The Changing Chicken: Chooks, Cooks and Culinary Culture
It Must've Been Something I Ate
Reviews by Barbara Santich
Jane Dixon, The Changing Chicken: Chooks, Cooks and Culinary Culture (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2002).
Jane Dixon’s book, The Changing Chicken: Chooks, Cooks and Culinary Culture, is an exception to the usual rule that PhD theses should remain cloistered within academic libraries and sally forth to the commercial environment of bookstores. Not that it’s likely to become a best-seller; its style is somewhat dry and unexciting (with sentences such as: "Specifically, the case of chicken meat reveals the importance of nutritional producer services to product differentiation" [p. 145]). Nevertheless, it is an important book, undeniably very thorough and to that extent ground-breaking — and soundly deserves publication.
I doubt whether any other commodity would have served as well as chicken for a study of the modern food system —a system that encompasses all the activities from production to processing to distribution to value adding to retailing to cooking to consumption. Using chicken as the model, Dixon sets out to "investigate the powerful relationships and processes that underpin the production, distribution and consumption of a popular food" (p. viii). Her particular interest is in the shifts in power that accompanied the move from self-provisioning to marketplace reliance and the implications of these changes, and her research takes her from chicken sheds and slaughterhouses to supermarkets and consumers.
Acknowledging that in countries such as Australia (and, even more so, the US) fundamental changes have taken place in the past half century "in relation to the food supply, in who is preparing the food, in what is considered a meal, and the place of food in sociability and culture", the book begins with the proposition that "culinary cultural change is not consensual, but is fought out in the marketplace of buyers and sellers through the practice of cultural and economic strategies" (p. 9). Dixon challenges the idea that the balance of power in food systems rests with producers and demonstrates the importance of merchants who, historically, have not only delivered goods but have "delivered stories about the goods" (p. 8).
This is remarkably consistent with the collective model of taste and preference proposed in a recent PhD thesis by Jarrett Paschel (A Theory of Collective Taste and Preference: The Sociology of Food and Wine. PhD, University of Washington, 1999): The "collective hierarchy of taste and preference" being "the sum total of all the overlapping networks of cooperative activity responsible for the function of a given social world (art, food, music, wine, etc.)" (p.23). In the case of food products, the networks include producers, manufacturers, marketers, food writers and chefs. Paschel gives the example of Copper River Salmon, once destined for pet food, being developed as a high quality fish for the restaurant industry by a restaurateur and a fishing consultant. While this combination introduced changes to the harvesting and processing practices, what was more significant in ensuring acceptance of the fish as a high quality, luxury product was the story associated with the fish and spread by chefs, restaurateurs, food writers and retailers.
That consumers have very little power in the food system is amply demonstrated in Dixon’s chapter "Consuming Chicken", based in part on a series of focus groups with adult men and women. These consumers clearly valued chicken for a variety of reasons — its relative cheapness, health properties, versatility, ease of preparation and almost universal popularity. While they expressed concern about production methods, the possible presence of antibiotics and animal welfare issues, this did not translate to their buying decisions. Concern about a food is not sufficient to prevent consumption if other incentives (such as healthy convenience) are present. Dixon notes that "there is no evidence of consumer pressure on producers to address" such concerns (p. 79). Indeed, she shows that supermarkets have a much more powerful influence over production.
While not an easy book to read, The Changing Chicken is a significant text in bringing together a range of different perspectives on a particular commodity and demonstrating the complex web of factors which influence contemporary eating practices and attitudes.
Jeffrey Steingarten, It Must've Been Something I Ate (London: Headline, 2002).
Last year I gave my students various examples of gastronomic writing — the authors ranging from Annie Proulx and Marion Halligan to Angelo Pellegrini and Robert Farrar Capon —to read, evaluate and compare, asking them to comment on each and to identify what made for excellence in gastronomic writing. Not surprisingly, "informative" was high on the list, as was passion and humour. And of all the authors in this small group, Jeffrey Steingarten was clearly a favourite (the sample was "Primal Bread", from his earlier book, The Man Who Ate Everything).
Steingarten demonstrates the same qualities of passion and humour combined with informativeness in his subsequent book, It Must've Been Something I Ate. His passion is obvious; this is a man who loves eating, loves words, loves life. At the same time he’s unashamedly Francophilic, occasionally malicious (about California or tourists from Colorado in New York), often self-deprecating, and if at times he comes across as a self-centred, self-righteous snob who is never averse to dropping names ("my friend Hervé This, PhD", "my friend Gloria Steinem"), the jokes at his own expense more than compensate.
Like the first book, this one is a collection of articles previously published in Vogue magazine between 1997 and 2001. Would that all editors were as generous with words — some pieces as long as 5000 words — and expenses as Steingarten’s Vogue editor! Wouldn’t we all like $US4,000 for a caviar tasting or $US1,000 to charter a boat to catch bluefin tuna; wouldn’t we all happily fly to Switzerland to submit to testing for "Gourmand Syndrome" (dining at Marc Veyrat’s Auberge de l’Eridan on the way) or to Rome to discover the secrets of pizza bianca. We have to agree, however, that Steingarten handsomely rewards his readers (and his editors). His articles are erudite and thoroughly researched, his wit slyly astringent, his hypotheses meticulously tested — including practical experiments in either his or the magazine’s well-equipped kitchen.
Steingarten is not afraid to mince words, castigating Americans for their food phobias. He’s provocative, fond of the grand statement — as when he asserts that "Today, the French have become the greatest chocolatiers in the world, miles ahead of the Belgians and the Swiss" (of course, he’s absolutely correct). And he doesn’t give a fig for political or nutrtitional correctness, proclaiming that "Lard is far less bad for you than butter or a hydrogenated solid shortening like Crisco or margarine".
This combination of qualities amply justifies Jeffrey Steingarten’s reputation as the doyen of contemporary food writers.
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