Summer SAVY, Session 2 Day 2, Culinary Anthropology: Exploring Food and Culture (5th-6th)
Dear Parents,
We’re grateful for another rich day of Culinary Anthropology with your curious and thoughtful students!
Today, we explored how our food preferences are shaped by family, culture, and community. We began with a classic ethnographic activity: making kinship charts. This exercise helped students map out their family relationships and reflect on how family structures vary widely across cultures. From there, we examined our own food preferences and discussed how factors like ethnicity, religion, gender, and personal values influence what we eat.
In the afternoon, we watched excerpts from The Search for General Tso (2014), a documentary that examines how a Chinese-American dish—not a traditional Chinese recipe, but an American invention inspired by Chinese cuisine and tailored to U.S. tastes—became an icon of Chinese food in the United States. This sparked vibrant questions about globalization, the blending of culinary traditions, and how ideas of “authenticity” often reflect cultural negotiation and adaptation. To finish the day, we cooked and enjoyed General Tso Tofu together—a plant-based take on this distinctly hybrid dish.
How you can support your student:
- Talk About Today’s Activities: Ask your child about their kinship chart, food identity collage, or their reflections on The Search for General Tso. What new insights did they gain about food and culture?
- Share Your Own Culinary Stories: Are there fusion foods your family enjoys? Have you ever adapted a recipe passed down from a parent or grandparent? How has cultural blending shaped your family’s food traditions?
- Explore Food Through Film: For families interested in continuing the conversation at home, here are a few thought-provoking documentaries and films that delve into the cultural, political, and emotional dimensions of food: Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Eat Drink Man Woman, Soul Food Junkies, Jadoo, Spinning Plates, and City of Gold.
Tomorrow, we’ll continue our exploration of culinary anthropology by learning more about the production, processing, and distribution of the food we eat. We are eager to continue this journey of discovery with your children. Thank you for nurturing a passion for learning in your young scholars.
Warm regards,
Ms. Kathryn and Ms. Andrea
