Food As A Basic Biological Need

It is a known fact that every human being communicates through language, but perhaps a little known fact that we communicate even through the food we eat. We communicate through food all the meanings that we assign and attribute to our culture, and consequently to our identity as well. Food is not only nourishment for our bodies, but a symbol of where we come from. In order to understand the basic function of food as a necessity not only for our survival, we must look to politics, power, identity, and culture.

The source of the earlier European colonist anxiety about their diet comes from their limited understanding of genetics, diets, and overall human health of the time. In Rebecca Earle’s work “The You Eat Their Food…”: Diets and Bodies in Early Colonial Spanish America, the historian presents the ideals of the early European Settlers, mainly Spanish, on how food effected the human body and form. The work elaborates on the Spanish logic for the aliments of both the settlers and the indigenous people of the land, linking it to food. Food in the New World played a prominent role in race and health – based upon Eurocentrism.

The Columbian Exchange brought direct changed that modified the cultural characteristics of many people. Though religion was a weapon of domination, it was food that created a great cultural impact. This paper will focus on the cultural impact that food had in the world, and how much Native American food contributed to the economy and culture of the entire planet.

Neither life nor culture can be sustained without food. On a very basic level, food is fundamentally essential for life, not simply to exist, but also to thrive. A means by which carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, nutrients, and calories are introduced into the body, food is a mechanism of survival. However, on a more abstract level, food is also fundamentally essential for culture by establishing its perimeters and dimensions and in shaping its authenticity and character. Food becomes the

One does not necessarily expect books about food also to be about bigger ideas like oppression, spirituality, and freedom, yet Pollan defies expectations. Pollan begins with an exploration of the food-production system from which the vast majority of American meals are derived. This industrial food chain is mainly based on corn, whether it is eaten directly, fed to livestock, or processed into chemicals such as glucose and ethanol. Pollan discusses how the humble corn plant came to dominate the American diet through a combination of biological, cultural, and political factors. The role of petroleum in the cultivation and transportation the American food supply is also discussed. A fast-food meal is used to illustrate the end result of the

In Jessica Harris’s “The Culinary Season of my Childhood” she peels away at the layers of how food and a food based atmosphere affected her life in a positive way. Food to her represented an extension of culture along with gatherings of family which built the basis for her cultural identity throughout her life. Harris shares various anecdotes that exemplify how certain memories regarding food as well as the varied characteristics of her cultures’ cuisine left a lasting imprint on how she began to view food and continued to proceeding forward. she stats “My family, like many others long separated from the south, raised me in ways that continued their eating traditions, so now I can head south and sop biscuits in gravy, suck chewy bits of fat from a pigs foot spattered with hot sauce, and yes’m and no’m with the best of ‘em,.” (Pg. 109 Para). Similarly, since I am Jamaican, food remains something that holds high importance in my life due to how my family prepared, flavored, and built a food-based atmosphere. They extended the same traditions from their country of origin within the new society they were thrusted into. The impact of food and how it has factors to comfort, heal, and bring people together holds high relevance in how my self-identity was shaped regarding food.

Food became comfort during slavery and because they could control cooking, it was one of their few real pleasures and a way to feel free. The history of “soul food” is seen in the traditions that were passed down from generation to generation.

Eating and drinking is not only a necessity, but also a pleasure. Humans have known and experienced this since the beginning of man. Food plays a very important part in everybody’s daily life. However, the role of food in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work The Great Gatsby and John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath vary immensely. The complexity and need for sustenance differ between the books, but both reflect the events, viewpoints, and attitudes of the time periods they are set in.

Modern culture allows the discussion of food to be a matter of opinion, but this narrative reveals that Puritans did not understand the different tastes in food that other cultures had. During the first week of Rowlandson's captivity, she refers to the natives' food as "filthy trash" (265). She later admits that the food was savory but can not believe that her stomach was not rejecting the

For quite some time now, food has been at the forefront of people’s lives throughout the world. Eating has become a tradition, as food keeps us alive, healthy, and well. The importance of agriculture and farming is something that should not go unnoticed. Even just sharing a meal with somebody is intimacy, it has brought us closer together than ever before. Marcie Cohen Ferris, author of “The Edible South: The Power of Food and the Making of an American Religion”, takes a closer look at how food has brought a sense of togetherness but also the separation and tension that is running rampant through society today. She examines ideas of segregation and civil rights, and how food was able to play a pivotal role in some of America’s most historic moments.

Food traditionally represents comfort, security, and family. We recall the traditional concept of comfort food and the large family dinners in Norman Rockwell 's piece Freedom from Want. However, for many, food is also a serious, and potentially damaging, method of control. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia are classic examples of psychological syndromes, related to control, that express themselves with eating disorders. Prisoners of war are denied food as the most basic method of torture and control. Like all humans, Offred, the main character of Margaret Atwood 's Handmaid 's Tale, finds that food is a central and important feature of life.

When you are asked what your daily essentials are, food must be one of your answers. We all know that food means a lot to people but have you ever thought about food from another perspective? Anderson’s readings investigate food from many other perspectives. According to Anderson, food represents our views, class, power, lifestyles and identities. These ideas are true and can be found among the Trobriand Islanders. In their society, life revolves around lineage and food because lineage controls all the food. In order to make the lineage system successful, people from Trobriand Island treat yams as their wealth, social status and political power. Connecting back to Anderson’s ideologies, the idea of food represents social class is reflected by the different treatment received by the Trobriand Islanders, Islanders’ urge to work represents the connection between food and political power, and the fact that lineage is more important than oneself indicates the idea of food is identity.

Food, has a specific meaning to all of us; for some it is a form of nourishment, for others it is a cultural act,

In “The Pleasures of Eating” Wendell Berry wants the reader to recognize that eating is a cultural act. He believes we are eaters not consumers and that we should have more knowledge about the food we eat. Berry wants the reader to questions where the food is coming from, what condition is it produced in and what chemicals may it contains. He has found that the food industries blind us to what we are consuming and the effect it has on us. At last Berry believes that we must eat responsibly to live free.

During the first week of class, four readings were assigned. One of the readings, “Food and Eating: Some Persisting Questions,” by Sidney Mintz, discusses the paradoxes of food. Although food seems like a straightforward concept, it is actually extremely complicated. According to Mintz, there are five paradoxes, including: the importance of food to one’s survival, yet we take it for granted, how people stick to their foodways, but are willing to change, whether the government should allow people to freely choose food or if they should protect the people through regulations, the difference in food meanings according to gender, and the morality of eating certain foods. All of these paradoxes give people questions to think about, making this an extremely philosophical look at food studies. It also mentions that food must be viewed through the cultural context that it is in, which became important in “The Old and New World Exchange”, by Mintz, and “Maize as a Culinary Mystery”, by Stanley Brandes. These discuss the diffusion of foods after 1492 in different ways. The Mintz reading gives an overview of all of the foods spread from the Americas to the Old World, and vice-a-versa, but does not go terribly in depth on the social changes and effects of specific foods. Brandes focuses on the cultural impact of specifically maize on the European diet, noticing that most Western Europeans shunned it. He studies the cultural implications of this, concluding that maize was not accepted