Food Roots &amp; Today’s Pantry: The Multiple Meanings of “Thrifty Know-How” among Older African American Women

Katherine Lambert-Pennington,Lyndsey Pender

doi:10.5195/aa.2020.265

Abstract

In this article we put the themes of gender, agency, food tradition, and time, which are central to the food studies literature into conversation with the research on aging and food security to offer an intersectional analysis of older African-American women’s foodways. In particular, we explore how income, age, gender, and time intertwine to inform older African-American women’s everyday actions and activities related to food provisioning, including shopping, cooking, and eating. Grounding our analysis in a “food tense” perspective, we examine how past experiences shape current food acquisition strategies and preferences, and how seniors’ desires for health and longevity serve as a cornerstone of future foodways. Further, we consider food tradition, food knowledge, and thrifty know-how, as a forms of gendered cultural capital, that generate alternative resources, meanings, and explanations of older women’s foodways. This multidimensional and future inclusive approach to understanding seniors’ food resources not only challenges the point-in-time, income-expenditure, and life course frameworks used in food security research, but provides insights into the complex and fluid factors that shape seniors’ orientation and relationship to food.

Highlights

Much of the existing scholarship on aging and food has assessed food security among older adults (Nord 2003; Frongillo and Horan 2004) or has emphasized the ways that seniors’ present-day food habits and nutritional status impact their overall well-being (Wolfe, Frongillo, and Valois 2003; Lee and Frongillo 2001; Ahmed and Haboubi 2010)
We begin to bridge this gap, by placing the measurements and concerns emphasized in the aging and food security literature in conversation with the themes of food tradition, gendered food labor, and agency to explore the foodways of a group of older African American women in the U.S South
While previous literature on food access and security among older adults often interpret thrift as a cost saving measure, we argue that older African American women’s “thrifty know-how” represents a form of cultural capital (Beagan, Chapman, and Power 2016) that is employed to meet diverse social, cultural, financial, and health goals

Summary

Introduction

Much of the existing scholarship on aging and food has assessed food security among older adults (Nord 2003; Frongillo and Horan 2004) or has emphasized the ways that seniors’ present-day food habits and nutritional status impact their overall well-being (Wolfe, Frongillo, and Valois 2003; Lee and Frongillo 2001; Ahmed and Haboubi 2010). We don't ever have any fried foods.” Participants’ attention to the homecooked quality of senior center food and the emphasis they place on maintaining a selection of unprocessed childhood staples like vegetables, meat, and dairy in their homes, further suggest the ways taste and values cultivated in childhood shape the foods they eat and assign meaning to in the present.

Results

Conclusion