Salty Marshmallow

Alexandra Saad

 

Wake up, breathe, and live.

We all share daylight and darkness, sun and moon.

We are all standing on the same piece of land.

We are so alike.

 

We are so different.

You own this land; I borrow it.  

Am I in your territory?

Is that how you feel?

After all, we are all humans.

 

We are the same species, Homo Sapiens.

Claim to be the same; need to be different.

Identity matters.   Culture is present.

Quiet outsider, loud observer.

I am an immigrant.

 

Standing on borrowed territory for three months has been enough time to realize how substantial culture is. The more I explore, the more discoveries of self-identity I encounter.   Fortunately, the fact of being an immigrant on US land has not stolen my identity, but instead   has brought it out from me.   For the first time, my identity becomes tangible; it magically appears in front of my eyes.   I am able not only to see it, but also to hear it when it talks to me about extraordinary things I have never heard. Individuality flourishes as a comparison arises between the outside and the inside.   This self-consciousness of who I am, where I come from, and what I am used to, is responsible for provoking the different reactions and emotions that I experience every day.   The smallest and most transparent things develop into solid, tangible and visible objects as my attention is alerted and a response takes place.   This is exactly what happened when I visited a public elementary school in Massachusetts,   and observed the students in the cafeteria during their lunch hour.   Observing children having lunch can be the simplest and most common experience , but for me it turned into a great source of information that made me consciousness of my culture.   The opening of their lunchboxes was a mysterious scene; the unwrapping of the food was a revelation; the first bite was the inspiration for these words.   I was witnessing the transformation of transparent setting into a black and white picture. As a student in Colombia I attended the school cafeteria every day to have lunch. I spent my elementary, middle and high school years seated at the same table,   accompanied by the same people, and probably using the same aluminum utensils,   but most importantly,   eating the same kind of food for almost a decade.   This experience in Colombia is still very vivid; I can recall it as if it was yesterday,   even though over six years have passed since the day I stopped having lunch seated on those benches.

Every Monday through Friday at 12 p.m., my friends and I would run towards the cafeteria.   Minutes later after leaving the classroom, we enjoyed some fruit, followed by a bowl of hot soup,   juice,    a full meal accompanied by salad   and finally a dessert.   This was my regular lunch throughout the school years.   It may sound like a lot of food, but calorie and fat-wise, it was not very rich. Instead, it was a complete and balanced lunch.   In fact, it was the same type of food we would enjoy in our homes. What we were experiencing at school during lunchtime was simply an extension of the Colombian customs implemented in our houses.   A Friday lunch at school and a Saturday lunch at home were consistent in style.   Perhaps, the school's food did not taste quite as good as that cooked at home, but I was aware that it was not the same to cook for seven hundred students as it was to cook a meal for a single family. But one way or another, they were both homemade meals,   and consisting of products I cannot find in any other place in the world; products that cannot be translated into any other language.   Using Spanish would be the only way to pronounce them, and using my imagination would be the only way to taste them in foreign territory.

The table below depicts   a regular week's menu at the school I graduated from,   Colegio Los Nogales:

http://www.nogales.edu.co/2005/contenido/documentos/MENU.htm

While I was translating this table from Spanish to English, I not only realized how much I missed the food I grew up with, but also how the world was turning into a perfect map where countries were clearly separated from the each other; one color for every country.[clarification?] For the first time, those colors did not have a political connotation but were all about culture.   How can I have survived over twenty years without having been aware of my own culture?   Education, through schools, should definitely be part of providing this self-understanding.  

