The Victoria University staff club is strange in many ways. It is tucked away in the library, undergrads aren’t supposed to go there, and know very little about it. But, despite the secrecy, it is very unexciting – except the alcohol is quite cheap, and sometimes the food is nicer and less over-priced than the rest of the university.
The staff club also has a mission, and that mission is to tell the people who eat there how to eat. As you go down the corridor every side is telling you to eat Blueberries! Low fat! Omega-3 Oil! and so on. Then they usually have little plastic triangle display things on every table – the sort that some restaurants put wine or specials on, but the staff club puts advice on how not to eat too much. Including one that said: “Eat like an Eskimo” followed by lots of praise of fish. Where do you even start?
1. Eskimo? For reals? After that shall we play Cowboys and Indians with any natives we can find on campus?
2. Advice about food is so fucking ridiculous. Why on earth should we eat like we lived somewhere where almost nothing grows? The fact that human beings have been able to subsist on large parts of the planet shows how resilient we are, and what a wide range of foods (as a species) we can survive on. The fact that historically people living in some areas have eaten predominantly fish, while people living in other areas have had very limited access to fish, is a reason to shut up about the one true way of eating.
3. These are workers at the university and post-graduate students. Are we somehow expected not to be able to feed ourselves? Are we in imminent danger of death from a blueberry deficiency? Is there a special section on the health deprivation index about how badly off staff and post-graduate students at the university are?
The Fat Nutritionist has a great post about how the vast majority people on weight-watchers are based on their socio-economic-gender-ethnicity profile are already going to live FOR-EVER. The same is true for the majority of people who work at university or those with post-graduate degrees.*
I’m not suggesting that this information would be anymore productive in, say, a meatworks tea-room. But given that you can’t get more urban-liberal-middle-class than the staff club at a university, and the behaviours that are described as ‘healthy eating’ are the behaviours of urban-liberal-middle-class women more than any other socio-economic group. What is the purpose of bombarding those most likely to be already aware, and following, the behaviours that have been designated ‘healthy’ with?
I would suggest that the purpose is self-satisfaction – the purpose is rewarding the virtuousness, as much as it’s about compelling compliance in those who eat there (they are after all only posters – the staff club doesn’t even sell that much fish). I want to explore this some more, and look at the impact that a moral model of food has on those who do not follow it. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that eating-places are most likely to push these messages among those who are presumed to be already following htem.
* And this in itself is telling. As PhD Comics can tell us post-grad students subsist on instant noodles and free food that can be scavenged around campus. While this stereotype isn’t entirely true, it does have a basis in reality, as post-grad students are lacking in both money and time – which makes acquiring nutritious food you want to eat tricky. And yet, post-grad students generally survive the experience, and go on to live to ages that befit their socio-economic position.
Is campus foodservice provided by an outside company? It’s entirely possible the signs (the triangles are often called “table tents”) are a company-wide thing that the foodservice company does pretty much everywhere. I’ve worked for two such companies, and it strikes me as likely this isn’t the university, but whoever is contracted to manage the uni’s cafeterias, etc.
Not that it makes things any different if that’s the case–it just might explain just who’s come up with the idea.
Not to mention that the traditional Inuit diet is pretty freaky – it’s almost 100% meat. They get their vitamin C from raw organ meat and fermented whale flesh.
Something tells me the people putting up these ads would not appreciate such cuisine in their lunchroom.
Wow, anthropology 101 fail.
Since there is very little vegetation in the Arctic that a human can eat, Arctic people eat predominately meat. If you eat high amounts of protien, you need EITHER fat or carbs to balance that out (so your body doesn’t end up eating itself–I can’t remember the biology of it, but I have sources if someone is truly interested). Since carbs aren’t exactly an option in the far north, people eat way WAY more fat than the grand majority of Westerners do (unless maybe if you’re living off of Big Macs alone).
Telling people who live outside of the Arctic to eat “like Eskimos” is not only offensive, it’s factually wrong. I feel comfortable going so far as to say that any diet or dietary advice (aimed at ‘Westerners’) that includes references to how people eat who are not in a service based agricultural society (including the Paleodiet) is probably not going to be a long term plan. The ONLY exception that I can think of would be Native Americans and (some?) other relatively recently colonized people who are dealing with a relatively inexplicable rise in diabetes. Even though they may (or may not) be in a service based agricultural society, my understanding is that some of the problems are reduced by switching over to a more traditional diet. (My advisor works with Native Americans on this issue, so while I don’t know of any studies off the top of my head, I can also probably get my hands on those if someone is interested)
“The staff club also has a mission, and that mission is to tell the people who eat there how to eat.”
I’m not really clear on what this place is that you’re going to. Are the people who put up these signs also people who prepare food and decide what to serve there? If so, I don’t find it offensive that they’re talking about the food they have in posters and such. I would expect that the people responsible for providing the food would also study the food and make choices on what food to offer and so on. Once they’ve done that, why not put posters up talking about why they’ve chosen to offer certain things and why they think those things are good to eat?
I’ve no idea where the material comes from. The food run by caterers who run other food outlets on campus, but as far as I know it is the only food outlet that has these signs. The staff club itself is run, possibly by the committee, possibly by the university, it’s all very nebulous.
I find it ridiculous that people who sell orange juice put up signs telling you how much scary sugar orange juice has (among other problems with that poster), but I think it demonstrates my point that what’s going on here is more complicated than giving nutrition advice.
So we have a bunch of people in an academic setting thinking that they have the duty, justification and entitlement to tell other people how they should think, eat and live? What a surprise.
Hey, just replace “an academic setting” with “the suburbs” and you’ll have the conservative viewpoint on gay marriage. Maybe not so much the eating, though.
Hey, just replace “an academic setting” with “the suburbs” and you’ll have the conservative viewpoint on gay marriage.
I’m afraid the logic escapes me.
Let’s take any further discussion of gay marriage to an open thread, please.
Ah, I forgot rule #1 – “Don’t feed the trolls.” Sorry, Amp.
As a grad student I can completely relate to your post. Although my fav at our school is all the posters and signs and then the fast food on every corner.