Doctoral Dissertation Research: Agricultural Modernization and Traditional Food Knowledge Systems

快节奏的生活方式，以及大规模的商业化食品工业，导致了传统食品体系的崩溃。营养科学已经广泛表明，传统食品的消失对社会不利，因为它们提供了健康、环境和经济效益。这种损失可能是非常有害的，就像在美国一样，因为传统饮食的替代加剧了肥胖症的流行。最近，作为倡导可持续饮食倡议的一部分，传统饮食的推广再次浮出水面。然而，有必要了解这些传统粮食系统的知识和做法是如何丧失、保留或改变的。该项目除了为培训一名人类学研究生提供资金，使其掌握严格收集和分析数据的科学方法外，还将使更广泛的受众参与科学进程，并向投资于优化农业生产技术的组织广泛传播其研究结果。 梅勒妮·纳西索在弗吉尼亚·纳扎里亚博士的指导下，将调查农业现代化对传统食品知识和实践的影响。这项拟议的研究重点是通过研究菲律宾的发酵大米传统，对大规模农业现代化，绿色革命（GR）的烹饪和美食的影响。从20世纪60年代开始，GR在地球仪的水稻社会中引进了现代水稻品种、早熟、抗病虫害和高产水稻品种。据报道，这些品种将取代传统的水稻品种，缩小遗传水稻的基础，并彻底改变水稻景观的口味，气味和质地。这项研究质疑，如果由此产生的遗传侵蚀和感官转变只是惰性现象，没有社会影响。它特别探讨了产量品种的材料操纵是否会在多大程度上转化为传统食品知识的丧失。使用民族志和食品与营养科学方法的结合，调查人员将探讨Candaba镇大米供应的多样性和理化特性的变化，Candaba镇是一个以发酵大米传统而闻名的水稻种植社区。他们将探索这些大米材料特性的变化如何改变对大米的认知，以及随后他们如何准备和消费发酵大米。这将提供证据，如何消失的许多传统水稻品种和水稻的材料特性影响人类与他们的食物环境的相互作用，以及这是如何侵蚀和/或促进文化食品知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Fast-paced lifestyles, and a massive and commercialized food industry, have contributed to the breakdown of traditional food systems. Nutritional science has already extensively demonstrated that the disappearance of traditional foods is disadvantageous to society because of the health, environmental and economic benefits they offer. The loss can be acutely detrimental, as it has been in the U.S., as the replacement of traditional diets has aggravated an obesity epidemic. Recently, the promotion of traditional diets has re-surfaced as part of initiatives advocating sustainable diets. There is, however, a need to understand how the knowledge and practice of such traditional food systems are lost, kept or modified. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in scientific methods of rigorous data collection and analysis, the project would engage a wider audience in the scientific process, and broadly disseminate its findings to organizations invested in optimizing agricultural production technologies. Melanie Narciso, under the direction of Dr. Virginia Nazarea, will investigate the repercussions of agricultural modernization on traditional food knowledge and practice. This proposed research focuses on the culinary and gastronomic impact of a large-scale agricultural modernization, the Green Revolution (GR), through the study of fermented rice traditions in the Philippines. Starting in the 1960s, the GR introduced modern rice varieties, fast-maturing, pest and disease resistant and high yielding rice varieties in rice societies across the globe. These have been reported to replace traditional rice varieties, narrowing the genetic rice base and revolutionizing the rice landscape's tastes, odors, and textures. This research questions if the resulting genetic erosion and sensory transitions are merely inert phenomena without social ramifications. It specifically explores whether, and if so, to what extent material manipulation of yield varieties translate into traditional food knowledge loss. Using a combination of ethnography and food and nutritional science methodologies, the investigators will probe into the changes in the diversity and physico-chemical properties of the rice supply in the town of Candaba, a GR technology adopting rice farming community known for its fermented rice traditions. They will explore how these changes in material properties of rice alter cognitive perceptions of rice, and subsequently how they prepare and consume their fermented rice. This will provide evidence how the disappearance of many traditional rice varieties and the material properties of rice influence human interaction with their food environments, and how this erodes and/or promotes cultural food knowledge. This will inform programmatic efforts on crop improvement, sustainable diet promotion and biocultural diversity conservation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.