Hungry for Change: Borderlands Food & Water in - Southwest ...

Food laBels and tHe
real-mex conundrum
Bilingual labeling: El Pato migrates across the border: Mexican imported salsa at Food City | Photo Maribel Alvarez
By Maribel Alvarez
not all Mexican food is created equal. I am not talking
about extremes—like nibbling Taco Bell fare after an aromatic
meal of home-cooked tamales, barbacoa or cocido.
I’m not talking about basking in the smell of fresh cilantro,
garlic, limes and avocados over jars of green slime
dubiously called guacamole. My measure of comparison
is much more modest and concrete: I am interested in
plumbing the claims made by labels on Mexican food
products sold in popular grocery stores.
In the world of food labeling, fierce battles over who gets
to claim higher levels of “authenticity” are waged in earnest
across the nation. Mexican food is not the only
target of such protracted marketing wars, but among
all ethnic foods, Mexican food is the undisputable
frontrunner. The demand for Mexican food across all levels
of social class, regional niches and gastronomical
lifestyles has soared in recent years beyond anyone’s
wildest imagination.
It is a well-known fact that for several years, salsa has
surpassed ketchup as American’s favorite condiment.
But as Gustavo Arellano writes in Taco USA: How Mexican
Food Conquered America, the demand for the food has
grown in tandem with the demand for Mexican labor. To
make a long story short, Taco-mania coincided with
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higher concentrations of Mexican nationals residing in
the USA. Enticing words on salsa jars, cans of beans and
plastic tortilla wrappers stake claims for health, traditional
values, environmental consciousness and cultural
heritage. The marketing goal here is to grab the attention
of an increasingly diversified and segmented field
of shoppers and consumers that simultaneously includes
Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, other Latinos and
non-Latinos in one fell swoop.
There’s a certain irony in this upswing of popularity: for
most of the last 150 years, Mexican food has functioned
both as an object of desire and as a focal point of prejudice
and derision among large segments of mainstream,
white U.S. consumers. Historically, food choices have
been used to stigmatize social and cultural groups.
Folklorist Mario Montaño has studied the ways in which
consumption of certain types of meats in South Texas
(the well known “organs” or offal meats), choice of spices
and certain modes of preparation became mutated into
racist attitudes expressed by Mexican food slurs (“greasers,”
“chili peppers,” “beaners”). In order to eat these
foods without associating with the stigma, Anglos in
Texas reinterpreted Mexican culinary traditions to fit
their, let’s say, more “hygienic” culinary tastes: thus,
from tri-tip, we get “fajitas.”
I became intrigued by this gastronomical conundrum:
Americans, it seems, endure a perpetual love-hate relationship
with Mexico that translates in various guises
and fads of Mexican food. In the college campus where I
work, young co-eds (mainly males) rely on Mexican food
(tacos and burritos) in large quantities as their main
source of nutrition. At the same time, one can easily hear
rumblings (mainly among females) about the perception
of Mexican food being the kind of unhealthy choices
that make people fat.
Despite its popularity, Mexican food (and increasingly
produce that comes from Mexico across the border) is
the subject of sudden health scares, rumors and speculation.
Like Africanized bees, narcos and buffel grass, they
have become the dangers emanating from south of the
border. The cultural, class-based and social baggage accompanying
Mexican food consumption in the U.S.
(since the 19th century) has not disappeared. As I began
to pay more attention to the labels on Mexican food
products at my local supermarket, I was able to discern
a pattern: marketing efforts within and without Mexican
market segments seem to share the common goal in
their attempt to erase the stigma of Mexican food as
“poor people’s food.” My observations led me to this
working hypothesis: Social class is the constant element
Local but up-scale: Salsa branding, Whole Foods style | Photo Maribel Alvarez
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referenced by the variety of styles, fonts, colors and
claims on Mexican food packaging.
To gather data for my hypothesis, I set up a basic research
exercise modeled after a project at Stanford
University. This study, as recently reported in
Gastronomica magazine, sought to identify class identity
in food marketing via the words inscribed on bags
of potato chips.
In short, this is what the Stanford researchers discovered:
expensive chips tend to emphasize exotic ingredients,
tout health claims, tend to explain what they are
Social class is the constant element
referenced by the variety of styles,
fonts, colors and claims on Mexican
food packaging.
not (not fried, not greasy) and use more text and more
complicated grammar on their packaging. In contrast,
economical brands of potato chips stress hominess, old
family recipes or traditions of the company or founder.
Consumers of all social classes, however, value the product
that they think is most authentic. What counts as
“authentic” for each social class, however, is a different
matter altogether.
I kept my investigation simple. I counted one type of
food—I chose salsa—in two polar opposite market segments:
the upscale Whole Foods and the economical
Food City supermarket. The stores stood 2 miles apart in
Tucson’s mid-town section.
At Whole Foods, I identified a total of 17 commercial salsa
brands (all except one Mexican import were offered in
glass jars); those 17 brands, in turn, offered customers 70
varieties of flavors and levels of heat. In addition, Whole
Foods offers 6 varieties of refrigerated “salsa fresca”
made in their own deli-kitchen. At Food City, there were
more brand names offered (a total of 26) but significantly
fewer varieties of flavor combinations and heat levels
(40 compared to Whole Food’s 70). Food City also offered
one single kind of refrigerated, made-on-the-premises
“salsa fresca.”
The larger variety of salsa offerings at Whole Foods reflects
a more segmented and niche-based consumer base.
We see the upscale and “health-oriented” store offering