If real men don’t eat quiche, then what do they eat?
“Meat!” announces world arts and cultures professor Michael Owen Jones in an excessively deep, rumbling voice, as he hunches over a table peering aggressively toward his students.
During most of his lecture for WAC C129/C229 “Food Customs and Symbolism,” Jones is soft-spoken, but this outburst served a purpose: to demonstrate the gender symbolism of food.
Women are normally associated with vegetables and lighter foods, whereas men are associated with meats and heavier foods, Jones explained. Even though both genders often eat a wide variety of foods that do not fit the stereotype, men especially are associated with meat.
“Men will eat meat and heavier foods when they seek to dominate women,” Jones said.
Gender symbolism is just one of the topics discussed in Jones’ course, which also looks at cravings, the sensory aspect of foods, food preparation, the social aspects of eating and how food relates to a person’s identity.
“Our food choices reflect, express, (and) convey our values, our outlook on life and our traits,” Jones said.
Ironically, Jones knows exactly what he likes when it comes to food, and ““surprise ““ it’s not exactly meaty.
“I rather enjoy broccoli and cauliflower,” he said. “I steam my broccoli and cauliflower so they maintain a certain crispness, where the broccoli is kelly green, and season them with salt and freshly ground pepper.”
Jones created and started teaching a foodways class at UCLA in 1974. Foodways is a recent term, referring to “the study of what people eat and why they eat it,” according to georgiaencyclopedia.org.
Jones became interested in this subject after talking to his mother about the change in her diet after she lost her sense of smell.
Since then, after years of studying foodways, Jones has witnessed the common misconception that eating certain foods can offer illuminating information about a person.
“There’s no dictionary of food meanings and food symbolism,” Jones said. “You can’t say, “˜If you eat an Oreo, what does that say about you?’, but (you can say) maybe how many Oreos you eat, when you eat them, or even how you eat an Oreo.”
As students learn in the class, there are some personality traits that become evident by the way people eat.
Jones gave the example of people who sample different things on a plate and, when asked which foods they liked best, reveal that they ate by starting with the ones they liked least, moving around the plate and tasting last the one they liked best.
“This suggests that there is a quality or personality of this individual that emphasizes deferred gratification, putting off something enjoyable … getting other things done first that are more mundane or tedious,” Jones said. “(This is) all manifested right there at the table, at the plate.”
In this foodways course, students can have their class and eat it too.
According to Jaynie Aydin, a graduate student at UCLA who took the course as an undergraduate from Jones in 2002, Jones and other students would bring in foods to taste in class.
“He would bring in foods that he had made and let us sample them,” she said.
Jones explained that he used to bring in food samples from La Brea Bakery.
“My friend owned the La Brea Bakery, so I would bring in unusual breads like cherry chocolate bread and pumpkin seed bread,” Jones said. “(The class and I) were breaking bread together.”
However, food consumption in class has dwindled, since the owner of the bakery sold the store and Jones has not yet found adequately unusual food to share with his students.
But students still find enjoyment in the class, even if not through their taste buds.
For Aydin, Jones was the secret ingredient in the class.
“He’s very available and approachable,” she said. “He is a big “˜foodie.'”
Jones would also show home videos, talk about his own recipes, and bring in an apron from home to wear, Aydin said.
Lauren Akazawa, a third-year studio art student who is currently enrolled in the class, has learned plenty already.
“You wouldn’t think that my choices at the grocery store say something about my identity, but they do,” Akazawa said.
The lessons of WAC C129/C229 stay with students way beyond the quarter’s end.
“I learned that food is interwoven into our lives. It relates to our emotions, health and belief systems,” Aydin said. “It is something that we all have in common ““ our love and hate of food.”