offer the opportunity to examine the culinary sensibility expressed in the Lebanese culture. Notwithstanding the differences in organisation, time span, table manners, and purpose, the gourmet meal, in which mezze is embedded, possesses the same logic as the ordinary daily table: to stimulate and maintain the desire to eat. Both types of meals epitomise a sense-sustained culture of appetence designed at averting ill eating and sickness, a realm of research that merits investigation.
