Food movements around the world promise a new way to engage in more sustainable and ethical lives. Peru has embraced this vision with such enthusiasm that their identity as a nation seems to be fervently articulated around food. Participation in the movement is high and appears to include all socio-economic sectors and ethnic diversity, even the Afro-Peruvian population which continues to be heavily marginalized by mainstream national discourses. The architects of the movement attribute this overwhelming participation to the fact that food intrinsically represents and links everyone since Peruvian food, as the Peruvian people are constituted from the same process: fusion.

In theory this means that all food traditions are being embraced equally, but in practice there is an active selection of appropriate and inappropriate Peruvian foods, and as I argue, a selective and judgmental process that eventually targets people too. This lecture will discuss why certain Peruvian dishes are actively promoted yet others, like those that incorporate cats, are banned and disparaged and what this all means to the people who consume these cuisines.

Along the way you will also learn how to cook a cat… if so inclined. Meow!