EE1 Final

Adam Clark Eric Leake Writ-1133 EE1 What can’t be added to meals today Eating has always been about more than just food. Meals traditionally have been times when a family or group of people can communally come around a common meal. These meals had a lot of structure, happening at the same time everyday. It allowed people to come together and form relationships with others. It was also a time to escape from day to day tasks and relax for a while. It showed that food was more of a means of forming and building relationships and not solely eating. These more traditional meals are beginning to disappear though, and are often replaced by fast-unstructured meals. With this shift in meals, food though has kept a meaning beyond just eating. People now gather to do group work with food instead of using food to escape work. These Fast meals are advertised to an audience by appealing to emotions; people like the conveniences and emotions brought on by these advertisements. Foods connections to time and family are fading; people now see meals as more individualistic and add new things to their meals, forming new connections. Traditionally, meals were very scheduled events. Morning breakfast before school or work with family members and a family dinner at the same time every night. Dinner often revolved when parents got off work, being the same time every day. The importance on family meals was high, so families made their schedules around them. A family breakfast allowed communication of each other’s daily plans and family interaction before the work and school day begin. Dinner, a more structured meal, would consist of everyone sitting around the same table for the meal. The daily events of the family members lives could be discussed so everyone knew what happened in each other’s day and it allowed for strong family relationships. It was a time everyone was guaranteed to get to talk with his or her family. Society now though has become much faster paced causing a disconnection with the importance of traditional meals. These traditional meals can be seen as to time consuming to do everyday so families are beginning to go without them. This has made foods connection to family and relationships weaker, but it has brought other connections to food. The connection with food and personal relationships can still be seen with foods new connection to working. Food is now a common place in bringing colleagues together in work places, small meetings and student work groups. Food has migrated to these working groups as people see it as effective multitasking along with a relationship builder. Society has become faster paced, so combining two required daily things together appeals to people as it saves time. Instead of “wasting” time by just talking to someone over a meal, work can now be accomplished. The growth of this trend can be seen by the large growth of restaurants that cater to this atmosphere. Caribou, Starbucks, Panera, and Brueggar’s are all places that offer smaller meals with large places to dine in. In additional to the ideal workspaces provided, most of them offer free Wi-Fi to customers. Scott Hughes a spokesman for Brueggar’s wrote about a shift in the company’s transition supporting the idea that people want the ability to add work to their food. “Hospitality is a major emphasis” of the changes happening at Brueggar’s in recent years (Hughes). This hospitality to costumers is providing a place where they can work while they eat. The convenience of both of this greatly appeals to people and the fast paced society of today who can now add anything to a meal on the go. Foods growing connection to something other than family and becoming individualistic in nature can even be seen in environments under extreme control. Prison spread is food that provides inmates with a way to break away from the scheduled meals and establish prison status. . In Sandra Cate’s piece in “Breaking Bread with a Spread” she describes spreads as foods created by inmates often around a base of ramen noodles (17). Outside prisons people are fading away from scheduled meals, getting food on the go and multi tasking when eating. Spread is the inmates’ way of breaking the scheduled meals of prison. Meals are served at the same time everyday in prison, starting at 5:30 AM. Cate articulates that “spread is eaten on the inmates’ own timetable” (20). This is often sometime after dinner at night, but the inmate can make it when he or she pleases. Spread gives the inmate power to be individualistic, escaping from their very structured lives. Spread has also become a means of expressing power and status for prisoners. Prisons have always had an internal hierarchy within the inmates. Prisoners now are displaying this hierarchy through their spreads. The spreads can become elaborate, requiring a variety of ingredients, so inmates can come together and share with each other forming friendships. These friendships are often radically defined though, another inmate Devon Gray notes (19). This defining of friendships often brings a status meaning to spreads. Spreads are a delicacy so the being able to have the food often brings an element of social and jail status to the food. An inmate Watkins strengthens this idea through stating “ if you and your contemporaries can spread together on a nightly basis, it shows that you have money enough on your books, as well as the strength in numbers” (qtd 19). This equivalent of a traditional meal for inmates is about much more than just building relationships, it saves them and is a passive way to establish their status in prison. Spread came as prisoners wanted to be more individualistic. As spread grew, inmates saw it as a means of displaying their status in the jail because it is a luxury and a means to escape the prison schedule. With foods growing individualistic nature, an emotional connection with food is developing as people can express their emotions through what they eat. With a traditional meal, an emotional connection may have been made, but it was an emotion connected to being happy with family. All emotions are being connected to food now, without a family connection. Products used to be advertised as “the number one…” or “Healthiest….”, but now an emotional connection to a product is often a better means of advertisement. This can be seen through how food products are now advertised to society. Advertising now often looks to appeal to emotions of a consumer rather than providing a product better than its competitors. Coca-Cola is a prime example of appealing to customers’ emotions. A major Coca-Cola campaign used the slogan “Open Happiness”. Its ads often displayed a bottle of coke with these words. The company does not say its product is a good product, its advertising happiness that comes with Coca-Cola. The idea of happiness is enough to attract buyers to a product. Two other advertisements for Goldfish and Cheez-Its were also analyzed with similar results. The goldfish ad featured animated goldfish crackers in a campout telling scary stories. Its audience, younger kids, relate this to having fun with friends in a similar situation. The name of the product in not stated until the end of the advertisement, but the goal is to get the consumers to believe buying the product will bring back more similar emotions that will please the buyer. Cheez-it similarly has a commercial designed to appeal to emotions of a buyer. The Cheese is being immature, cracking pointless jokes. Cheez-its appeal to a slightly old audience than goldfish can relate back to times where they cracked equally pointless jokes, thinking they were funny. Cheez-its then form a connection to enjoyable emotions in the buyers past, causing the buyer to want to purchase Cheez-its to relive those past emotions. This shows a strong growth in connection with food and emotion to express current and past feelings in an individualistic manor. Products are not always purchased because they are the best available, sometimes an emotional connection can cause a consumer to get a product to express a similar emotion it is advertised with. The transition from a traditional meal has brought a great change to how people perceive food. There no longer is a desire for food to be structured and a time away from work. Food has transformed to be just the opposite. People today can add anything to their meals, whether it is work, watching TV, or other multitasking. Today’s fast paced society has encouraged people to add anything to their meals to boost productivity. Food has also lost its once structured nature. Food is now an individualistic way to express oneself and to break other schedules society may make. Meals can now be things to eat on the go expressing food change in both structure and means of taking a break that it once had. People now eat different things to express and feel different emotions connected to a particular product that is advertised to them. These changes show how society has adapted food to tolerate anything to be added to it, allowing people to break a schedule and be individualistic with it. Works Cited Walkup, Carolyn. "Bagel Brands Seek Whole New Image with Fast-casual Makeovers." Nation's Restaurant News 41.16 (2007). ProQuest. Web. 17 Apr. 2012. . Cate, Sandra. "“Breaking Bread with a Spread” in a San Francisco County Jail." Gastronomica 8.3 (2008): 17-24. Print. Horwitz, Jamie. "Eating at the Edge." Gastronomica 9.3 (2009): 42-47. Print.