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”.

Web Search Analysis

I began my web search with Google. The initial result was a collection of “official looking” resources which each explained what obesity was, causes and what to do to solve the problem. My first thought was both how obvious the information seemed and thus maybe that is why the media does not truly cover the issue. Part of the news process is literally what is “new.” In this case, Americans have been socialized to how bad the problem is and thus there is little “new “ about the issue.

Out of curiosity, I then conducted a Google News search on obesity. Most of the news stories involved new pills or procedures to what it seemed would “solve” obesity. It was framed as a medical issue rather than an individual issue for a person to conquer. (Say, versus the message on weight-loss shows like the Biggest Loser.) I also learned that September is “National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month” which seems a rather silly as awareness of childhood obesity hardly seems to be the issue. (Like Women’s History Month and Black History Month, I am not a fan of issues that deserve year-round attention getting only get 28 or 30 days of attention.) Overall, it was not surprising, but still sad, that the “solution” to the issue is a medical-based procedure rather than an analysis of what children eat and how they exercise. There was a great editorial in the New York Times on September 5: “Time to Revive Home Ec.” It makes an argument I have made before about the value of home economics: the ability to cook, understand nutrition, etc. I believe California was recently looking at adding the class back as a requirement.

I then did a search of the “Biggest Loser” under Google News which came up with 1,600 pages. When I added obesity to the search, the results dropped to 43! The top article was a profile about a contestant from Season 11. This was the lead: “During the past two decades, there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in America, and rates continue to increase.” Unlike most coverage, obesity was the basis of the coverage. The New York Times article we read for class, I was struck by the concept that according to the producer this is an “extreme” show yet it not marketed that way both in the advertisements and in the media coverage of the program.

Salsa 2 Go

I took this photo today as I walked across campus at the Univ of Central Florida. I like the sign's simplicity in a city (Orlando) that is usually flash and over the top colors and lights. (Think Disney, Sea World, Universal) I like the use of the sun from the Sunshine State and her "2" of text-speak in her sign. The overgrown ferns and flowers in front of the sign also seem very Central Florida.

I liked the business more when I initially thought it was just salsa but there is actually an entire Tex-Mex menu. Th small building that houses the to-go food is covered in chili peppers. On Wednesdays, large red chili peppers hang in a few trees. If you find one, it means a free lunch.

Salsa 2 Go is unusual for a campus eatery and its sign looks different from the rest - not an uniform. Most restaurants are run by fast food chains (Pizza Hut, Burger King, etc.) or by Campus Food Services. They have the same boiler-plate signs. Salsa2Go's sign is its own and demonstrates its unique role for a campus eatery: This business is run by a local Orlando woman, known for her salsa recipe, who approached Stadium Food Management. They were so impressed that she was able to open a nacho kiosk in the Stadium and after 2 years she opened this small space in the middle of campus.

Another thing I have found interesting about this space is that in such a hot climate, the walk-up food service is Tex-Mex food rather than ice cream or something cold. This might just be the notion of someone originally from the Midwest.

Oh, the salsa is delicious!