Deck 6: Foodways: Foinding, Making, and Eating Food

Question 1

Anthropologists study the diversity of diets, the complex interactions between nutrition and the environment, cultural beliefs surrounding food, and political and economic processes, meaning that they study food

A) ethnocentrically.
B) structurally.
C) indifferently.
D) holistically.

Answer 1

D

Question 2

The human diet is

A) vegan.
B) vegetarian.
C) carnivorous.
D) omnivorous.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Anthropologist Sidney Mintz observes that most people around the world usually

A) eat only plants.
B) eat only animals.
C) do not eat much dairy.
D) eat a common patterned diet of core-legume-fringe foods.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Why was meat eating important for human evolution?

A) It breaks down toxins in the body.
B) It provides high-quality protein for human brain development.
C) It provides us with more muscle.
D) It is not important for human evolution.

Question 5

Mary Douglas compared food's structure in society with _______________ and a formal dinner with a _______________.

A) theatre; play
B) music; opera
C) language; sentence
D) sports; game

Question 6

Eating practices are

A) unique to each culture, and rarely show similarities across cultures.
B) disconnected from political and economic processes in a society.
C) influenced only by elders in a society.
D) marked by identities such as gender, age, and ethnic group.

Question 7

Foodways are subject to large-scale industrial processes, trade relationships, and trends, suggesting that they are

A) stable.
B) irrational.
C) isolated.
D) dynamic.

Question 8

Which theory would analyze the distinction between raw and cooked food as a distinction between the binaries of nature and culture?

A) Structuralism
B) Functionalism
C) Cultural materialism
D) Historical particularism

Question 9

Food security refers to

A) protecting food from contamination.
B) access to sufficient nutritious food to be healthy and active.
C) government subsidies to agriculture to ensure a steady food supply.
D) providing food to all people equally.

Question 10

The structured beliefs and behaviors surrounding the production, distribution, and consumption of food is referred to by anthropologists as

A) horticulture.
B) intensification.
C) life systems.
D) foodways.

Question 11

A process that increases yields and includes prepping soil, technology, a large labor force, water management, and plant and soil modification is

A) transhumance.
B) industrialization.
C) intensification.
D) localization.

Question 12

Why do foragers turn to agriculture?

A) Foraging is too difficult and time-consuming
B) Agriculture provides a better diet
C) Increased population density causes too much competition for resources
D) Old age

Question 13

Most human diets follow a common pattern.

Question 14

It is unusual for human adults to be able to digest milk.

Question 15

There are more undernourished people than obese and overweight people in the world.

Question 16

In many parts of the world food is a very important way of communicating social identity.

Question 17

The principles of agroecology are at the heart of industrial agriculture.

Question 18

What pivotal evolutionary shift happened around 1.8 to 2 million years ago that is closely related to human foodways?

A) Primates walked bipedally
B) Meat consumption increased
C) Humans learned to make tools
D) Humans developed language

Question 19

Why was symbolic anthropologist Mary Douglas so interested in Jewish dietary laws?

A) Because they were a way to communicate symbolic piety
B) Because they helped people avoid disease
C) Because they are wrong
D) Because they are strictly biological

Question 20

What is the most important thing that the core-legume-fringe dietary pattern indicates about how people eat?

A) They love carbohydrates most of all
B) Relishes define a tasty meal
C) There is a common general pattern of how people around the world eat
D) The intersections between culture and biology

Question 21

A key component of nutritional anthropology as defined by Audrey Richards was attention to the

A) eating of food.
B) manner in which food is grown.
C) interrelationship between biology, health, ecology, political-economic, and cultural concerns.
D) ecological conditions necessary for growing nutritious food.

Question 22

Anthropologists are interested in the nutrition transition because

A) it explains widespread changes in bodily form, eating patterns, and everyday life in urban settings.
B) it directs attention to the spread of nutritious food because of industrial agriculture.
C) it will aid the creation of sustainable agriculture.
D) it demonstrates in a powerful way how foodways mark social boundaries.

Question 23

Which of the following is not true of how food preferences relate to gender?

A) Men always love meat, no matter which culture they are from.
B) Foods take on qualities associated with one gender or another.
C) Men and women are enculturated to eat certain foods.
D) Foods are linked to gender-appropriate behaviors.

Question 24

One of the main reasons agricultural intensification interests anthropologists is that

A) pastoralists and foragers practice it.
B) it's the basis of industrial agriculture, which is the only viable way to feed large populations.
C) it often leads to overproduction.
D) there are many strategies for achieving it.

Question 25

For anthropologists, what is important about the existence of differences between populations in the ability to digest milk?

A) The absence of genetic aspects of the practice among humans
B) The way human children innately crave cow's milk
C) The lack of social and political power of the milk industry
D) The ways cultural beliefs and practices can support milk consumption

Question 26

Long-term damage to soil quality is typical of

A) pastoralism.
B) foraging.
C) horticulture.
D) intensification.

Question 27

Slash-and-burn agriculture adds what to the soil?

A) Pesticides
B) Nitrogen
C) Oxygen
D) Hydrogen

Question 28

The recent popularity of local, organic foods in certain places is an illustration of globalization.

Question 29

Foodways rarely change because people are conservative.

Question 30

Foragers tend work less to survive than agriculturalists or pastoralists.

Question 31

Societies tend to stick with one mode of subsistence.

Question 32

A structuralist approach to the study of a large banquet would emphasize the

A) spatial placement of the food on the table.
B) manner in which social relations were structured around the table.
C) oppositions and contrasts in foods that help people make sense of the banquet.
D) food taboos that prevent some people from eating certain things.

Question 33

An anthropologist who promotes principles of agroecology would likely view horticulture as

A) based on inadequate and inappropriate agricultural techniques.
B) better than pastoralism as an adaptation to nature.
C) completely opposed to the principles of agroecology.
D) useful to learn new principles about sustainable farming.

Question 34

A nutritional anthropologist who studies the nutrition transition would probably focus on all of the following except

A) changes in bodily form associated with urbanization.
B) changes in residential patterns and mobility associated with urbanization.
C) the labor conditions of migrant workers.
D) changes in ideas about what is healthy food.

Question 35

A cultural relativist would be most likely to emphasize that pastoralists

A) are living backward lives and need to modernize.
B) are inefficient in their adaptation to nature.
C) have developed effective social institutions and knowledge that ensure long-term sustainability of the landscape.
D) are a relatively new example of cultural adaptation to nature.

Question 36

Do you think an anthropologist studying pastoralism in a non-Western setting, such as Ethiopia or Sudan, could offer useful insights about rangeland management to ranchers in a US state like Wyoming or Texas? Explain your answer.

Question 37

Is knowledge of how horticulture in small-scale societies works useful for rethinking how agriculture works in our society?

Question 38

One of Mary Douglas's major insights is that the ancient Israelites used food to communicate symbolic piety. Give an example of how people today might use food to communicate symbolic piety.

Question 39

Choose a meal you like to eat. Apply a foodways perspective to analyze it.

Question 40

Discuss areas in American life where you see a nutrition transition taking place. Can you apply insights about those processes by applying insights from the textbook?

Question 41

If you were asked to analyze food insecurity in your community as an anthropologist, what perspectives and concerns would you bring to the issue?

Question 42

What are the major commonalities and differences in the human diet?

Question 43

How does gender differentiation help organize women's and men's food preferences?

Question 44

How and why do social relationships differ in distinct modes of subsistence such as foraging, horticulture, and pastoralism?

Question 45

Is there a biocultural logic to the foodways in which you are involved? What is it?