Food Diary: Food’s Meaning In My Life

Every time we look at the people all around us, subconsciously we are registering how we are similar and different from each other. Through these distinctions, we begin to see how people distinguish themselves from one another. Some people love to see themselves aligning with the clear cultural norms that are displayed by individuals around them, whereas others like nothing less than being so different they make people uncomfortable. As an individual grows up, they begin to move from being shaped by their parents to shaping themselves.  However, an individual’s roots remain imperative to how someone looks at themselves, as well as others in their daily lives.

The whole idea of fashion is in the forefront of society’s culture. Trends develop over time from various causes on how to dress and people either jump on board with the current styles verbatim, or attempt to create their own personal spin on what is ‘in’ allowing them to feel connected to the overarching expectations of society while still retaining a sense of individuality. Fashion overflows to more than just how one dresses, it can be reflected in literature, architecture and the food people eat.

The way people display different fashions of things, such as speech, dress, and eat all are part of how they express who they are. Anthropologist Robin Fox explores this in his article Food and Eating: An Anthropological Perspective stating, “Every meal is a message, and where we eat is as important as what we eat in getting the message across” (Fox 5). When one considers the physical function that food has in any individual’s life, it is clear that in first world countries often times putting emphasis on in meals is a product of a luxurious mindset.

With college students nationwide (myself included) constantly complaining about the three meals a day they get prepared for them lacking in luster, food is something that people in well-off countries, like America, need to be more than just fuel for their bodies. This plenty is what empowers fashion to be such a strong factor in the development of personal identities as well as the collective identity of culture overall. Fox explores this idea further in his discussion of how “once foods become plentiful and varied, fashion takes over, and the lure of novelty - the trendy - is often disguised as concern for nutrition” (Fox 8). The “disguise” displays “with-it we are. Just as clothes indicate our trendiness, so does food” (Fox 8). Therefore how we use food becomes something that is a reflection of how we are as an individual and the identity that we ascribe to ourselves, and more importantly want others to see as us. This can ultimately become more important than the idea of food as fuel because of the knowledge we will be filled up so have liberty in the ways in which we refuel.

For me, I am engulfed in this lifestyle of food as being more than stomach filler. I know for me when I don’t eat for an extended period of time to let my tank feel empty, not only is what I eat more enjoyable to the taste, but refueling itself is an incredible experience leaving me in the commonly known state of “food-coma”. This is my story about how I took advantage of food-comas in a ritualized attempt to relax after a long week.

My first semester of my senior year was incredibly stressful. From captaining two sports teams to being in charge of my student government and most of all being under immense self-inflicted academic pressure after a hang-out heavy junior year, I had a lot of responsibilities to have success in what I was doing as well as allow for more success in the future. Needless to say every moment I had to relax was a wonderful happening. When the last day of my work week came around (Friday) it was an unfortunate combination of the day with the heaviest responsibilities and the day I wanted to let myself relax the most.

Topolinos Pizza. 18 inches of spiced, garlicy, sizzling, deliciousness that knew how to call my name like no other meal in my life. In about 10 – 12 minutes, the entire pizza would be half in my stomach, and half in my friends and it was only a matter of minutes before we were hit with a paralyzing food coma in which the feeling of ultimate apathy would sink in ensuring a Friday night without glamorous adventure. To capitalize on the post pizza recovery recharge, we would head to the local athletic club’s hot tub to await the return of enough energy to do something with our lives. In an average time of around an hour, the coma’s paralysis would wear off, and we would be charged enough to enjoy the rest of a very relaxing night.

Now, one may think that these Friday’s would not be the ones that would be bunny eared in my high school scrapbook, but they hold an incredibly special place in my heart. Using Topolino’s Pizza as a method of recharging my body was a transcendent occurrence that really recharged my mind body and soul. It became a deep expression of me and how I was feeling. At the particular time this ritual went down in my week was the primary object that allowed me to recharge enough to hit the next week as hard as I needed to in order to achieve success. Even more so, the timing of this weekly ritual in my life allowed me to remain sane. While continuing a schedule involving a lot more work than my peers as well as one that I questioned my ability to handle, these events allowed me to feel in a more balanced swing of things. This ritual was my aggressive response to the life’s stresses, and through my fasting, compulsive purge, and after affect I was brought peace.

