Food, Culture & Society

An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research

ISSN: 1552-8014 (Print) 1751-7443 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rffc20

Judging, Tasting, Knowing “Good” Food

Abby Wilkerson

To cite this article: Abby Wilkerson (2016) Judging, Tasting, Knowing “Good” Food, Food,
Culture & Society, 19:2, 223-226

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15528014.2016.1178524

Published online: 02 Jun 2016.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 83

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rffc20

Download by: [Weill Cornell Medical College] Date: 04 August 2016, At: 04:40
 Food,
Culture
Society
&
VOLUME 19 │ ISSUE 2 │ JUNE 2016
Downloaded by [Weill Cornell Medical College] at 04:40 04 August 2016

Judging, Tasting, Knowing

“Good” Food
Abby Wilkerson
George Washington University

Abstract
Though public discourses of “good” food exert a powerful influence, cooks and eat-
ers construct our own understandings in ways that may simultaneously reflect and
resist these norms. Our knowledge of “good” food may sometimes present itself as
“vague” (Schaefer et al., this issue), yet is often quite nuanced, based on dispa-
rate factors—economic, logistical, nutritional, temporal and political, along with
individual preferences—as the articles featured in this special cluster illustrate
(Thomas et al., Tsui, this issue). Cooks (and also eaters) often exhibit sophisticated
epistemic functions not unlike those of judges. They navigate multiple modes of
knowledge—lay and expert, embodied, situated spatially and relationally—between
eaters and food environments, between eaters and cooks. Cooks’ and eaters’ dis-
cussion of good food reveals moral imperatives translated into foodways, a range
of interpersonal and institutional interactions and the traces of social hierarchies,
as we see in these articles. Thus, “good” food is less a series of discrete choices by
individuals than a domain in which cooks, eaters and their environments constitute
interdependent networks. Through the emerging picture of these processes, this
special cluster advances our knowledge of the cultural politics of “good” food, the
epistemic politics of food “choices,” the workplace as an underexplored site of food
cultures and just and sustainable health promotion efforts through food.
Keywords: “good” food, food literacy, epistemology, social construction of health,
food choice

DOI: Protean and highly contested though they may be, public discourses of “good”
10.1080/15528014.2016.1178524
Reprints available directly from the food exert a powerful influence in many or most of the settings in which we
publishers. Photocopying permitted
by licence only © Association for the spend our time. The articles featured in this special cluster use qualitative
Study of Food and Society 2016

223
 Abby Wilkerson ◊ JUDGING, TASTING, KNOWING “GOOD” FOOD

research to explore feelings and perceptions associated with “good” food—feel-

ings of eaters and of cooks, about food, about preparation, about the people
one is preparing food for or with and their pleasure and well-being; feelings
about the meanings of food in the workplace and the workday, about the needs
associated with eating in that space; perceptions of risk, of safety, of well-
being, of wickedness and virtue, of pleasure.
Within this special cluster, the demand to make healthy “goodness” the
cornerstone of our food preparation and consumption emerges as a site of
laborious and anxiety-provoking challenges. Food service cooks must implement
shifting definitions of “healthy” meals, often with inadequate training, time or
other resources, while attempting to make these changed meals appetizing
Downloaded by [Weill Cornell Medical College] at 04:40 04 August 2016

to the eaters whose well-being they understand to be their charge (Tsui, this
issue). Meanwhile, office workers are confronted with the boxed meals of office
lunch meetings and the workplace “food altars” that display an array of treats
brought in from home (Schaefer et al., this issue). These workers describe a
constant struggle to resist the temptation to abandon their own dietary goals
and principles. Within broader projects of illuminating contemporary cultural
perceptions of “bad” food consumption as moral transgression, the cluster
contributes new understandings of how navigating “good” food significantly
contributes to the stressors of very distinct workplaces.
In daily decisions of what to eat or serve and how it is to be prepared, cooks
and eaters are on the frontlines of shifting and confusing nutritional discourses
shaping cultural notions of food “goodness.” Challenges to the very idea of
“healthy” food1 circulate alongside emerging research about the variability of
nutritional requirements between individuals.2 Yet the quest for the “magical
sign”3 of (healthy) food goodness continues, an endless parade of this or that
vaunted vegetable or grain or preparation supplanting its predecessors.
The three articles in this cluster by Schaefer et al., Thomas et al. and Tsui
give insight into how cooks and eaters navigate these discourses, all while jug-
gling the distinct and often competing needs and preferences of multiple eaters
in settings from home to work to institutional food service. In the research pre-
sented in these articles, participants’ knowledge of “good” food may sometimes
present itself as “vague” (as reflected in the title of the article by Schaefer et
al., this issue), but emerges even more as complex and difficult to articulate
because it involves the negotiation of a range of disparate factors, including but
not limited to economic, logistical, nutritional, temporal and political consider-
ations, along with individual desires and preferences. Thus, we see eaters, and
cooks especially, exhibiting sophisticated epistemic deliberations and func-
tions not unlike those of judges.4 They navigate multiple modes of knowledge,
lay and expert, embodied, situated spatially and relationally—between eaters
and food environments, between eaters and cooks. In the process, “good” food
is less a series of discrete choices by individuals than a domain in which cooks,
eaters and their environments constitute interdependent networks.
Although reductionist discourses defining “good” food strictly in factual,
quantifiable terms play a powerful role in the experiences presented in these

