The latest example of ‘white privilege’: Eating French food

White privilege. White supremacy. White fragility. Whiteness. For the academic left, there’s no aspect of life which cannot be shoehorned into a relationship with these terms.

Law (yes, law) professor Mathilde Cohen of the University of Connecticut recently gave a talk at Sciences Po Paris and the University of Nanterre in which, according to The Times, she argued “French eating habits reinforced the ‘dominance’ of white people over ethnic minorities.”

“By this,” Cohen says in the clip below, “I mean the use of food to reinforce whiteness as a dominant racial identity.

“The French meal is often presented as the national ritual to which every citizen can participate equally. But French food ways are shaped by white middle- and upper-class norms … and the boundaries of whiteness are policed through daily food encounters.”

Keep reading

French food is now racist, according to professor who studies ‘food whiteness’ and ‘food privileges’

The Times U.K. reported that a video of Mathilde Cohen discussing the issue for a seminar outside Paris is upsetting folks in France, as the paper noted that the country’s cuisine is “seen as a cornerstone of the national identity.”

Cohen, who hails from the University of Connecticut School of Law, suggested that French eating habits reinforce the “dominance” of white people over ethnic minorities, the Times U.K. said.

An academic paper that was part of Cohen’s seminar asserts that France’s “eating culture … has been the central means of racial and ethnic identity formation through slavery, colonialism, and immigration. The whiteness of French food is all the more powerful in that it is unnamed, enabling the racial majority to benefit from food privileges without having to acknowledge their racial origin,” the Times U.K. added.

Here’s Cohen on video discussing “food whiteness in French culture,” which she said also can be defined as “the use of food to reinforce whiteness as a dominant racial identity.”

In the clip, Cohen says “the French meal is often presented as a national ritual to which every citizen can participate equally. But French food ways are shaped by white middle- and upper-class norms … the boundaries of whiteness are policed through daily food encounters.”

Keep reading

Now even apple pie is being linked to slavery, as writer tries to cancel the all American dessert

A left-wing writer for the Guardian says apple pie tastes of genocide of indigenous people with an aftertaste of slavery.

Food writer and activist Raj Patel wrote an article for the Guardian called: “Food injustice has deep roots: let’s start with America’s apple pie.” Patel argues that apple pie is rooted in colonialism and slavery.

Patel wrote, “The apple pie is as American as stolen land, wealth, and labor. We live its consequences today.”

Patel then brings up that the apple pie and most of its ingredients are not from America, which is true. There have been only small, wild crabapples native to North America until apples (Malus domestica) were brought from England to the Jamestown settlement in 1607. Preceding that, the initial wild species of apples (Malus sieversii) was initially from Central Asia, in areas like modern-day Kazakhstan and China, and brought to Europe through the Silk Road trade routes. “Several societies were consuming apples in present-day Greece and Italy since 2000 BCE,” reported by the World Atlas.

Patel claimed that apples came to the western hemisphere with Spanish colonists in the 1500s in what was called the Columbian Exchange, but is now called a vast and ongoing genocide of indigenous people.

Patel says that he believes the planting of apple trees in Virginia “was used to demonstrate to the state that land had been improved.” He added, “John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, took these markers of colonized property to the frontiers of U.S. expansion where his trees stood as symbols that indigenous communities had been extirpated.’

Encyclopedia Britannica states that the “age of modern colonialism began about 1500, following the European discoveries of a sea route around Africa’s southern coast (1488) and of America (1492).”

However, the first recorded recipe for apple pie was written in 1381 in England, reported by Smithsonian Magazine, noting that the pie was made with apples, figs, raisins, pears, and saffron, and it is possible it did not include sugar.

The writer then links the sugar in the apple pie to slavery.

Keep reading

Epicurious cuts out beef recipes, citing climate change: ‘We know that home cooks want to do better’

Condé Nast’s culinary magazine Epicurious announced Monday that it will no longer publish beef recipes, saying it no longer wants to give “airtime to one of the world’s worst climate offenders.”

Epicurious tweeted, “Today we announced that Epicurious is cutting out beef. It won’t appear in new Epi recipes, articles, newsletters, or on social. This isn’t a vendetta against cows or people who eat them. It’s a shift about sustainability; not anti-beef but pro-planet.”

Keep reading

Warning! ‘Keys Of The Food System’ Being Handed Over To Big Tech

Imagine a world where algorithms are used to optimize growing conditions on every fertile square meter of land. Where whole ecosystems are re-engineered.

Where drones and surveillance systems manage the farm. Where farmers are forced off the land into e-commerce villages.

Imagine a world where food is treated like a strategic asset and food transit routes are militarized.

Where powerful governments and their flag-bearer corporations control resources and food supplies across vast economic corridors.

Imagine a world where many foods are grown in petri dishes, vats, and bioreactors. Where people’s eating habits are invisibly nudged using reams of metadata they have unknowingly surrendered via digital wallets.

Where AI assistant apps decide on people’s food intake based on genetic information, family history, mood, and data readings from inside their waste bins and digestive systems.

This may sound like science fiction. But the “4th industrial revolution” is already sweeping through food systems.

Keep reading