The food served these days in a Colombian school is precisely what I used to eat six years ago; which shows how things have not changed. The same system exists.   Not only is the food nutritious,, it is also complete in terms of containing protein, carbohydrate, and vegetable.   The main dish is always accompanied by white rice.    This grain is always part of our meals.   Eating the beef, chicken, pork or fish without the rice would not be right; something would be missing.   The rice is as important for the Colombian meals as, for example, the wine is for the Italians or the bread is for the French.   What can I say is the essential ingredient in US meals? How can I solve this analogy? [IS THE PRECEEDING SENTENCE NECESSARY?] Continuing with the lunch menu I had back during those school days in Colombia, I also remember that along with the rice there was always another side dish of potato, plantain or yucca.   These side possibilities were presented in different ways, such as potato chips, steamed potato with parsley, potato chorreada (tomato, onions and cheese sauce), sweet plantains, tostones , baked plantain with cheese and guava paste, fried yucca and steamed yucca. Recapitulating, the main course always came with rice and one of the side dishes mentioned above.   One may be thinking that one of the reasons of having all these choices for lunch is the fact that these products are some of the main agricultural goods grown on Colombian land.   If this is the reason why we eat them, why did I not see them in the school cafeteria in Massachusetts,   as these are also produced in the United States?   Again, I think the answer is that we [WHO?] are different.   We have a different culture.   We have different customs.   Making it simple, we eat differently.

The Columbian lunch menu may sound very fancy, but describing it here is not my only intention. Instead, I want to compare my childhood menu with the foods served in American school cafeterias.    In order to understand better, it is important to be aware of the history of this scenario.   While the school in Colombia wanted to transition smoothly   from home to school by offering familiar foods,   twentieth century American school cafeterias were used to create a new American cuisine that disrupted what immigrant children encountered at home.   Advocates [A:   Consider saying who these advocates are--pull from below where you mention the home economics people] hoped that by adopting this American cuisine, immigrant students would change their eating habits and become Americanized (Spring, 2005).   The purpose of Americanizing students was a consistent idea behind education as a protective response to the threat of losing the Anglo-American culture to cultural pluralism.   Were schools trying to provide that self-understanding of the culture that I claimed before to have been lacking during my education? Or was it instead an attack on immigrant cultures?

School cafeterias have been serving food in accordance with proposals by home economics advocates   of the New American Diet since the late-nineteenth century. The diet   consisted of prepackaged and frozen food that was ready to eat; simple instructions were attached to them .[Check accuracy of this statement. Didn't prepackaged and frozen food appear in the mid-19 th century?]   The principal idea was to stop cooking at home where there was no sanitary control, and instead buy prepared foods that were not only made under better sanitary conditions but also allowed women more time in their schedules; time they could devote to more intellectual activities, such as education. The whole idea was to free women and allow them to move from producer to consumer (Spring, 2005).   Through research, industries were finding ways to conserve food in cans; all kind of products were starting to be available in cans, from meats, to soups to whole meals.   It was argued that this new system provided a balanced diet to American families.   The argument against preservatives was less important than saving precious time. [A:   Is preceding sentence necessary?]  

Workingwomen were definitely benefiting from this new idea, but what about children? Who was benefiting from implementing this food style in their school cafeterias?   It was definitely not the students.   The cooks at school were also trying to use time more wisely.   If cooking was their job why would they want to save time ? Nowadays, when schools are constantly attacked about the unhealthy food they offer in the cafeteria, they defend themselves by saying that there are no kitchens at school where they can cook, so that instead they have to buy everything prepared, and just heat it up . [A: Just curious:   IS THIS THE CASE FOR ALL SCHOOLS?   STATISTICS ON THIS?] Then I asked, how is it possible that a school has no equipped kitchen? Is not eating as important as learning in the classrooms? I am afraid the answer is no. I came to the conclusion that there is no time to eat. I see people eating while they are stressfully driving or sitting in front of the computer while being completely absorbed by the machine. What happened to what I used to call breakfast, lunch and dinner?   [CONSIDER INCLUDING LENGTH OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN SCHOOL LUNCH RELATIVE TO COLOMBIAN]

Students in US schools grow up with junk food, candy bars, and sodas. Their first choice for lunch is pizza and french fries (Zanger, 2005).   After eating these favorites for decades, health advocates want to take them away from children and ban them at schools. For instance, New Jersey and Connecticut have already approved a legislation that bans, from almost all school cafeterias, any food that as a first ingredient has sugar ( Applebome, 2005) .   It is never too late, people say, and I agree, but unfortunately they are hundreds of children who are already suffering the consequences of a culture trying to create a world where living is at a very high speed and there is not time to waste.   Cooking is a waste of time so eating unhealthy food, albeit food created under sanitary conditions, is the choice.   Today's students do not want to give up their treats.   They are used to them; it is totally understandable.   They grew up with them.    Culture appears again. (See attachment for an American School Lunch Menu).

