Le Petit Mangeur

Greek Goddess of Fertility. Ain't she a stunner? I love pomegranates. I first heard of pomegranates in fourth grade when we learned Greek Mythology. The stories were full of pomegranates; it was practically a literary device for change. It was the pomegranate seed that changed the fate of poor Persephone, subjecting her to eternal life in the underworld. I was reminded of the story of Persephone when I asked myself the question “are pomegranates fruits or berries?” I thought there was a difference, when really, fruit is more like the umbrella term and berries go under it. According to E.N. Anderson’s “Everybody Eats” a fruit as seen by botanists is a ripened ovary produced by a flowering plant. Basically anything that grows on a stem and has seeds in it. This differs considerably to what us normal folks call fruit, but for all intents and purposes I am going to stick with the scientific term. (Apparently, eggplant is a fruit??) So then we have different categories of fruits. Ther...

Did you know that the inner core of an apple—more specifically the seeds of said fruit— contains tiny bits of arsenic? For those of you who‘ve forgotten tenth grade chemistry, arsenic used to be the poison of choice for your average criminal, and long ago, by your average Persian king.  I found this out from my roommate. She told me so, casually one day, as she munched on an apple. First she started like anyone would: bit into it, ate the fleshy part surrounding the seeds. Then she paused at the core. At this point I returned to procrastinating on the web. The next thing I knew, all there was left was the stem of the apple. What! She ate the seeds? Yup. Arsenic or no arsenic, my conscientious roommate refuses to let any part of the apple go to waste. She would probably eat the stem too, but it had been removed by the kindly dining hall staff. As much as I admire her...”waste not want not” attitude, I don’t think I could ever follow the same route. Is it my American-ess coming to th...

“Classified ads, catalog entries, and menu entries are all advertising, whereas headlines and instructions are not.” – Zwicky, Ann and Arnold Zwicky pg 86 Yesterday in class we considered several brands of potato chips with varying prices. The chips that were more expensive sometimes had nicer packages and were less flashy than their cheaper counterparts. The one thing that remained constant was the amount of words on the back of the packages. The cheaper versions contained little information, sticking to simple and clear statements, while the more expensive brands used sentences or even whole paragraphs to describe their products. Do we need more convincing to buy something more expensive? Is that why there were so many words on the back of my Terra Chips? To me, too many words meant a product was not worth buying. If something is worth buying I don’t need to read a paragraph on the nutritional benefits of, oh, I don’t know, Sun Chips, to figure that out. Fo...

So this blog is off and running! The title of this blog is only temporary, I know it seems a bit dull. So today was the first day of my introsem "The Linguistics of Food" and I made everyone jealous telling them of how fun this class already seems. We did a little experiment with a variety of chips: about half were from expensive brands and the other half were of cheaper brands. One thing I noticed as I walked back to my dorm was that on all the cheaper brands, the companies stressed either simplicity or wholesomeness, "The Original", or "Classic". Their appeal is one of nostalgia I think. Sometimes people don't want to try something new, they want food that's familiar and makes them think (perhaps) their childhood. I myself preferred a thick cut Ruffle chip to a Hawaiian chip. Sometimes less is more.