My connection and loyalty to Topolino’s runs incredibly deep because of how it was the strongest agent in helping me recover from things in my life that was cutting at my knees. This idea of food being such a point of recovery for people is one of the reasons it transcends a daily practice into something with huge meaning. My personal expression with food now is something entirely different than it would have been if I hadn’t gone through this ritual. Meals themselves now hold the upmost importance only if they allow me to recharge physically and emotionally.

Psychologically speaking, this makes sense too. With pizza being something that historically had been used for celebration in my childhood it is no surprise I found immense comfort in it once again. Psychologist Anneli Rufus comments on this phenomenon in her article on eating psychology. She states:

“There's also how the brain links emotion, memory, and sensory stimuli. Popsicles nibbled to break childhood fevers, pizza when your track team won, coconut on your honeymoon: The brain associates good experiences with specific flavors, fragrances and textures, coding them as harbingers of happiness. Henceforth, even when you neither have a fever nor have won a race, eating Popsicles still brings the rush of relief and pizza feels like a reward”. (Rufus 1)

            As a part of my identity shaped from very early on was the idea of celebration or “good time” food. With those connections between positive emotion and certain tastes comes an ability to use food as a consistent friend that comforts you any time you seek it out.

Upon reflection, there was a deeper connection going on as well with the type of restaurant Topolino’s was and my own lifestyle at that point. If you venture through Denver and check out different coffee shops and cafes, it isn’t too difficult to see a correlation between the places size, atmosphere, and if it is a chain or not and the customers in them. You are much more likely to see hipsters, or other people that are in subcultures that are far from corporate, in these smaller shops. On the other side of things, seeing men and women in business attire in a Starbucks is incredibly common. This completely parallels those individuals place in society, where the corporate men and women with more money as well as a more uniform lifestyle are attracted to coffee shops that have that same set up. Think about the music in these places. Starbucks is more likely to play acoustic music, like a John Mayer type artist, that people recognize. A unique coffee shop will play music of all sorts with music that most people have not heard of, or that is a widely accepted hipster band like Iron & Wine or Bon Iver.  For a hipster, going to a place with tattooed baristas in a building that used to be an auto shop fits who they feel to be as an individual.

Topolino’s did this for me, where at the time I went there the most I was living a very alternative lifestyle than my peers where I was intensely focused on my roles on student government, academics, and family life and very much not on the typical high school social experience. Because of this I felt more comfortable at a place like Topolino’s, where there is only one in the world, it can hold at most 15 people, and the people that work there are working very hard to scrape by.   

Although uniformity in customers can have high correlation like in coffee shops, the spread of age, gender, overall appearance, and educational backgrounds can vary immensely in one small eatery. In an article written by Northeastern’s professor Jack Levin, he discusses how a restaurant can tell a lot about the area that it is in as far as socio-economic levels, ethnicity, and age of inhabitants. He argues that you can completely map out the demographics of Boston by simply looking at the type of restaurants are most in certain neighborhoods. Eating habits at different life stages can illustrate the socio-economic demographic that an individual is in, much like how the types of restaurants in different sections of Boston map out demographics. Everyone enjoys eating out, but the luxurious nature of it often limits possibilities of where to go.

In terms of socialization, the way in which an individual is socialized affects what they connect with and enjoy. If a Mexican immigrant moves to the US, they are still going to feel the best when they can eat authentic Mexican food, not classic diner food, even though America is their new home. This is why demographically one can see the correlation with what restaurants are around. People of

Overall, the shaping of an individual’s identity through eating is a tricky thing to map out. Whether its psychological connections from childhood, how they express themselves, or how they feel they fit into society, food is a vital player in illustrating who an individual is. For me Topolino’s Pizza was huge in expressing my identity that stemmed from being cultured into having pizza ritually connected to certain positive emotions.

In our society as a whole food is one of the most important vessels of how we distinguish ourselves from one another. Whether we latch ourselves onto certain trends, like heading to Starbucks, or pave our own paths under the same social umbrella, like going to an overpriced hipster coffee shop, we are constantly expressing who we are through what we consume. Through these daily ingestions we not only grow into who we are as individuals, but also collectively as a society and how we support what we eat reflecting what we are.

