Eating Culture ANTH 4398 1:40-2:55 p.m.

Matthew Preston Barnett

Dr. Krista Lewis

Food Procurement Assignment

Authentic Arabic Grocery vs. The College Convenience Store

The subjects of this study, a common college convenience store and an Arabic grocery store, are drastically different environments despite sharing the common ground of food distribution. The styles of packaging alone speak entirely different languages before you even begin to read (or attempt to read) the colorful names that attempt to lure the customer into picking up an item and taking it to the register. Let's begin with the staff, environment, and (most importantly) food of the convenience store. In the case of the convenience store, the often solitary employee standing at the counter often makes eye contact as soon as possible, as if to relieve the anxiety of the encounter with a potential customer, or perhaps in other words, make the right impression. Smiles will usually be exchanged. The environment of the convenience store is not easy on the eyes. The white walls give a sense of cleanliness but the hard floor has the appearance of lengthy wear. The space of the store doesn't seem very large thanks to the placing of the aisles and yet they have tables and chairs for a small number of students, three tables with each seating two on high, cushion-less stools. There were chiefly two types of food, as I briefly mentioned the hot food, and the second being the items meant for purchase rather than immediate consumption. Present were a wide variety of items, ranging from candy rich in empty calories to chilled smoothies in bottles. After carefully investigating

the latter category, very few items seemed at all geared toward student health, with the smoothies and health oriented trail mix (as opposed to the misleading trail mix big brand names with huge amounts of sodium and sugar) as the few exceptions. But we return to the hot food items. I'd only previously seen such a specific selection of fried foods that at various gas stations. All the fried, terribly bad but oh-so-tempting food that is of questionable nutritional value. I took careful note to ask the employee what hot food items were selling most frequently. The answer was interesting, and seemed to do with the portable shape of the snack. Crispitos, a greasy delicacy of chicken substance and cheese in a fried tortilla, was a top seller. Pizza Sticks seemed to be about as common as a quick meal fix between classes for students and sold almost as well. Everything on the menu was fried or drizzled in what appeared to be cheese (or both,) but I was highly suspicious after buying a standard amount of nachos about whether it was imitation cheese product. The cheese came from a hulking black machine that oozed piping hot cheese similar to a soft serve ice cream apparatus. I tried a Crispito, which, to my dismay, led to stomach problems that I associate from experience with high levels of grease. As for the Pizza Stick, it seemed rather similar to a college dorm favorite, the Pizza Roll. Like pizza, but greasier, and certainly more processed in flavor. The Arabic Grocery was a different story altogether. First, the staff. Only three men seemed to be running the place at any given time, and they had a very different attitude than the lone person who operates the fryers in the convenience store. They remained calm and did not seem to want to initiate eye contact unless you deliberately grabbed their attention. A sort of respectful distance was made available to the customer in that sense. As for the food, the vast majority of the products I found within the establishment were oriented towards natural ingredients, spices, dried vegetables, as well as bread. I was absolutely certain upon entering the store that the Arabic Grocery was far and beyond healthier than the previous establishment. Perhaps in reference to the special Islamic considerations towards meat, there was a noticeable distance between the area of the store where you would purchase a choice cut of some Halal meat or another

with other foodstuff. An entire left wall of the grocery kept pita and other types of bread, showing a grand emphasis for such a small grocery store. A non-Arabic parallel of the same size would assuredly have a very small area for bread, and pita would usually not be among them within most common small business grocery stores in the United States. There was a huge contrast between the colors of the packaging between the convenience store and that found at the Arabic grocery, but also in the appearance of the two. While the convenience store had very familiar items and the names on many of the Arabic items were unintelligible to me, I was able to notice that there was certainly a different appeal trying to be brought about in the coloration of the packages. While the convenience store focused on very intense, stark colors, the Arabic grocery store had colors that, while more florid in their range, seemed less demanding to the eye. The oranges, reds, and yellows seemed more faint, submitting to the buyer rather than insisting a purchase. This could be a parallel to the respectful distance of the Arabic employee versus the enthusiastic greeting of the Convenience store employee. The customs within, even if this analogy can be seen as a stretch, do create distinctly different impressions on the eye, as one learns in the cultural sense for aesthetics which obviously both cultural models share though express differently. The appearance of the Grocery had earthly, wooden walls that seemed more comfortable to stand inside than the stark whiteness of the prior shop, but the floor was standard white tile as far as the aisles went. I expected something far more exotic, but that's perhaps the anti-Western bias at play with my Anthropological insight. As for the social relationships between stores, it was evident that they possess a parallel in their symbiotic relationship with their respective owners. The Arabic Grocery, known as Ali Baba's, is across the street from the Arabica Hookah Cafe, where one can smoke flavored tobacco by use of water, coals, and hoses. The owner of both the Grocery Store and the Hookah Cafe can be seen shifting daily between both locations, profiting doubly over his cultural novelty and interest for non-Arabic people, and as a home away from home for those who Middle Eastern cuisine is a part of their heritage.

As for the convenience store, as a property of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, it maintains a financial agreement with the college and while not owned by the college, is deeply woven into the academic system due to the rigorous and sometimes questionable design of Dining Dollar Plans, which offer cheaper prices for students who take the deal. Despite the questionable nutritional value, it maintains a quick method for students to grab a meal between classes, which is very profitable but questionable perhaps from the notion of wanting healthy students. In conclusion, my exploration of the two establishments for food distribution led to a somewhat negative assessment from the nutritional standpoint concerning my own culture and a respect for the rich and natural ingredients used as mainstays in Arabic Culture. While in no way can we say a gas station is a fair parallel to a grocery store, my own experience with non-Arabic Grocery involved still a wide variety of unhealthy products that numbered considerably higher than what I'd like to admit. The American spirit has long been considered pragmatic, but what does that involve sacrificing? Pragmatism is not the same as holism, and perhaps they could be seen as diametrically opposed. The cultural differences such as what food is clean or unclean did not come into play during my visit to either store, but I did learn what I feel is an increasingly urgent issue in the health of American cuisine. That we are compelled to be grabbed by the throat by our food options, that it is better to eat fast than eat well, and that other cultures have not been confused in the same way we have, and therefore that post-industrialization has caused this confusion.