Final Paper - Narrating an Ethical Meal

Final Paper Assignment: Narrating an Ethical Meal

This final assignment is to be intentional about how your ethical concerns figure in how you feed yourself by telling the story of how you prepared a meal for yourself (and possibly shared with others).

There are two parts: (1) a description of the hands-on story how you prepared a meal from scratch (and all of the steps involved in finding ingredients) and (2) a reflection on how your narrative relates to the concepts, readings, and discussions from class (especially those from the final weeks of the quarter focused on ethical eaters). 

It is not intended to be a "perfect" meal, but instead you are to reflect on how constraints of time, money, desire, etc. might complicate how we navigate our food environment in pursuit of our ethical commitments. 

If you do not have access to a kitchen, please let me know as soon as possible so I can help figure out access or an alternative. It is perfectly acceptable (and may be even more enjoyable) to team up with another student to produce this meal. Each student will need to provide their own narrative of their shared meal. 

1) STEP ONE: The Hands-On Aspect of the Assignment: (1-2 Pages)

The first objective is to make a meal, using unprocessed ingredients, that is about the same cost or less than a pre-prepared meal or eating out. There may be a trade-off between cost and time (i.e., it may be cheaper but take more time to prepare things “from scratch” than buying them ready made).

1a) Decide on a recipe, either one you are familiar with or one that you would like to try for the first time. If you have minimal cooking skills, consider getting some help from a friend or an online resource. Sheet-pan meals have been trending online during COVID. They are super easy and quick and offer an almost limitless array of options.

1b) Purchase the ingredients. Record the following:

• From where were the ingredients purchased (e.g., farmer’s market, supermarket, consumer's coop, etc.). What determined your choices?
• What was the place of origin of the ingredients (to the extent you can discover this, i.e., foreign, domestic, local)?
• To what degree did cost factor into your decision of what to buy, how much of each item to buy, and where to buy it? 
• What kinds of decisions did you make with respect to how you sourced your ingredients (e.g., organic or not, animal treatment, sustainability, fairness, food preferences/ideologies, etc.).
• What compromises did you make when buying ingredients? Why?

1c) Make your meal. Keep track of the time you spent actively cooking as well as total preparation time. Provide some measure of serving size and total cost per serving, as well as time spent per serving.

Don't get too hung up on writing out this part of the assignment. You can use as many. pages as you wish but the really important part is step two. You can include some of this information to the extent that it is part of your story-telling.

2) STEP TWO: The Writing and “Engaging with the Course Materials” Aspect of the Assignment: (3-4 Pages)

The second objective of this assignment is to engage with the critical concepts, readings, and discussions from this class. This means that in the midst of your narrative you should be citing the specific readings and quotes that have had an impact on how you think about food. It is a hybrid genre between a personal story and a more academic exercise because you are referencing a literature. Some questions to consider are:

• How do your choices in the hands-on aspect of the assignment express your nutritional philosophy and/or food ideology? How are you constructing your ethical self through your choices?
• What do you know about the value chain of each of your ingredients (to the extent that this is knowable) and what kind of economy are you performing through your practices of procuring food (are your food choices supporting big agriculture or small farmers)?
• What sorts of constraints or obstacles do you encounter in practicing the kind of food economy that you desire?
• How have the materials from this course changed your way of thinking about your relation to the food you eat and the economies you perform (how you source your food)?

You should frame your discussion in terms of economies of health, environmental sustainability, social equity, and animal welfare. You may not have space to discuss all of these, but you can focus on one or more that you feel are most important to you. 

Use the following parameters in writing your essay:

• 5-6 pages (about 1500 words), double-spaced, 1-inch margins, Times New Roman, 12-point font.
• Use in-text citation (author last name, page number) when quoting from course readings

It will be important to draw connections with course readings especially from the last three weeks of the quarter. Make sure your paper has a well-structured and well-developed narrative. Make sure you properly cite all quotes from course materials. Check for grammar and spelling. Feel free to have fellow classmates help to proofread your paper! You are welcome to include recipes and/or pictures if you like, but these should not be part of the page count for your text. 

Submit on Canvas, by midnight, Monday, December 11.

GRADING RUBRIC:

Please note that points will be deducted for late papers (1 point per day).

Construction of a Thoughtful and Critical Analysis of the Meal Preparation Process
(10 points)

• The student provides a description of the process of planning, shopping for, and preparing a meal.
• The student provides a rich account of the decisions and compromises made in the process of buying food for the meal (see bullet points outlined in Step 1b)
• The ethical considerations surrounding sourcing ingredients are carefully laid out in the analysis of the meal, drawing from ideas in course materials.

Integration, Synthesis, and Demonstrated Understanding of Course Materials
(10 Points)

• The essay does a good job of fully responding to the prompt and constructs significant links between course content (readings, lectures, discussion) and the narrative of a meal.
• The essay fully and thoughtfully addresses the issues of food ideology and food economies (at least one) outlined in the second half of the prompt (see bullet points outlined in Step 2).
• Drawing form course materials, at least one critical concept from class is adequately and accurately defined, described, and applied to the description and critique of the meal preparation experience.
• The student effectively uses examples and/or quotes from course materials, where appropriate, to support arguments and connection between the meal narrative and concepts from the course (especially those from the second half of the quarter).

Structure, Flow of Argument, Spelling, and Grammar
(5 points)

• There is a clear structure to the essay and the argument is easy to follow.
• Paragraphs and sentences flow logically from one to the next.
• Quotes and examples from outside sources are appropriately cited in text and a bibliography is provided.
• The paper is clean and appropriately formatted.
• The paper is free of spelling and grammar errors.