10/14/2019
Here's a fabulous post about re-connecting all the movements associated with eating a food to the experience of eating it!
As I'm writing Grow Wild, I'm trying to define the term SNACKTIVITY, as I use it. Activity implies something is happening, snacks are a bit of food; together they make "something is happening for a bit of food" also known as a 'snacktivity', which most often are fun, edible crafts.
I tend to use the term in the or "stacking" sense, where the primary consideration of snacktivities is restoring the movement that naturally occurs with a food and the responsibility of an individual's movement in the human food system. Snacktivities, then, would include growing, foraging, harvesting, and food-related tool making movements, as well as the movements that go into making/cooking and eating (chewing!) the items at the end of the chain.
In 43 years I've eaten thousands of popped corn pieces but I've never done any movements for that snack beyond cooking and eating it. Yesterday we harvested a crop of popping corn at a local farm and it was a dynamic, glorious bit of time learning about the plant, filling our bags, being outside with other animals, playing, and just hanging out.
Snacktivities, yes, can add fun to food, but you can expand the concept to also increase the movement, dietary nutrients, plant knowledge, food knowledge (including which peoples originally cultivated this plant, and when and where, originally), responsibility, play, nature, and community found in a snack.
P.S. We made tamales afterward and used the discarded husks.
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