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This study profiles the usual dietary habits of independent-living elderly from alternative methodological perspectives. The primary objective was to validate a comprehensive dietary questionnaire developed for use in epidemiology against the results of household refuse analysis, an independent, continuous measure of dietary behavior. Members of 44 one-and two-person households residing in a retirement community in southern Arizona completed a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. Subsequently, all refuse discarded by participating households during the following six weeks was collected and recorded by researchers. During the final week, respondents completed a recall questionnaire asking them to report their dietary habits during the study period. Analysis compared the results of survey and material measures of monthly household consumption at the levels of total intake, food group, and food item. Primary indices of agreement or association between measures included tests of mean difference, correlation coefficients, and percentage of subjects misclassified in tertile comparisons. Agreement between the results of measures was very good, with significant exceptions. Survey and refuse estimates of mean monthly quantity of total intake differed by less than one percent. Significant differences between mean estimates of consumption produced by each measure were found for three of 10 food group categories, and 19 of 73 food items compared. The correlation coefficient for comparisons between survey and refuse estimates of total intake was .72, and positive associations were also evident for the large majority of other items examined. Fifty-seven percent of subjects were classified into equivalent tertiles by both survey and refuse estimates of total intake. Percentages classified into equivalent tertiles in food group comparisons ranged from 48 to 70 percent. Potential effects of sources of error in refuse were also examined. Significant differences between results of the measures clustered among food items commonly associated with health risk or benefit, or items which serve as accessory elements in meals. These results suggest that, although brief food frequency questionnaires can provide valid estimates of usual diet for the majority of food categories, social desirability response effects may significantly affect reported consumption of some items.

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The sharing of Mexican food in Tucson at festivals, restaurants, and grocery stores between Euro-American and Hispanic groups performs a number of functions beyond nutrition: it signifies the desire for harmony, it perpetuates negative cultural stereotypes, and it re-enacts the social drama of 500 years of contact. In this gift exchange, a hybrid cuisine--"Sonoran style"--is invented, mytholigized, and marketed as authentic. Food sharing both engenders cultural exchange and turns a profit, and ethnicity reinvented as an "orientalized" tourist commodity. "Eating the other" requires a symbolic supply/demand economy, and the recognition and negotiation of ethnic identity and cultural taboos and boundaries. The result of cross-cultural eating is complicated by the implications of consuming and incorporating the other in order to understand and negotiate difference. An introduction posits the "gastronomic tourist" as a model for food sharing and cultural cannabalism. The events taken as texts and read as examples of Victor Turner's social drama, are secular ceremonies and rituals that often resemble the touristic. One such arena is Tucson Meet Yourself. Unlike carnivalesque festival, this local celebration cultivates neutral ground where diverse groups assemble and sample "otherness" through food, music, and dance. Ethnic food initiates and sustains the communitas of this temporary quasi-pilgrimage even though actual performances of traditional foods are truncated to serve large crowds. The third chapter offers a close reading of Bourdieu, and considers local restaurants where distinctions of Sonoran style and its constant reinvention suit the supply/demand of producers and consumers, and show how ethnicity is invented and authenticated by powerful consensus, and mediates across boundaries; yet it also perpetuates stereotypes through the rigid "grammar" of the Sonoran style meal. A final chapter focuses on the enormously popular commercial salsas where non-Hispanics can meet Hispanics anonymously. The rhetorical and experiential frames surrounding the label and its advertising are examined, following Goffman and Barthes, and are revealed to mass-market ethnic stereotypes in general, and in particular, to depict Hispanic women's bodies on labels and advertising in order to exploit connections between food, women and sex.

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No description available.