There was a point at which some students began bringing lunches from home.   The peanut butter and jelly sandwich was a popular lunch option, but with all the nut allergies that are common now among children, schools have begun to call themselves peanut and tree nut free environments .   Therefore, those who had a peanut butter sandwich as a source of protein from Monday through Friday,   have had to come up with something more creative.   And what can be more creative than a marshmallow sandwich? Yes! It is called Fluff. It is marshmallow cream between two slices of bread. The bread is obviously whole wheat or seven grain, and there is no more than fluff that goes into it.   Where is the lettuce and tomato?   I miss the color.   The cafeteria turned black and white as I discovered this new food revelation, which is easy and very fast to make .   Mission accomplished?   Time is used wisely.   This is a product that has been out on the market for over eighty years, but I saw it for the first time a month ago.   I insist that it is all about culture. [A:   Define "It" do you mean that Fluff's making its way into the American lunch is a reflection of culture"]   I hope it is clear that I do not have anything against the Fluff, which, despite what I believed, does not have any artificial coloring or preservatives, and is a low calorie food.   I find it extraordinary that while some people are eating rice and beans, others are enjoying a marshmallow Fluff sandwich .   While watching students at lunch, I felt something was missing on the plate. Excuse me, there was not even a plate; a Ziploc bag and a napkin was all they needed.      Is this how immigrants feel when their diet is changed for the American cuisine?   When changes are enforced, we unconsciously reject them; changes are difficult to digest .

There is no best or worst between meat and rice, and a marshmallow sandwich, they just express different cultures and systems of living. Food can be the mirror of our cultural backgrounds.   While many questions remain unanswered, a statement remains accurate: tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.   I am not the one to judge which food system works better,   I only want to provide a different perspective to all those thousands of articles that are written daily about the unhealthy food served in schools.   My intention is to make them [WHO IS 'THEM'?] see that children are [CONIDER 'MAY BE'] rejecting these changes as a natural response to losing what they have liked [CONSIDER 'BEEN ACCUSTOMED TO'] for hundreds of years.   It is never too late   [HOW ABOUT 'NOT A BAD THING']to give color to a black and white scenario, but do not through [CONSIDER 'BUT PERHAPS NOT WITH'] all the colors at the same time.   Applying a [SINGLE] tone at a time works better [CONSIDER 'MIGHT BE MORE EFFECTIVE'].    [A:   The last lines of this article(in bold)   seem less strong than what comes before.   Consider]

* http://www.arlington.k12.ma.us/hardy/menu.htm

References

Applebome, P (2005, June) Taking Candy From Schoolchildren Isn't So Easy After All.   New York

    Times , 154, 25.

Durkee-Mower.   Marshmallow Fluff.   Retrieved December 4, 2005, from  

    http://www.marshmallowfluff.com/htm/welcome.shtml

Mulvey, K (2005, August).   Unhealthy risks for kids tip scale.   USA Today , 12a.   Retrieved

    December 1, 2005, from Academic Search Premiere.

Poey, V (2003). Fictional grounds and culinary maps. In Journal for Pedagogy, Pluralism & Practice .  

    Retrieved December 5, 2005, from http://www.lesley.edu/journals/jppp/7/poey1.html

Spring, J (2005).   The American school: 1642-2004 (6th ed.).   New York: McGraw Hill.

Zanger, M (2005).   What's for lunch?   Education Next, 5.3, 18-25.   Retrieved December 1, 2005, from    

    Expanded Academic ASAP.

Author bio:

Alexandra Saad is associate professor and director of the Division of Interdisciplinary Inquiry at Lesley University. She teaches courses in history and interdisciplinary studies. Her research interests focus on the