224
 studies, some cooks and eaters still carve out space for food as pleasure. One
woman asserts: “I love tomatoes”—adding defiantly, “They could even have all
these published reports out that say they're unhealthy, but because I love them
so much, I, I will look at them as healthy. So, just don't take my tomatoes away”
(Schaefer et al., this issue). Here, she redefines “healthy” according to her own
unshakeable conviction of the centrality of pleasure, in the tangy umami flavors
of her beloved tomatoes. Similarly, Tsui takes us into the world of institutional
cooks who offer up their made-from-scratch pan de yuca and cafecitos to one
another and their interviewer, even as they navigate increasingly exacting nu-
tritional demands and more complex preparations on tight budgets and limited
time.
Downloaded by [Weill Cornell Medical College] at 04:40 04 August 2016

Examining how notions of “good” food are enacted, these pieces also indi-
cate the traces of class, race and gender hierarchies inside and outside the
workplace. In food service, those workers—overwhelmingly women of color—
who are responsible for producing “good” food, as their workplaces define it,
face a range of shifting demands over which they have little control, while eco-
nomic pressures keep them tethered to these low-wage jobs (Tsui, this issue).
The research that was conducted primarily with office workers deliberately
sought “working adults … who ‘think about health’” (Schaefer et al., this is-
sue). Middle-class women predominate in the resulting pool. Their concerns,
anxieties and pressures regarding nutrition for themselves, and often for family
members as well, reflects the widely documented phenomenon of women bear-
ing the affective and logistical brunt of societal demands to prove our personal
worth through appropriate food “choices.”
In a telling moment in Tsui’s article (this issue), John, “an African-American
senior center cook,” stops his interview when a young White male nutrition
educator enters the room. The co-worker’s presence raises concerns of “trust”
for John, first in terms of continuing the interview in his presence, but ultimate-
ly in terms of being interviewed at all, indicating fears of job security should
he speak candidly about his experiences in the workplace. John’s decision to
stop the interview indicates broader dynamics in the “good food” movement, in
which younger, Whiter, better-educated staff may wield authority or credibili-
ty not always afforded colleagues of color often responsible for the hands-on
work.
In “Healthy, Vague: Exploring Health as a Priority in Food Choice”5 by Sara
E. Schaefer, Charlotte Biltekoff, Carolyn Thomas and Roxanne N. Rashedi, uni-
versity employees (primarily office workers) convey the centrality of health in
their notions of “good” food and their daily food choices. They reveal both a
decision-making process that involves a complex calculus and the difficulty for
many of precisely articulating their conceptions of “healthy” food. The authors
conclude, “It is clear that the meaning of health should be approached with
curiosity, rather than assumptions about universal applicability.”
VOLUME 19 In “Abundance, Control, and Water! Water! Water! The Work of Eating at
ISSUE 2 Work,” by Carolyn Thomas, Jennifer Sedell, Charlotte Biltekoff and Sara Schaef-
JUNE 2016 fer, respondents drawn from the same project describe the daily challenges to

225
 Abby Wilkerson ◊ JUDGING, TASTING, KNOWING “GOOD” FOOD

“healthy” eating imposed by daily routines of their office settings, and how a
constant flow of water through the body provides a sense of compensation for
perceived dietary transgressions.
Emma Tsui’s “Pan de Yuca and Brown Rice: The Hidden Meanings for Cooks
of Producing ‘Good’ Food in Publicly Funded Foodservice” examines foodser-
vice cooks’ experience of institutionally-based healthy food initiatives. Across
various publicly funded settings, Tsui explores the rewards of this process as
well as the increasing demands these cooks face, “provid[ing] insight into the
functioning of racial and class inequities within the ‘good’ food movement.”
Together, this cluster has much to offer for those interested in the cultural
politics of “good” food and the epistemic politics of food “choices,” the work-
Downloaded by [Weill Cornell Medical College] at 04:40 04 August 2016

place as an underexplored site of food cultures and just and sustainable health
promotion efforts through food.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

  1. See, for example, Michael Ruhlman, “No food is healthy. Not even kale” (Washington-
Post.Com 17 Jan. 2016. 4 Mar. 2016).
  2. Reiner Jumpertz von Schwartzenberg and Peter J. Turnbaugh, “Siri, What Should I
Eat?” (Cell 163 [Nov. 19, 2015]: 1051-2. Web. 4 Mar. 2016.)
 3. Katie King, Theory in Its Feminist Travels: Conversations in US Women's Movements
(Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1995).
  4. Thanks to Michael Fakhri for this framing, in the discussion following the May 2014
Association for the Study of Food and Society panel, which gave rise to this article
cluster.
  5. This article and and Thomas et al. (also this issue) are based on data from a single
broader project.

226