Works Cited

Fox, Robin. "Food and Eating: An Anthropological Perspective." Social Issues Research Centre. n. page. Print. <http://www.sirc.org/publik/foxfood.pdf>.

Levin, Jack. "The Sociology of Boston’s Restaurants: Where Diversity and Good Food Meet." American Sociology Association: Footnotes. 36.5 (2008): n. page. Web. 18 Apr. 2012. <http://www.asanet.org/footnotes/mayjun08/rest.html>.

Rufus, Anneli. "Explaining the Psychology of Comfort Food." Gilt Taste. 21 Jun 2011: online. Print. <http://www.gilttaste.com/stories/622-explaining-the-psychology-of-comfort-food>.

Meal Time = My Time

As American society has shifted more and more to an individualistic lifestyle in which people operate on their own schedules with little cohesion with others, meal-time is changing in connotation as well as denotation. People work on their own schedules, and that work has changed from time-based to task-based, where one needs to get a certain thing done versus working for a set amount of time. With this in mind, it is no surprise that people eat meals in different ways than they did with a classic 8 hour work shift with a lunch break.

In Eating at the Edge, Jamie Horwitz describes this phenomenon and how meals are becoming something that is no longer a ritualized social connector but rather moving toward something that is done because people need food to perform well during their daily grind (Horwitz 45). Horwitz references Manuel Castella in agreeing upon his point of the disconnect of "space of flow" diverging with the "space of place" being a product of a hyper-mobile society (qtd. in 44). Ultimately, this is leading to people eating on their own time and not with others as everyone creates different structures of their days.

Americans seem to be content with this shift, however, with companies producing huge varieties of ways to eat food on the go. The example that Horwitz uses is the "Campbell's Soup at Hand" which is an innovative packaged soup that just needs a couple minutes in a microwave and is 12 ounces of portable, cup-holder fitting, sustenance that requires no cleanup. With the stresses of the day always apparent on individuals with pressures reaching the quota of individual production, it is only natural that people put less emphasis on meals s something worth allocating the day's valuable time to. Because of this, companies will continue to produce products that are efficient and portable because the market for these are only increasing.

As a university student, these concepts make complete sense to me and I am without a doubt a part of this societal shift in meals. The fact I have only eaten a granola bar today is a product of being on my own time schedule as well as the amount of work that I need to get done to have some level of academic success. I am living in my own world where my work schedule is hard to collaborate with others in order for us to eat meals together, especially on the weekend. During the work week it is easier to eat with others because of set meal times at the dining halls that people who want to eat to ensure they eat the food their meal plan is paying for. However on weekends with people setting their own schedules which includes staying out later as well as sleeping later, sharing meals is not as mechanical as during the week.

Overall, this shift of meals is something that really reflects a bigger picture occurrence that social theorists see as an issue. The hyper-mobile society that is being further cultivated each day creates a lifestyle that is increasingly individualistic. Societally, this can be seen as a huge issue with each step of increased individuality being seen as a threat towards a community centered society. Where this becomes an issue is with less community less social problems get solved and less social institutions improve. A decreased sense of collective identity and consciousness sparks less collective action toward a shared vision or goal. Although right now, this is clearly not entirely the case in American society it is something that is in my generation's best interest to keep in mind, and tread lightly in accepting a lifestyle where each person lives a life that is shared with few people around them.

A Night At Anthony's Pizza

When you walk into Anthony’s Pizza the first thing that you notice is the small amount of space between the counter and the entryway. This leaves the customer kind of confused on how they should line up, and also makes you bend your neck at an uncomfortable angle to see the full menu at once when trying to make your decision. This is the first aspect that makes Anthony’s an overall agitating atmosphere. The layout of the store overall is awkward with eating areas on the left and the right of the counter, but accessible through a hallway that makes the restaurant overall in three sections. After you order and either pick the pool table arcade side or the more traditional booth side to sit, you await to hear your name. But with a generally loud atmosphere and an impatient staff covered in flour from head to toe, all you can react like when they are frustrated at you for not hearing them yell your name is a laugh and head shake.

