Modern Food: How we are what we eat
What are the costs & conveniences of modern food? From who makes it to what goes in it, we want to re-establish our connection with food and where it comes from.
Course Overview
This course thinks about modern food and our connection with it – who makes it, what goes in it, and how this affects each and every one of us. It examines how our personal choices are shaped by our contexts and environments. This is not a course on “clean” eating or dieting. Instead, we are interested in the intersection of convenience and food – both its importance and its cost when it comes to how we decide to feed ourselves.
Over the 2 days of this weekend intensive, we will focus on bread as an example of a food. We will examine how ultra-processed food disrupts the connection between the food we consume and our bodily responses to it, and consider the labour involved in preparing real food using whole ingredients. We will consider how we might re-establish our connection with food as well as the real opportunity costs of doing so. Put simply, who can do the cooking? Finally, by reflecting on our individual contexts, environments, and food choices, we will establish ways that we might want to change the way we eat.
Each day, we will end the session with a bread-making workshop led by Josefina Venegas Meza, a professional baker & pastry chef who has worked in some of London's best kitchens. In addition to acquiring a practical and valuable skill, we intend this practice-based session to be an opportunity to reflect on the work of making food and what re-establishing a connection with food entails.
You will also receive a comprehensive and exclusive bread-making handbook with all the essential information you might need to refer back to should you wish to continue baking in future.
Who Is This Course For?
Home cooks & professional chefs
Food writers, activists & community organizers
Those involved in anti-capitalist and feminist work
Anyone who wants to be more reflective, intentional and conscious about food
What You'll Learn
- Produce a personal reflection of your individual contexts and choices around food
- Critically examine how convenience around food production impacts is dictated by cost of living, social roles, and capitalist structures
- Learn how to bake a loaf of bread at home yourself
What's Included
Live Sessions
Interactive classes with your instructor
Session Recordings
Lifetime access to all recordings
Community Access
Connect with fellow learners
Certificate
Proof of course completion
Real-World Project
The reflective project begins with the baking of bread. Bread is an illustrative example of the various topics we discuss on the course. It is simple, comprising 4 ingredients (flour, water, salt & yeast), but it allows us to open questions about provenance of ingredients, traceability, sustainability and food systems. In a practical way, this also means you will leave the course having learnt how to bake a loaf for yourself, and therefore have at least one way you can change what and how you consume, should you choose to do so. Each day, we will end the session with a bread-making workshop which will take you step-by-step through the process and is designed for beginners with no prior knowledge assumed. In addition to functioning as a real-world skill, this is a reflective, auto-ethnographic exercise. Having undertaken this project, in class we will reflect on the process of making bread from scratch and by hand - how it felt, what the loaf looks like, where the ingredients came from, etc. This exercise is self-reflexive in spirit and offers the chance for us to reflect on the various questions that have arisen throughout the weekend. Questions to think about might be (but not limited to) on nutrition (i.e., what goes into real bread as opposed to mass-produced, ultra-processed bread), labour (i.e., the physical work involved in making bread), and gender & capitalism (i.e., how this process is often made the responsibility of women in the household or outsourced into factories). The project is also an opportunity to extrapolate and reflect on food production more broadly. Food production is often obscured from view or glossed over in our lives - this project is thus a corrective that encourages us to consider what goes into making food in a conscious, intentional, and reflective way. You are welcome to retain your reflection in a personal journal or disseminate it in a format of your choice – be that an essay, illustrated zine, a video, podcast, or more. Some of the questions to reflect on might be (but not limited to): How does the tactile process of making bread connect us to our food, our bodies, as well as where the ingredients come from? What is the labour that goes behind making food? How has capitalism/industrialism stripped food from its purpose of nourishing the body? How does feminism affect the nature of domestic labour?
Session Schedule
About the Instructors
Food Writer
Born in Chile, I came to the UK to study Literature (PhD, King's College London). Subsequently, I trained as a baker and have since worked in various kitchens in London, including Michelin-starred restaurants and am currently authoring my first cookbook. I believe in cooking with whole ingredients and that through the food we make we can create the kind of world we want to inhabit – diverse, considered and one that connects us more to our roots, land and communities. To be conscious about what we eat puts our individual selves at the centre of a complex network of critical environmental, social and political choices.
Pavan Mano, PhD
Co-instructorCultural theorist
Pavan Mano is a cultural theorist working in contemporary literature and cultural studies. His teaching and research engages with critical and literary theory, and he is interested in culture broadly speaking as a collection of systems that govern how we live. Pavan's first monograph, Straight Nation (Manchester UP, 2025) examines postcolonial nationalism in Singapore and how states can cultivate cultural ideas of "good" and "bad" members of society. He is currently working on a new project around the politics of food and cuisine.
1 Course Credit
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Need financial support?
We believe learning should be accessible. A limited number of partial scholarships are available for those who would not otherwise be able to join.
If cost is the only barrier, we invite you to apply thoughtfully below.
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July 4
25 students max
2 days
180 min / day
