What We Learn About Food And Eating Habits

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.

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

Getting a hot meal in college is very easy. Most college students have a very short walk to their campus cafeteria. Entering the cafeteria, there is generally an array of meals to choose from. Researchers have been studying the eating habits of college students for a while. Although the studies are predominately due to the typical increase in weight of Americans over the past few centuries, the data has shown interesting results not pertaining to their research. A fascinating question has arisen to add to the ponderous question of how men and women differ. The question that I was looking to gain knowledge on was “how do men and women vary in

This essay is going to describe how the society has an influence on food choice. Food is very important to the human body since it has the right nutrients for a balanced diet in order to enable good health and growth. However people depend on food, as people need food throughout, for the body to constantly work. However this essay is going to explore how food choice has influenced the internal and external factors that may actually have a little to do with the food itself, and in order to give a clear concept this essay will therefore explore the social factors of what one has to eat.

When it comes to things that are needed to sustain life, often times, these things are just part of the daily routine and have no positive, emotional stimulation. Food, on the other hand, is also required in order to survive, but for many it is one of the best parts of the day. Even though eating food is one of the most repetitive things we do as humans, it never gets old and is always exciting. Eating is almost always something that individuals look forward to and gives them a sense of joy. Each culture has a different approach on food eating habits and ways in which food is prepared, enjoyed, and consumed. Often times food practices by humans are determined by values, attitudes, beliefs, and environmental and religious circumstances; all of which are the products of tradition, culture, and contacts (Onuorah and Ayo, 2003). These unique variations in food consumption and food preparation make food habits absolutely fascinating and culturally distinct.

Food is used in different circumstances in life represents a culture, but can also reflect one's personality, lifestyle, and socio-economic

In the text, An Edible History of Humanity, Tom Standage provides his take on how the past was so deeply affected by food throughout the generations. The book approaches history in a different way altogether: as a sequence of changes caused, influenced or enabled by food. Standage explains that throughout history, food has not only provided sustenance but has also acted as the catalyst of societal organization, social change, economic expansion, military conflict, geopolitical competition and industrial development. As Tom Standage explains, since the time of prehistory to present,

My earliest memory of food is lentils and rice cooked in a pressure cooker. Lentils were cooked at least three days a week. Other days we had different vegetable curries, curd and more rice. This was what I took to school as my lunch every day. As I grew older and started caring more about my social life and people around me, I started noticing what my classmates brought for lunch from their homes. I started understanding how food reflected different cultures and communities. One day, in our

Michael Pollan in his book titled ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ takes a critical look at the food culture in the Unites States. According to him, the question that seems to bother most Americans is simply ‘What should we have for dinner today?’ To Pollan, Americans face this dilemma because they do not have a proper tradition surrounding food. ‘The lack of a steadying culture of food leaves us especially vulnerable to the blandishments of the food scientist and the marketer for whom the omnivore’s dilemma is not so much a dilemma as an opportunity; (Pollan). He cites the example of the Atkins diet and how an entire nation changed its eating habits almost overnight. A nation that had deep rooted food culture values would

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

Sleep, sex, and food are the three most important aspect of a human life. Each of them represents resting, reproducing, and surviving – essential elements that form the foundation of human culture and society. The status of these elements always represents the social stature and cultural ideology, of the desire or dislike of people. Some standards are universal, while some are uniquely formed through generations of different cultural traditions. Food in this case might be the most simple and yet the hardest ideology of desire for anthropologists to catch. Its meaning is never as plain as a recipe of a cooking book, but always attached with the cultural and psychological ideology that is connected with individual and cultural identities.

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

The Way We Eat discusses the ethical considerations of eating meat that has been raised through the process of factory farming. Singer and Mason both believe that factory farming is a unethical treatment of animals because the suffering and abuse that animals endure while being raised in order to eventually be slaughtered for human intake. Their main argument for supporting their opinion is that animals should receive the same awareness as humans receive, so when pain is being inflicted on an animal, there should be equal sympathy if the same pain was being performed on a human.

This article gives a basic definition of bulimia, which states that it is the act of binge eating and then purging in a n effort to prevent weight gain. It also says that the physiological thinking behind this disorder has yet to be discovered. Over al the article and its context seem to be reliable it often refers to research and experiments that have been

Food taboo is present in all societies in one form or another. The extent of food taboos vary between cultures and societies, yet restriction of food resources is ever present in all social systems, even when the taboo goes unnoticed or is accepted under the guise of normative behavior of a particular social group. Supporting this point is the simple comparison of all available food resources to consumed food resources. In no society is the complete available food resources used as food, or perceived as fit for consumption. The food perceived as fit for consumption is considered sacred, nourishing, and healthy, while food resources considered unfit are those tethered to concepts of the profane, unclean, and unhealthy, which ultimately harm the physical and spiritual body.