Lucky Peach

Magazine analysis: Fresh Peach, Issue 2, Fall/Winter 2011


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I chose the current issue of a new magazine (the second issue of Lucky Peach) that was introduced at a changing time in publishing. According to the editors’ note in the current issue: “We came up with this magazine without giving much through to how we’d sustain it.” They increased the cover price from $10 to $12. Six ads were added in the second issue: such as appliance company Breville. The raising of the price and the addition of advertising show the need to conform to a typical business model to stay in publication. My issue of the magazine was purchased at a grocery store so there is an effort at mainstream distribution. The magazine is published on high-quality paper – much nicer than you would typically find in a popular magazine.

The target audience of this magazine feels like someone who is educated (based on topics and vocabulary level) and someone who is a “foodie” who would reject the

In terms of tone, these writers and editors use a tongue-in-cheek style. For example, on the cover, the word “vandalize” is crossed out and replaced with “decorate” as the verb for using stickers on fruit and the reader is also urged to “kill fish” and “eat cookies.” An error in a recipe from the first issue “memorialized” in a cartoon in the second issue rather than a simple correction. (The original recipe called for 4 tablespoons rather than 4 teaspoons of baking soda.)

On the other hand, there were some of usual pitfalls of mainstream magazines. Of the blurbs on the cover was: “A sexxxy (sic) drink recipe that’ll blow his mind.” It’s the same message that you can find most months on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine. Also, the dominance of male over female chefs is represented on the cover of the magazine: there is one female chef named compared to four male chefs.

The featured topics make the publication feel like an independent magazine. There are not the typical topics that are found in a Fall/Winter issue such as features about Thanksgiving or Christmas meals. Instead, there is a description about a gathering for Kyudo (Japanese archery) festival held in Kyoto each year (pg 7) and an ode to “My Beautiful Dry-Aged Steak” with the byline of “You.” (pg 126) Recipes were unique, too, ranging from corn cookies and Arnold Palmer Cake to microwave sponge cake. From the reading, “Democracy v Distinction,” the writer noted: “Gourmet food writers appear to view introducing their audience to unknown ingredients and dishes as essential to their work” (pg 189). In Lucky Peach, there seems to be an attempt to try unique dishes but less likely to be ingredients strange to the reader. There is better journalism in this publication than what is found in many food magazines that are often filled with brief, under-reported content.

This is a magazine filled with line drawings and what I would describe as artsy images – a rejection of the overly stylized “food porn” images described earlier in the semester. The first two covers (the first cover is below) hardly feature appetizing food.

A Closer Look at a Jello Pudding Ad

According to food historians, for the two decades or so after the end of World War II, newspaper food sections were often overlooked as nothing more than a collection of casserole recipes and plugs for local grocery stores and other advertisers. In David Kamp’s popular book, The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation, women’s pages are largely dismissed – relegated to only a few mentions. In one reference, he mockingly refers to them as the “Jello-abusing women’s-page ladies” (p 10). It was this lumping in of food and women’s editors with Jello recipes that led me to look at Jello advertising. (In the post-World War II years though the 1950s, food sections ran up to 48 pages – made thick with food ads for local grocers and national companies like Jello and Campbell’s.)

The colorful appeal of Jello gelatin, and its pudding products – introduced in 1936, made it perfect for magazine and newspaper ads. The above image was typical with lots of color and the beginnings of food styling. Many ads featured recipes in the hopes that the page would be kept by middle-class homemakers. These old images are still popular online.

The above 1948 advertisement – likely from a women’s magazine – features three recipes and images demonstrating the visual appeal of the pudding dessert. (The concept of food needing a visual appeal goes back to the 1940s as newspaper photo departments began creating attractive – for the time – images. This was done at the Milwaukee Journal and the Chicago Tribune, among others.) The pudding recipes in this ad included several additional ingredients. The butterscotch pudding is featured on between of a quartered banana with whipped cream and a cherry on top. The chocolate pudding includes strange-looking piles of whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. The vanilla pudding is transformed into a parfait in a glass dessert cup and topped with raspberries.

This was concept of taking an easy-to-make product and making it more complex with new ingredients and display was typical for the time. As the story goes, homemakers balanced the ease of convenience foods and the role of caring for the family by making sure the dessert was not too easy. (Another example would be baking a cake with cake mix and then decorating the cake in a sophisticated way to indicate love of her family.) In other words, this ad shows homemakers that this product is both easy to use, as a convenience food, but that it can also be “dressed up” to show what a thoughtful wife and mother she was for her family.

When writers like David Kamp mock women's page editors for their Jello recipes, the above is an example. The odd look aside (No one noticed that it looks like eyes?), some writers have noted that the technicolor television times of the late 1950s and the 1960s influenced the bright colors of Jello in its print ads.

Key Lime Pie

I chose to photograph a dessert to photograph because I had hoped it would be more attractive but instead it was more intimidating. (I did not even post the image of piece of pie which did not look appetizing, at all.) There is so much the baking versus attractiveness that did not quite match up. Although the pie wasn’t “pretty,” it did taste wonderful.
In terms of feelings invoked, the lack of beauty in the image does not impact the fondness for a “Florida food.” Regardless of how messy key lime pie looks, it is almost always yummy. Because central Florida is such a mix of relocated residents – there is a true appreciation for native Florida dishes. (It is more likely that neighbors and colleagues are from the Midwest than a native Floridian. This results in fewer Orlando-based food but more likely a Milwaukee-based German potato salad at a deli.)