However, it’ hard to imagine this mix of negative customer experience is completely on accident. This type of marketing strategy, or ones similar to it, has been used with other things as well. Like minimal marketing, where companies do almost no advertising of their logo, with a goal that when you see it you feel special or like you made a certain cut. Similarly, when you get served food at a place that is rude to the customer, the rest of your experience rests on one thing, the food. When the food tastes good and has good value, like it is at Anthony’s, you are willing to put up with an untraditional service atmosphere.

The people in Anthony’s are pretty hilarious overall, especially on $1 slice nights. I spend most of my Monday nights recovering from the first day of the week at $1 slice night. This particular experience’s highlights were a scraggly-bearded man in his mid-50’s buy a beer and invite himself to sit down too near for a good looking graduate student. He then proceeded to tell her how beautiful she was at every opportunity he could until she decided it was time to down her pizza slice and tell the man she had to go. Secondly one young man I saw was wearing a shirt that said “I <3 MILF’s” which is incredibly tasteful in itself, but he took it one step further by being with a child no older than 3 (that I assumed to be his and my friend agreed), and woman who had to have been the mother, and either his own parents or his in-laws, overall it was quite a comical situation to observe. In the same room were a group of fraternity guys from University of Denver, a more normal family with two kids around 15 years old that looked like they had just finished basketball practice, and a group of 5 college students talking about one of the classes that they were all in.

The spread of age, gender, overall appearance, and educational backgrounds varied immensely in this one fairly small restaurant. In an article written by Northeastern’s professor Jack Levin, he discusses how a restaurant can tell a lot about the area that it is in as far as socio-economic levels, ethnicity, and age of inhabitants. He argues that you can completely map out the demographics of Boston by simply looking at the type of restaurants are most in certain neighborhoods.

Anthony’s is in a University district, where the majority of its customers are college kids. This is why they have hugely popular $1 slice nights that flock in the college students (including myself). But what is interesting is how it attracts generally wealthy white kids along with some fairly odd people that don’t seem to be socialized in the same way that DU students are assuming that most students here would not where an “I <3 MILF’s” shirt in front of two generations of their family or hit on girls that are inappropriately aged with no shame in a public setting.

Taking full advantage of $1 slice night is something that is incredibly acceptable for a college kid, but kind of odd once you get out of your mid – late 20’s because of how personal definitions and expectations change over time. For example, college students can generally afford to eat poorly and still remain fairly healthy because of their age. If my dad was to come to Anthony’s and eat as much pizza as I did it would probably shake his health up. However, the people that were at Anthony’s that were not from DU seemed to be from a lower socio-economic place. For a family of four, a meal out could cost $50 whereas at Anthony’s it only has to cost around $10 - $15.

Eating habits at different life stages can illustrate the socio-economic demographic that an individual is in, much like how the types of restaurants in different sections of Boston map out demographics. Everyone enjoys eating out, but the luxurious nature of it often limits possibilities of where to go. At Anthony’s it was clear that people could afford it, but also enjoyed it despite the fact it wasn’t the healthiest, or the best at serving.

Works Cited:

Levin, Jack. "The Sociology of Boston’s Restaurants: Where Diversity and Good Food Meet." American Sociology Association: Footnotes. 36.5 (2008): n. page. Web. 18 Apr. 2012. <http://www.asanet.org/footnotes/mayjun08/rest.html>.

The best eating experience of all time

NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM

mmmmmmmmmm........ so so tasty

Weddings: bringing people together in more ways than one.

The source I want to use is how food can bring different cultures together and how that is a positive thing for out society. Specifically, it focuses on wedding menus.

http://latimes.wehaa12.wehaaserver.com/article-969-a-cultural-blend.html

Eating and feeling, society and food.

Everyone needs food in their life to survive. Eating is a simple checkpoint that each individual must pass through to live a happy healthy lifestyle. Regardless of its utter necessity, people enjoy eating, making meals in our world being something that is heralded upmost with the upmost importance and being something that is used to celebrate and commemorate.

The social significance of food runs incredibly deep, intertwined with cultural traditions, expectations, and identities. Because of this, one can tell a lot about a culture based off of how they experience their meals, who they eat with, and what specially they eat.

In two reflections on the connection between culture and food, one in prisons and one in post-Mao China, authors O’Donnell and Cate explore how social divisions can be mapped through food. In Cate’s piece on prisons she discusses how inmates who share their, “spreads”, (a low budget casserole that can be prepared with hot water and a microwave) usually do so with those of the same race noting, “the whites spread with the whites and the blacks spread with the blacks”. In this case, the cultural defining aspect of meal time in the prison has to do with who the inmates “spread” with.

