This dissertation examines how women’s food writing, from blogs to cookbooks to novels, demonstrate a desire to articulate themselves as people within communities rather than accept a dehumanized identity as a consumer or set of credit-card numbers. I argue that through an emphasis on connection with one another via a discourse of scratch cooking and locally sourced foods, women are able to push back against the hegemony of corporate food and industrial agriculture. Working from a case study model, each of my chapters examines the distinct ways in which women assert their personhood apart from the homogenizing influences of mainstream food culture. As a means of articulating this woman’s culinary culture, predicated on a foundation of scratch cooking and local ingredients and relationships, I examine the food blog Fed Up With Lunch and the author’s use of an anonymous persona to interrogate the federal school lunch program; feminist vegetarian and vegan cookbooks authored by collectives of women who rely on oppositional identities in order to push back against what they view as hegemony; how diasporic Indian women use scratch cooking as a means of self-expression within the context of migration; and the novel cookbook as an example of injecting a feminist discourse of food into a traditional fictional narrative. Read together, these discrete case studies make an argument for women’s power to effect meaningful change from within the circumscribed space of the kitchen. / text

Introduction & Background: Unhealthy diets and non-communicable diseases such as obesity are on the rise on a national and global scale, and there is an urgent need to initiate interventions. However, research suggests there is a lack of effective initiatives from major processed food manufacturers, which are a major contributor to the cause of these health issues. Thus, this study seeks to examine the role that food manufacturers have in contributing to the obesity epidemic and the strategies that they use to navigate around health policies. Purpose Statement Question: Is there evidence of a primary role that processed food manufacturers play in enabling the obesity rates nationally and worldwide through market strategies? Literature Review: A wide variety of databases within public health and medicine, such as PubMed, World Health Organization, and National Institutes of Health, were searched using keywords like “Big Food and obesity,” “marketing and obesity,” and “relationship between obesity and food corporations”. Studies that discussed the impact food manufacturers had on obesity and other non-communicable diseases or strategies that they used were selected. Findings: The different research studies analyzed provided evidence that processed food manufacturers, also known as “Big Food," play a significant role in contributing to public health issues, especially non-communicable diseases like obesity. The food industry uses old and new techniques to solidify its influence nationally while gaining power through global means and evading public policy restrictions Conclusions: There is a need for further research to identify these market strategies and effectively dismantle them.