The lack of stylizing is quite obvious – the lighting, coloring and added details (such as a slice of lime) make the pie look “off” as compared to typical media images. I have posted below an image of key lime pie from the Food Network as an example. (Of course, the cheaper and improved cameras allow for better images and the ability to easily upload mean that the mainstream media is no longer the only source for “food porn” images.)
While the lack of attractiveness does not take away from the taste or feelings about this dish, the media-based or online images of “food porn” or even stylized photos do impact what I expect to see at a restaurant or at a bakery. If desserts at those places don’t look “glamorized,” I do subconsciously think that the pie might not taste as good as I expect. This goes back to the images from cookbooks, food magazine and the Food Network that stick in the mind.

What I find interesting about this concept is that the stylized images that we now expect are really a return to the early newspaper images of food sections. (My favorite part of the readings was learning the history of the term "food porn" in the McBride reading. The history elements are going to be helpful in my work.) At many newspapers in the post-World War II years, the first color photographs were of food or fashion. Most of these early food images were supplied by advertisers, such as Campbells’ soups. The company would supply a stylized (for the time) image, such as a casserole dish using Campbell soup. It was only in later years that this became an ethical issue (advertising and editorial should be separate) and the photo departments of newspapers took their own photos. While these images were not as “slick” as the ones coming directly from advertisers, there were professional elements: good lighting and equipment. This meant that the food images were appetizing. My key lime pie photo never would have made the cut ;).

Milwaukee Journal Food Section

With the Milwaukee Brewers hopefully (fingers crossed) headed to the World Series, it got me thinking about Milwaukee cooking. (The current Milwaukee J-S food editor has been doing some great articles about baseball-based cooking.)

All this Milwaukee talk made me go through the Milwaukee Journal's The Best Cook on the Block Cookbook. It was a result of a feature that began in October 1977 where readers would nominate someone they considered the best cook in their neighborhood.

In the introduction, editor Peggy Daum wrote: "In a city where family ties are still strong and three or four generations still live in the same neighborhood , this means holiday feasts for relatives, Sunday dinners for family, Saturday night suppers for friends." (2) This showed the true local role of food.

What I found interesting in the book was how many men were featured as cooks considering the time period. For example, Alex J. Linder contributed Kluski with Pork or Potato Dumplings with Pork. Daum wrote of Linder: "From a family of seven boys, Linder got interested in cooking when he helped his mother in the kitchen. Now retired, he does all the cooking at home." (66)

Another example was Tom Radoszewski who contributed Polska Kielbasa or Polish Sausage. Daum wrote of Radoszewski: "As a boy, Radoszewski watched his grandfather make sausage. Later, he evolved his own recipe from his father's recipe. A Milwaukee cookbook couldn't be complete without such a recipe."

New AP Stylebook Includes Food Section

The Associated Press has announced that the new stylebook includes a new section on food writing. According to the press release: "“With all the cooking shows, blogs and magazines focusing on food, as well as growing interest in organic and locally sourced foods, our new food section feels timely and on trend,” said Colleen Newvine, product manager of the AP Stylebook. “With this new addition to the AP Stylebook, The Associated Press is proud to bring clarity to the writing that describes and informs the new food movement.”

This information really dismisses the important role of one of the four Fs of the women's pages. (The other three are family, fashion and furnishings.) The food editors of women's pages were covering recipes and food news going back for decades prior to the introduction of the Food Network, Top Chef and food blogs.

Jeanne Voltz's BBQ

In honor of our class topic of BBQ, I wanted to mention my favorite BBQ book by an often forgotten cookbook author, Jeanne Voltz: BBQ Ribs, Smoked Butts and Great Feeds.

This book was one of the first to establish barbeque as a cuisine worth valuing. Her take on barbeque was likely because as a food journalist, she was not burdened by the food hierarchy of culinary cuisine. She simply saw an untold story. Voltz once said, “The South has the kind of climate that grows certain things the way no other place in the country does. I’ve worked in Los Angeles and New York, but you can’t ever get away from grits and greens.”

Food Packaging Analysis

Food Packaging Analysis
My first lesson learned from this assignment is that I buy too many store-brand items that lack anything of interest for analysis. Those packages are so plain as be almost generic.
So after a search of the pantry, I chose Jif peanut butter. I am the mother of a toddler and one thing that struck me with the overall packaging/advertising of children’s products is a level of diversity that is not always seen in adult products. The packaging of diapers, for example, will include images of white babies, black babies, Asian babies and Hispanic babies. Many of the baby food jars and ads are the same. Something about the innocence of babyhood makes equality of race encouraged.

Back to the Jif package, although every family that I know involves two working parents who more or less share parenting tasks equally, too much packaging and advertising clearly labels mothers as the caretakers. This example is almost so obvious as to be funny: “Choosy Moms Choose Jif.” So apparently, the grocery shopping is done by mom and her “choosy” decision of Jif, validates her concern over her child. This somehow also seems to imply that it is mom who will be using the complex product of peanut butter for the child.

This message is typical of so many mediated messages that both normalize the expectation that women will take the primary role in parenthood – regardless of whether there is a father in the household. (This, of course, also excludes single fathers or families with two dads.) It also adds the value of a mother’s consumer decision be a validation of her role as a mother. In other words, a less “choosy, mother” (less worthy mother) would choose another, likely cheaper, brand. This decision would somehow rob the child of some kind of nutritional superiority.

In thinking back on Jif commercials, I cannot recall a mix of race in terms of mothers featured, although there may have been. What I do recall, in terms of change, is the more recent attempts in Jif commercials to include fathers. A 2010 ad featured the slogan “Choosy Moms … and Dads Choose Jif.” Here is a link to the commercial. (I couldn’t find the imbed code.)

Interesting that the current packaging did not follow the ad campaign and instead continued to focus on mother as the “chooser”.