Expanding on my research into how western society moralizes and demonizes foods, I cooked and served a lunch to the faculty and students at Memorial University’s School of Fine Art MFA program based on the premise of permission. I examined 3 different areas of impermissible foods: ferments, sugars and fats.
Fats: traditionally associated with gluttony, overeating and filth, fats have also recently become a trend within diet culture thanks to the rise of Atkins, Keto and Paleo diets. Fat, either for its negative or positive connotations is inextricably linked with notions of class.
Sugars: often associated with lack of control. we talk about sugar being as addictive as cocaine, and associate it with sugar-high children. It connates celebration and joy as much as it does recklessness and immaturity.
Ferments: while sugars and fats are impossible to uncouple from diet culture, ferments gain their permissibility through other tools of white supremacy that see a phobia of flavor. Ferments are complex in flavor and carriers of both life and death, yet we only celebrate them once they become the new health trend. Before a ferment is accepted, it is treated with disgust.
The menu was chosen from my own cultural foods and adapted family recipes. I want to extend my sincere gratitude to Syd Lancaster for helping prepare this meal with me, Kellyann Henderson and Erienne Rennick for the incredible custom-made pottery that this meal was served in, and to Emily Anderson for taking photographs.
