Gourmet Goes Local

The respected and often tasteful Gourmet has put out a new restaurant guide, which you can find here. The focus this year is on the local, with the guide then broken down into sections (my personal favorite being "Meat Rules," but I'm from the Midwest).

Gourmet says that eating local has "caught on," which perhaps sounds far too much like fad-lingo (yes, I'm thinking whole-grain). Still, this does indeed gesture at our country's growing concern with what we eat, and an increase in the demand for a local product. Catching on is good; hanging on is better.

Luckily, we now have a short guide that showcases farm-to-table programs that are working--and working deliciously. Taste is, after all, a large part of Slow Food, and sometimes it is nice to be reminded.

Are You Involved in the Community Food Security Coalition?

Community Food Security Coalition is pleased to announce its two upcoming meetings:

12th annual Conference, scheduled for October 4-8, 2008 outside Philadelphia ( Cherry Hill, NJ)
- More details will be provided on this event as they become available.

Membership Meeting, November 11-12, 2007 Jekyll Island, Georgia.

-Held in a retreat setting along the beautiful Georgia coast, an hour from Jacksonville, FL, this event will be a different kind of meeting than CFSC has done in the past. Limited to 150 participants, it will be a more interactive and reflective meeting.

We want to engage you in thinking about and planning for the future of the community food security movement. We want your help in developing a common vision for our future direction.

We also want to engage you in thinking and planning for the future direction for CFSC, as a steward of the broader movement. How can our work promote, catalyze, and support an invigorated movement at all levels? CFSC is undertaking a strategic planning process, with a goal of making the organization more sustainable, inclusive, and responsive to members. This meeting is an integral part of that process.

We will be looking for your feedback at this meeting: to help us define our niche, to help shape the structures by which we gain membership input into our activities, and to shape our programs and committees. We encourage you to join existing member committees, or to create new working groups on the topics you feel are most important to the movement and your work.

The meeting is open to CFSC members. Non-members can join when they register. Registration starts on September 17th and closes on October 23rd.

See http://www.foodsecurity.org/2007MemberMeeting.html for more details.

Contact our office at 310-822-5410, or aleta@foodsecurity.org with any questions

CFSC

New Food Studies Program at Indiana University

The anthropology department at Indiana University proudly announces a
PhD in the anthropology of food, beginning the fall semester of 2007.
While food studies of all kinds are increasing in popularity at
universities around the world, and degrees in nutrition and food
marketing are available, IU offers the first program in the world
leading to a PhD in the social science of food.

Food connects a host of contemporary issues, ranging from obesity to
ecological dead zones to fair-trade coffee. Students will enjoy
opportunities to work on a wide range of food-related topics in a
department whose diverse menu already offers courses on a wide variety of topics including chocolate's history, other primates' diets, and the cause of famine.

Why Indiana? The anthropology department at IU has a unique combination
of food specialists with expertise in the sciences, humanities, and
social sciences. Students in the Food Studies Program will further have
the opportunity to study with scholars in other departments and programs
including history, nutrition, cultural studies and biology. This
diversity will allow students to specialize in human nutrition, the
evolution of the human diet, origins of food production, food in ancient
civilizations, and contemporary social and economic issues related to
health, culture, economics and globalization. The Food Studies Program
combines the sciences and humanities, contributing to the new health
sciences and human biology initiatives, and boosting the national
visibility of the university.

Indiana is home to a broad array of old and new immigrant communities,
which create a rich context for understanding the importance of food in
culture, and the growing globalization of the world food system.
Bloomington itself has been at the forefront of the farmer=92s market
revival, serving as a regional distribution center for organic groceries
and produce with a rich and sophisticated ethnic food culture. Building
on the rapid growth of culinary tourism into a major industry, faculty
and students in the Food Studies Program will team with local business
communities to increase Bloomington's prominence and visibility as a
food city and Indiana as a new center of cuisine. Bloomington has a
Slow Food chapter, a farmers' market, two microbreweries, several CSAs,
and "culinary tourism trails."

In this program, food fuels the connections between people, places,
cultures, and across the ages. The anthropology department has already
placed students in service-learning research and outreach with a local
food bank. Future projects may include work with local farmers, food
assistance programs for the poor and elderly, gardeners, and ethnic food
markets.

The IU Department of Anthropology is growing into one of the largest and
most important programs in the country. With 36 core faculty and
affiliates throughout other departments, the program boasts over 110
graduate students studying for advanced degrees in linguistic
anthropology, cultural anthropology, archaeology, bioanthropology, human
evolutionary studies, and archaeology and social context. The Food
Studies Program accelerates this growth, responding to the interest in
food within the field of anthropology.

This new PhD builds on the successes of the gastronomy and food studies
MA programs at New York University and Boston University, offering a
more advanced degree based on substantial independent research projects.

IU anthropologists will continue to expand and develop their
relationship with the new Food Studies MA degree program at the
University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

Due to the strong demand for this training, the department has already
received many inquiries. We will provide support for PhD graduates to
step into open job markets in academia and industry, where the
challenges of globalization and cultural diversity have prompted new
interest in anthropology as an integrative discipline.

www.indiana.edu/~anthro