Summer SAVY, Session 2 Day 5, Culinary Anthropology: Exploring Food and Culture (5th-6th)
Dear Families,
As we wrap up our final day of Culinary Anthropology, we want to take a moment to reflect on what a thoughtful, energetic, and inspiring group of young scholars we’ve had the joy of working with this week. Their curiosity and creativity have made each day a delight.
Today, we took a walking field trip to Vanderbilt’s Latin American Ethnobotanical Garden, where students practiced listening to plants. Anthropology is the study of what it means to be human… and humans rely on the environment around them, especially plants, for survival, culture, cuisine, and medicine. Students sketched plants, made observations, and hypothesized about the role different plants play in food and healing traditions. Each student is heading home with a mint plant—an edible reminder of our day’s explorations!
Back in the classroom, we turned our attention to some of the biggest challenges in our food system. Building on Wednesday’s questions, like Who grows our food, and Are they treated fairly? or What is the environmental impact of food production?, students added new concerns: What happens to food waste? Is healthy food equally available to everyone? Working together, students created problem and solution maps to visualize these issues. We talked about the difference between acting as an individual consumer and acting as a food citizen – someone who works with others to make the food system more fair, just, sustainable, and nourishing for everyone.
To wrap up our week, students created Food Citizen Commitment Posters, identifying a food system issue they care about and one action (big or small) they can take toward meaningful change. We ended our day with a sweet and savory treat: Sopa Paraguaya—a cornbread dish from Paraguay affectionately known as the world’s only “solid soup.”
How You Can Support Your Student at Home:
- Ask About Today’s Experiences: Invite your child to tell you about their walk in the ethnobotanical garden or what cause they chose for their food citizen commitment.
- Explore Ethnobotany Together: Take a nature walk and talk about the plants you see. What do they smell like? What do they feel like? How might they be used in cooking or medicine?
- Keep Thinking Like an Anthropologist: Encourage your student to continue using their field notebook at home, jotting down questions or observations about food, where it comes from, and how it’s shared in your own family and community.
It has been our pleasure spending this week with your young scholars. We sure had a fantastic time and hope they gained an enthusiasm for applying an anthropological lens to the food they eat!
Warm regards,
Ms. Kathryn and Ms. Andrea
