Session 7 Paradigm Shifts & Sensory Pleasures CATHERINE LOCKLEY

P.S. I LOVE that film :-)

Having worked for the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation for years, and latterly on food education that subverts the nutrition message, such as Phenomenom! with Alice Zaslavsky, I really appreciated your paper. Telling adults 'don't use the h-word' (healthy) is an unpopular thing to do but when we really look at what happens in school gardening and cooking/eating/messing-around-with-food classes, our eyes tell us that what works is to taste with all the senses, enjoy the smell of the tomato plant, explore carrots for curiosity. Fun, play, sensual enjoyment and conviviality nearly always win.

People will know of one of the underlying principles of Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Program, being the pleasure of children sharing the food they have grown and prepared - enjoyment of food as a part of food literacy. An essential life skill.

I had exactly this conversation last week Catherine, with a food educator who works with high schoolers and youth at risk. Nutrition may be the educator's objective but health messages don't work. Finding ways to make cooking social and enjoyable is definitely the go.

Hi Catherine! I totally agree about the need for a more hedonistic approach in our dietetic field and I'm really very unhappy with our nutritionism.

I feel Filipinos have increasing receptiveness to nutritionists and their teachings. For instance, it amused me how rural, uneducated folks in my field site have been saying all these nutrition lingo. Problem is, they're having it wrong in most parts. Our science is just so hard to learn. Having learned about ethnoscience, it doesn't really seem right to impose this kind of knowledge to a culture that had its own way of knowing food and nutrition.

I have been thinking of promoting this kind of nutrition in our country, based also on pleasure of eating (Berry) and extensive pleasure of eating (Heldke). I'm happy you have done research to help back this up. Me, I'm researching this through another route: memory. How do you plan to move forward with this in terms of research? advocacy?

Thanks for sharing the link to your paper. Love to hear more about your PhD research and your plans in the Qand A.

Interesting paper Catherine, I'll need to log into my researchgate account and download the study you have up there and take a better look. As a person who eats for pleasure, I do find that nutrition communication feels a bit like being lectured by a nagging teacher with a constantly wagging finger at times. So, perhaps a more hedonistic strategy will open people's minds to the message(s).

Hi Jacqueline! Yep, Scrinis is an old favourite in the library and of course a huge influence. Nigella was never a deity in this study, just a great example of presenting dietary recommendations in a very different narrative. I quite enjoy ‘not quite Nigella’ but I’m yet to weave parody into my research. Great thread to follow though, and one I hadn’t really considered in my scope. Now I’m going to annoy my supervisors with yet another thread in the already huge tapestry 🤪.

Thanks Catherine for this great paper. I'm sure you know Gyorgy Scrinis's work on nutritionism and the ideological charge invested in some of these "healthy" recommendations.

I wonder if you know "Not Quite Nigella". https://www.notquitenigella.com/

I love the irony of her scathing quasi-aspirational title. I'm sure that she omitted her real name from the website in the past, and was more opaque in her self-presentation. Does this kind of backhanded hommage support or refute the hedonic power of Nigella do you think?

Funnily enough, both of those parameters are included in my current (follow-on) PhD work, as are biochemical measures of hormone responses (Leptin, Ghrelin, Cortisol, Serotonin) and gut microbiota composition :-). Of course, I'm not going to land on the Holy Grail here, but am hoping that these observations at least contribute to meaningful change in both Nutrition communication strategies and downstream public health/behavioural change. 😊

Its hard to disagree with the statement that people don't listen to nutritionists. Those focus groups responses are golden and probably shared widely. People like watching Nigella, sure, but do they do what she says? I like you conclusions, I just wonder how the power of narrative measures up against things like price and addiction. Maybe if celery was modified to express nicotine...

I think the problem with nutrition education is that it is so focused on calories and the "hard sciences" that topics such as taste and pleasure of the table is overlooked. Anything that tastes good is considered "bad" for the health (ie cream and butter) but if used "properly" (im avoiding the word moderation) can lead to a pleasurable and healthy gastronomic and nutrient dense meal.

Catherine et al you may find this article I wrote back in 20024 interesting 😁

I quite agree Max, and thank you so much for including the artworks -they're glorious! Your thoughts very much echo those of my research participants. I agree that moderation is key, but I think they key to moderation (awful word) is pleasure in flavour/narrative. A hedonic mind-set actually alters orexigenic hormonal response regardless of a food's nutrient composition :-)

Catherine, you may be interested in a couple of my art works and my notes on them:

1. Nutritional recommended servings per day

Why is it not possible to make any sense of nutritional servings per day, why is it not possible to get any joy out of food described in this manner. Can anyone make any sense out of what seems like daily reports in the media updating us on how many servings of broccoli per day prevent cancer, “feed the man meat” pushing 3 serves of red meat a day, CSR media releases on how many serves of sugar are good for you, and then there is the promotion of fruit and vegetables, fish, pork and chicken. Is it any wonder that people eat too much, to the average punter one serve of red meat is a T-Bone steak and those promoting nutrition and healthy eating, for example, the “eat for health.gov.au” website says to eat 3 serves of the meat /protein food group a day; buried on another page in the website is that one serve of red meat is 65g.

At least two or three times a week the media report the latest research, or it should be mis-report, as only the headline bits are reported - “Drinking coffee everyday prevents heart attacks”. However the study in the media headline was not about heart attack, it looked at heart failure and stroke, which are very different conditions, the information was taken from a conference abstract which only included very limited details of the methods and results. As well the scientific data had not gone through the full peer review and publication process that validate the correctness of research.

I have produced my own recommended servings per day, and have made a brave attempt to include all the essentials: whale, kangaroo, sausages, oysters, two women and in acknowledgement of gender equality, two men, a goanna, a giraffe and at least two meerkats. I also firmly believe in, and follow, the research that recommended red wine and chocolate everyday.

2. A balanced diet

A balanced diet in theory is a good thing but I maintain that a balanced approach to food, must include enjoyment, should not be approached as a scientific exercise, calorie counter and fatty acid dipstick in hand. Moderation is a key and no guilt over a second serve with another glass of wine.

regards Max