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Food Culture Essay

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Factors Influencing Food Habits and Culture Eating food is essential for all of us, it keep us alive and also gives us enjoyment at the same time. Food can be defined as any substance that can be metabolized by an animal to give energy and build tissue. (ilearn) In ancient time, when people feel hungry, they eat. However, as human history keep developing and evolving, we have a higher standard on choosing food that we like to eat nowadays. In this paper, we are going to evaluate factors that are influencing our food habits and food culture. Those factors can be divided into two main categories, internal factors (individual preference and values) and external factors (geographical, religion, social, economic and political). Internal …show more content…

Another example would be Chinese like to eat hot pot in winter to keep them warm. In the northern part of China, there are more spicy dishes than the southern part of China. This is because eating spicy food will keep people warm. In costal region, there is more seafood than the inland region. The reason is because it is easier to get fresh seafood in costal region than in the inland region. Japan is an island surrounded by sea, and that is why eating seafood is famous in Japan. Some locations are better for growing specific food, for example China have the climate advantage in growing tea, and France have the advantage in growing wine. Religion is another external factors influencing food habits and food culture. Different culture has different religion, different religion has different custom and food is an important part of a religion. Some religion such as Muslims, consider eating pork as a dirty food, and people should not eat them. Buddhism do not recommend members to eat meat, because they think that is cruel to kill an animal and that we should respect them so we should not eat them. Therefore, a lot of Buddhism followers are vegetarians. Hinduism followers do not eat cow because they think that cows are scarce. People who believe in a religion will follow the rules of the religion, so this will influence their food habit. Some religions do not have rules about food, but they have specific food to eat.

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