Less Palatable, Still Valuable: Taste, Agrobiodiversity, and Culinary Heritage
People across the world eat many things that they would readily admit are not
particularly tasty. Contexts include economic boycotts, dietary restrictions,
ritual meals, and hunger. Taking into consideration that taste and
palatability are culturally conditioned, this special issue of Food, Culture,
and Society explores the relationship between taste and value by focusing upon
cultivated and wild food plants that are perceived to be socio-culturally
important even as they are characterized as bland, less delicious, and even
“bad.” This special issue brings attention to cases in which edible plants
considered less palatable are valued because they contribute to
agrobiodiversity, healthfulness or well-being, symbolism, ritual use, or as
culinary heritage.
This special issue considers the following questions: How
do taste and value intersect and affect each other? When do communities savor
less appealing flavors? What do social patterns, semiotics, and historical
changes tell us about the place of distinctly less appealing, sometimes even
unappealing, flavors and food crops? How do sociocultural factors, including
environmental conservation, healthfulness, and the maintenance of tradition
shape the valuation of taste? In pondering these questions, the articles in
this special issue will suggest ways of incorporating the “less delicious”
into the safeguarding of agrobiodiversity and culinary heritage and the
promotion of healthful foodways. In this way, this issue as a whole will
contribute a new dimension to studies of conservation, heritage, and nutrition
by exploring when and why people eat what their taste buds do not find most
delicious and practical ways to protect and promote edible plants with less
appealing taste profiles.
Papers on underrepresented cultivated or wild edible plants that emphasize the
diversity of social conceptions of “taste” and deliciousness are particularly
welcomed, as are those that examine the links between the socio-cultural
constructions of taste and biodiversity maintenance or loss. The special issue
will incorporate a broad geographic scope, including “less delicious” food
crops in Japan, India, and indigenous Papua New Guinea and Brazil. Papers that
complement these case studies will be considered, especially those focusing on
regions such as Africa, Europe, and Southeast Asia.
If you are interested in submitting a paper to the special issue, please send
an abstract to Greg de St. Maurice (
gregdestmaurice@ad.ryukoku.
ac.jp) and
Theresa Miller (
millerth@si.edu) by
28 January 2016. The deadline for complete
first drafts of papers is
June 2016.