This is different from the O’Donnell article on defining Chinese society through what is eaten. O’Donnell describes how the difference between seafood and livestock consumers is indicative of the shift from socialism to capitalism and takes it further by claiming this difference shows how Chinese culture has shifted from one that provides for to one that competes with.

The most interesting thing about these two articles is the difference in how food is viewed but the authors as well as the subjects they studied. O’Donnell sounded most concerned with the provisional aspect of food and society, where she defines a good Chinese government only by how the people eat during their reign. On the other side of things, the prisoners had all the food they needed to survive provided for them and instead of eating it they wanted to make their meals something more. Therefore for me it was way easier to get a sense of the prison culture than the Chinese based off of the discussion the authors proposed about food. The prisoners were more concerned with a total emobiment of the what, who, and how of their meals where it seemed that the most thing discussed in the O’Donnell article was simply the what, and how that pertained to society.

For me, meals are always much much more than a matter of survival. Often times my stomach will be full by my tongue will want more, so I will keep chugging at a delicious Pizza, or embark on a dessert journey filled with ecstasy and bliss. This is not only indicative of the culture live in, but my personal identity and how it is expressed. Meal time is a medium to express where you are from, who you enjoy being with, and what you value in life which is ultimately why one can understand huge parts of a society based off of what people eat.

Food Identity - response to Patrick's Blog on Wendy's.

In Patrick Smoral's Blog Post (http://psmoralwrit1133.blogspot.com/2012/04/short-essay-2.html) he gets at the idea that Wendy's is attempting to gain an identity as a brand through their advertising campaign. This is much like my own commentary on how Panda Cheese and Chic-Fil-A show their own companies identity by having humorous commercials to show they are companies that like having a good time, and therefore you should associate good times with their product. The difference is that Wendy's method of doing this is more direct, in which they shoe people having a good time with their product. This method is repeated by other companies, like Coca-Cola, and seems to work really well. Where Patrick's post complicates my argument is how in the Wendy's commercial it shows this post purchased bliss that the customers of Wendy's are experiencing where as the two ads I analyzed show nobody actually having a blast with the food but rather random things occurring because of the product itself which makes you laugh. Overall, I think Patrick and I agree that creating an identity through advertising is an effective way to make people give your product a chance.

Humor me, don't inform me

The audience cheers. Thank goodness, because the audience is supposed to cheer. Gaining the approval of a group of people leads to only good places (unless you are on trial to be stoned). Success in life can almost be entirely attributed to one’s ability to pleasing those who have their ears turned on to what an individual is communicating. This is generally referred to as the art of persuasion, or rhetoric.

Successful rhetoricians have huge power in dictating the direction that society heads in. When an individual has the ability to convince others of a specific idea or point of action, anything in contact with them will end up having the rhetorician’s fingerprints all over it. When the convincing is powerful enough the influence does not stop as just one specific action but seeps into our thought processes and interpreting of differing societal symbols.

Think of the initial connotations of certain color combinations, animals, or logos. Personally, I know that ketchup-red and mustard-yellow reminds me of McDonalds, that a cartoon rabbit is indicative of Trix cereal and yogurts, and red curvy writing on a red background is worldly renowned as Coca-Cola.

The way that these symbols get hammered into our heads is through huge efforts by advertising sects of corporations to see, comprehend, and most of all remember these symbols as much as possible. Let’s look at two specific advertisements and how they’re rhetorical strategies not just get a single point across, but fabricate a cultural meaning behind their advertising campaigns. 

The first set of advertisements is from an Egyptian dairy company marketing one of their corporate branches. (You're welcome for blessing your day with this video.)

The second video is of American fast food restaurant Chic-Fil-A and there long standing campaign of "eat mor chikin".

Both of these advertisements rely mostly on appeals to how one feels, or pathos. Attempting to humor it's audience, these ads are hoping to push their viewers into laughter in which will create a positive emotional association to their products. 

Both using ridiculous means to entertain their audience, one by having a destructive giant panda and the other with parachuting cows, defining the exact audience is pretty difficult because of differing senses of humor interacting with ads in different ways. When an advertisement uses a more logical approach, or use of logos, the overall reaction expected is much more uniform than that of emotional appeals, like humor. 

