May 13: Sweetness, Bitterness, Umami: Food as Information

Michael Twitty's book The Cooking Gene introduces us to the way in which the plantation economies of the South were world-shaping processes enabled by the transportation of enslaved peoples from different parts Africa as unpaid labor for each new wave of capital accumulation: sugar, rice, tobacco, cotton, etc. Mintz takes us more deeply into the dark history of sugar as a source of wealth and power. The podcast "400 Years of Sweetness" gives us an update in how sugar production has changed from a sugar cane economy to one based on corn, giving us a critical perspective of how and why HFCS has become so ubiquitous in our highly-processed fast food economy. Focus your discussion on a specific "aha" moment you discovered in your reading and listening for this assignment. Did it make you view this mundane commodity in a new light and how it shapes your everyday practice?