{"id":33,"date":"2016-01-25T15:19:18","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T23:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2015\/?p=33"},"modified":"2016-02-05T12:56:30","modified_gmt":"2016-02-05T20:56:30","slug":"we-are-how-we-eat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2015\/we-are-how-we-eat\/","title":{"rendered":"We Are How We Eat"},"content":{"rendered":"

WHEN CHRISTY SPACKMAN WAS AN UNDERGRADUATE<\/strong> molecular biology major, she read an article in the American Chemical Society\u2019s newsletter about the chemistry of whipping egg whites\u2014why using a copper bowl helps to stabilize them. She says it was one of those watershed moments. \u201cFor me it was both how to make a better angel food cake, and larger than that. I grew up in a family of very good cooks, and I cook a lot myself. I ended up moving to Chicago and going to culinary school, and it was there that I discovered the field of food science.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Christy<\/a>
Christy Spackman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After getting her professional cookery certificate and her M.S. in food chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Spackman received her PhD in food studies from New York University. There, she focused on the technologies of taste and flavor analysis with particular regard to water, the \u201cone thing that\u2019s supposed to be flavorless,\u201d she says. \u201cI spent five years looking at the way that technologies from the food science industry have been adopted by the water industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why is iceberg lettuce shipped across the country from California to New York when you can grow lettuce just fine in New York?<\/p>\n

\u2013 Christy Spackman<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the current Hixon-Riggs Early Career Fellow in Science, Technology and Society at Harvey Mudd, Spackman teaches a course called Where Food Comes From, the focus of which is the historical development of the contemporary agricultural system. \u201cWhy is iceberg lettuce shipped across the country from California to New York when you can grow lettuce just fine in New York?\u201d she asks. \u201cThere\u2019s an uncomfortable tension around how we imagine our farms as small, family-owned enterprises and the mega-industrial things they actually are. They don\u2019t fit that image of what we think farms should be. What are the consequences of that shift?\u201d<\/p>\n

Harvey Mudd students, Spackman observes, come into the classroom unburdened by assumptions about the agricultural system\u2014for instance, they have a very different view of genetically modified food than her NYU students did. \u201cHarvey Mudd students are much more willing to say, \u2018What\u2019s the data?\u2019 I personally hope that students leave the class with knowledge of the unintended consequences of technology and the importance of thinking about scale in trying to effect change,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the creativity of the food world that appeals to Anya Kwan \u201917. \u201cAfter I graduate Mudd, I would like to be a part of the food industry, probably as an R&D chef. I recognize that changing food to make it cheaper will be important in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Throughout<\/a>
Throughout the years, Harvey Mudd students have enjoyed an array of food-related courses, including Chemistry of Cooking, taught by Professor Adam Johnson (above); The Science of Cooking, taught by physics professors Jim Eckert and Patti Sparks; and Food and American Culture, taught by history Professor Hal Barron.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Isabell Lee \u201916, examining the history of food through the lenses of immigrant labor in agriculture or women\u2019s influence on food retail has been key to understanding its politics. \u201cWorking our way through history will really allow us to understand the likely confusing subtleties of modern food policy,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

To get at those subtleties, Spackman prizes interactive experience. Her class traveled to L.A. City Hall for L.A. County\u2019s Food Day and to the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market to talk with Heath & Lejeune, a certified organic wholesale distributor.<\/p>\n

During spring, Spackman will circle back to her passion, teaching a course called Technologies of Taste. The class will visit Gold Coast Flavor Company and Cal Poly Pomona\u2019s sensory science lab to understand why and how people taste. And it will examine the development of sensory science from the 1950s onward, focusing on water and the tricky, ever-evolving process of quantifying subjective experience into objective measurements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WHEN CHRISTY SPACKMAN WAS AN UNDERGRADUATE molecular biology major, she read an article in the American Chemical Society\u2019s newsletter about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}