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Overview of the Pilot Curriculum General Education Requirement
2004-2005 Pilot Curriculum General Requirement Course Descriptions

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Course Description:

Food is a biological essential for humans— one that has been elaborated and transformed in many ways through history, and given a variety of cultural signatures. This course will consider food from a variety of perspectives. In doing so, it will emphasize how food can only be understood when examined from the point of view of different disciplines. It will also serve as a medium for promoting critical thinking and quantitative skills, particularly through exercises in data collection (both observation and experiment), basic statistics and interpretation of results. There will be an opportunity to participate in tastings of particular classes of foods and to participate in one or a few exotic ethnic meals. Topics will include:

• Food choice in animals and in pre-cultural humans
• The history of food production (particularly agriculture and domestication) by humans
• Basic human nutrition
• Taste, smell and flavor
• The origin and development of animal and human food preferences
• The cultural history of specific foods, including meat, milk, chocolate, chili pepper, tomatoes and potatoes
• The function of food in daily life in a range of cultures including hunter-gatherers, and contemporary France, India, and the USA
• The cultural evolution of cuisine
• Food marketing
• The epidemiological revolution and its effect on the diet-health link and the way people think about food and health
• Basic statistics and the evaluation of clinical trials and other forms of evidence for a link between diet and health
• First world concerns about long term effects of diet and body image
• The regulation of food intake, obesity and eating disorders
• Evaluation of how food functions as a symbol
• Ambivalence to food and the emotion of disgust
• Vegetarianism

Most reading will be from secondary sources, but a number of original empirical articles from the diet-health, historical, psychological, and anthropological literature will be included.

Each student will be responsible for submitting four brief reports (1 to 2 pages, double spaced) of empirical projects and three brief critical or analytical papers (2 to 3 pages); there will be an open-book examination at the conclusion of the course.

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