What is Good Food?

"In the late 19th Century The British government began a project whereby they started recording oral histories because they were assuming that once the Gold Coast was turned into a colony that it would begin to lose its culture.

It really hadn’t happened but in any case there’s lots of oral histories that come out of that and I discovered that eating good food doesn’t really have so much to do with taste, food is very tasty, but it’s more about ensuring that you’re following the prescribed rules for how to behave, how to eat in such a way that you’re propagating good relations with deities or with ancestors"

"Society over the last few centuries is a society that’s moved continents.. [so]..how does this transnationalism affect the way we store our past, in our recipes, in our everyday meals, in our special meals?

And so that’s why I think it’s really important to understand what we mean by good food especially when we have to take into account every food has a history, every food has a biography.

If we pay more attention to that, we get to taste through and get to understand what that’s like on the palate."

What is good food? A conversation about food decisions made by governments, the market, in the household and among children

Francesca, a PhD researcher in anthropology, affiliated to SOAS and the Thomas Coram Research Unit at UCL’s Institute of Education reflects on her fieldwork among young children in care and at home in London. Mehroosh, who has recently submitted her PhD thesis in development economics at SOAS, looks out from her research into how food decisions effect households in India. Who decides what food should be farmed, what food is available at subsidised prices, and the shape of religious-moral food prohibitions and possibilities?

Hosts:

Francesca Vaghi | twitter: @Francesca_Vaghi

Mehroosh Tak | twitter: @mehr00sh | instagram: @ooshish

Studio production: Anna Cohen

Editor: Mukta Das

Music: Brandi Simpson Miller

With thanks to SOAS Radio.

Music credits:

Double Down by Silent Partner

It's Always Too Late to Start Over by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license [http://chriszabriskie.com/]

Belief by Silent Partner

Next Funk provided by NoCopyright Royalty-Free Musics

What is good food? A conversation about food and the past in Macau and Ghana.

Mukta, a researcher in the anthropology of food at the SOAS Food Studies Centre reflects on the work of chefs involved in gaining UNESCO recognition for Macanese cooking. Brandi, a researcher in history also at SOAS shares stories of the morals of cooking in the Gold Coast in the 19th Century.

Hosts:

Mukta Das | instagram: @muktadasphd | twitter: @muktadas

Brandi Simpson Miller

Studio production: Anna Cohen

Editor: Mukta Das

Music: Brandi Simpson Miller

With thanks to SOAS Radio.

Music credits:

Double Down by Silent Partner

Tribal Song provided by nocopyrightsounds