The Chic-Fil-A advertisement simulates a football game atmosphere and on top of that aired during football games. Thus it is safe to say that Chic-Fil-A is mainly marketing toward men in general. The demographic of football games viewers crosses all socio-economic levels, however one can infer that this ad is aimed toward the lower echelon of the scale. Chic-Fil-A is a not-so healthy choice of eating and generally people with more money are more worried about their health choices as well. On a stylistic note to couple with the high fat product advertised the ridiculous slapstick like humor is more aimed toward a less educated audience. It’s hard to imagine a bunch of Fortune-500 CEO’s sitting in a room rolling in laughter from a ridiculous commercial like this (unless it’s out of mockery) where as it is not as hard to imagine the average American male getting a kick out of this advertisement.

For Panda Cheese, the humor is not as pigeon-holed into as specific a group. Because of the outrageously absurd, at times almost dark, and impossible to take seriously commercials, a wider set of people is appealed to. But because of how in the 5 commercials the only female that acts is a nurse, you can infer that these commercials are also aimed at men just like Chic-Fil-A. Also, the fact that nothing about the actual product is mentioned shows that this is probably not aimed at the health-conscious.  

The main weapon used by Panda, more so than Chic-Fil-A, is shocking the audience. Each time the Panda appears in the commercials and his unchanging expression couples with nice calming music you anticipate what is going to happen. What both advertisements do is take a situation that look normal, like working in an office or watching a football game, and then twist it to have something ridiculous happen. Whether that is cows landing on a football field to advocate higher poultry consumption or a Panda smashing everything on your desk to ensure that you never say no to his cheese again, these unrealistic actions make the companies incredibly easy to remember.

Culturally, the act that this type of advertising works to any extent is pretty impressive. In no part of these ads was anything ever spoken about food quality, taste, health, or anything about the products at all. People enjoy laughter however, and when a company develops a thorough identity through an advertising campaign than when someone buys their product that identity is transferred over and makes a statement. The identities developed through these ads speak to a company’s character and willingness to have fun, which for some people, myself included, adds to their credibility, or ethos, and makes buying their products something that you can feel good about.

Cheap Chips equals health dip

Potato Chips. An American Staple. Ever sense I can remember I have love these thin, crunchy, potato-E goodness that melts in your mouth making it beg for a cup of water to flash flood the surprised desert. As I have grown up my favorite types of potato chips have changed from simple to slightly less simple, and the packages that I have found myself owning have followed this same trend.

Joshua Freedman and Dan Jurafsky explore the different methods of packaging and advertising that potato chip companies use to market their product to different groups. As I am sure a lot of people can personally attest to, a high end pita chip bag will not look and sound like a bag of Lay’s. For example you will not find the word “organic” anywhere on a bag of Lay’s, but it might be the biggest word on a different brand purchased at Whole Foods or another organic crazed shopping market. In fact, the conversation of ingredients placed on bags is something almost never found on cheaper bags of chips. 

They get around this by saying things like, “What gives our chips their exceptional great taste? It’s no secret. It’s the way they’re made!” In fact, lower-end chip brands almost always rely on two main catagories for explaining their product’s validity; historicity and location. Neither of those two subject have any weight in determining how something tastes or how it affects your health.

On the other side of things, high end chip bags rely on three main ways of communicating what their 

chips are about; naturalness, ingredients, and process. All three of these things have everything to do with how a food will taste and what it will do to your body. People with enough money to buy upper-end chips or most concerned with their health are likely more educated and will be able to spot the weightless marketing strategies that lower-end chips propose.

You could apply this method to a lot of things. The evidence is pretty clear from this article that the more educated the people you are marketing to the more legitimate everything you say must be. You can’t bee-ess someone who is actually looking for a healthier option with better ingredients. On the contrary someone who is looking for some grease fuel, like an individual that is okay with eating twinkies, you know you don’t really need to say much about ingredients or health benefits for them to buy your product. Instead you must emphasize making the package look appealing with bright colors and inviting pictures of the food you are trying to sell.

An example I have seen in my life that is non-food related of this is in basketball shoes. An expensive pair of Nikes runs at over $100 and rely on commenting on the weight of the shoe and descriptions of the different types of in-sole cushioning that it has, an approach that is more or less using logos as its primary appeal (although the other appeals are used all the time as well). A pair of Starbury basketball shoes runs at under $25 and they rely on no evidence on any idea of their shoes quality but instead solely rely on the ethos of their company representative, ex-NBA point guard Stephon Marbury. Because of this you will never see any basketball player past middle school wearing Starbury’s but will see Nike’s on NBA players well into the future, much like you will not see a serious eater (one who is health conscious and ingredient conscious) eating a bag of Lay’s regularly.

The capitalization of Food-Coma

When one considers the physical function that food has in any individual’s life, it is clear that in first world countries often times what we put emphasis on in meals is a product of a luxurious mindset. With college students nationwide (myself included) constantly complaining about the three meals a day they get prepared for them, food is something that people in well-off countries, like America, need to be more than just fuel for their bodies.

We all need fuel, however, and running on an empty tank is less than enjoyable to say the least. On the brighter side, I know for me when I don’t eat for an extended period of time to let my tank feel empty, not only is what I eat more enjoyable to the taste, but refueling itself is an incredible experience leaving me in the commonly known state of “food-coma”. This is my story about how I took advantage of food-comas in a ritualized attempt to relax after a long week.

My first semester of my senior year was incredibly stressful. From captaining two sports teams to being in charge of my student government and most of all being under immense self-inflicted academic pressure after a hang-out heavy junior year, I had a lot of responsibilities to have success in what I was doing as well as allow for more success in the future. Needless to say every moment I had to relax was a wonderful happening.

When the last day of my work week came around (Friday) it was an unfortunate combination of the day with the heaviest responsibilities and the day I wanted to let myself relax the most. We had a very intense atmosphere around our football team and the social responsibility that each student had to go out and support them every game they played. Because of this, I was in charge of a tailgate and mass transportation to every away football game for the entire season which all fell on Fridays after the school day was over adding about 4 extra hours of work to my uninspired burnt out Friday self.

To make this situation better, I applied my own spin of a work hard play hard mentality. After my 11 am lunch, me and one of my friends made a pact to not eat any food no matter how hungry we got until I finished with all of my Friday responsibilities and he finished his over 15 mile cross country workout. This ensured we would for sure have tanks that hit empty.

As I grilled hot dogs and burgers for people attending the tailgate, my stomach rumbled in reaction to my widening eyes and twitching nose of all the food around me. Getting hungrier and hungrier, I was incredibly eager to get some food in me. When the buses of students finally rolled out for game time, it was game time for me in an entirely different way.

Topolinos Pizza. 18 inches of spiced, garlicy, sizzling, deliciousness that knew how to call my name like no other meal in my life. In about 10 – 12 minutes, the entire pizza would be half in my stomach, and half in my friends and it was only a matter of minutes before we were hit with a paralyzing food coma in which the feeling of ultimate apathy would sink in ensuring a Friday night without glamorous adventure. 

To capitalize on the post pizza recovery recharge, we would head to the local athletic club’s hot tub to await the return of enough energy to do something with our lives. In an average time of around an hour, the coma’s paralysis would wear off, and we would be charged enough to enjoy the rest of a very relaxing night.

Now, one may think that these Friday’s would not be the ones that would be bunny eared in my high school scrapbook, but they hold an incredibly special place in my heart. Using Topolino’s Pizza as a method of recharging my body was a transcendent occurrence that really recharged my mind body and soul. At the particular time this ritual went down in my week was the primary object that allowed me to recharge enough to hit the next week as hard as I needed to in order to achieve success. Even more so, the timing of this weekly ritual in my life allowed me to remain sane. While continuing a schedule involving a lot more work than my peers as well as one that I thought I was able to handle, these events allowed me to feel in a more balanced swing of things. My connection and loyalty to Topolino’s runs incredibly deep because of how it was the strongest agent in helping me recover from things in my life that was cutting at my knees.

When I got the joy of reuniting with Topolino’s over this past spring break, a feeling of comfort came back to me. With each bite, I feel like I am being told that things will turn out alright and just to relax. As crazy as it sounds, I would choose the taking part in the capitalization of food-comas over any crazy party after a long week every single time.