"Food is fuel but it is so much more."
(David Marshall)
Why do we eat?
From a biological viewpoint, food is fuel for the body and is necessary to sustain life form and function. It contains the necessary chemicals for cells to replicate and multiply in order for humans to grow, repair and sustain. It is the building blocks that shapes us for who we are physically. Any deficit in food can cause illness and sickness. Food is not just fuel, but also medicine.
But there’s more...
People congregate around food. Eating food is a communal habit and that is why we keep seeing festivals or celebrations that almost always include food of some sort being served during that event. How we eat, what we eat, where and when are not solely for daily sustenance. Our behaviors around food has shaped our identities and create a new paradigm of culture called food culture.
“Food culture refers to the practices, beliefs and attitudes of humans. as well as the networks and institutions surrounding the production, distribution and consumption of food.”
(Wahyudi David and Daniel Kofahl)
Social identification through food
“Food is central to our sense of identity”
(Claude Fischler)
People have long identified themselves or others through food. The British people are famous for their biscuits, tea and fish and chips. The Indian people are known for their curries and spices. The Japanese are famous for their sushi and nigiri. Food-related categorization is convenient because just like identity, food undergoes a continual process of construction. Food-associated behaviors and practices are ever changing due to its acceptance towards outside influence and so does social identity. From its humble beginning, food is considered as a necessity but as time goes on, food is explored in relation to its many other themes such as food preference, food preparation, representation of food, the meaning of food and food-related activities/behaviors/rituals. People start classifying other people as ‘foodies’ in the 1980s and 1990s to identify a group of people who take up eating food at fancy restaurants as its own activity which deserves to be acknowledge as the sole activity. This change in meaning as to what food is causes a change into how people could make food as an identifying marker. Without the rigidity of constitutional rules and norms that govern and dictate a national or religion identity, food culture can be used as a cultural tool.
4 aspects of culture and its importance to food culture
To understand how food can be a cultural phenomenon, this project will look at food-related behaviors that can be defined using the main aspects of culture.
1. Values and beliefs
These serve to guide its members to discern what is considered good and bad. Additionally, values and beliefs are a way for the members to evaluate what is considered morally true and acceptable to practice. This project will look at how food can shape the values and beliefs of a community.
2. Norms
Norms are behaviors that follow the rules governed by what the culture has deemed valuable or what they believe in. This is a measurable and observable aspect of culture. This project will look at how behaviors related to food consumption has procedural aspects that define specific culture.
3. Symbols and meanings
Symbols help people to understand the world around them by associating gestures, habits, signs, words, etc. to meanings that are important to that culture. It helps members of that culture to make sense of the world they live in. This project will look at what food means to members of its community and how the relationship between man and food is not limited to survival.
4. Artifacts
Tools, technologies and innovations are physical objects that can define a culture. The way different culture utilizes tools and objects to practice their culture can identify how the culture operates. This project will look into the objectifiable ways food behaviors can enact culture.
The Birth of a Food Culture
“National cuisines incarnate the dietary wisdom of populations and their respective cultures”
(Rozin)
Preferences: What is good for me is not good for you
In Africa, crickets such as grasshoppers and termites are a delicacy. They are palatable and economically advantageous whereas in the Western world, they are considered a disgust and non-palatable. Given that humans have the same neural pathway to taste perception, how does a group of people consider a particular food as a delicacy and another group consider it non-food item?
Diet is one of the phenomenon that can explain the different eating habits of different cultural groups. All culture acknowledge that food is a means to good health so what is considered as “good food” shapes dietary habits. Because of this, nutritional values are ascribed to food and is illustrated through the food pyramid that guides people what and how much to eat. The pyramid defines the optimal amount of food in different categories (i.e.; carbohydrates, proteins, fats, sweets) to be consumed in order to promote healthy living. Each recommendation is calculated and employs an empirical approach. However, different culture defines “good food” differently. For such an objectively constructed model, different dietary food pyramids are created to account for food preferences of different groups of people. Below are some of the common dietary patterns of different communities selected by geographical regions.
Through all these food pyramids, we can see that even with the same model for dietary needs, food preferences diverge to create food differences that become the defining features of how we associate food to multiple groups.
The Mediterranean Food Pyramid
The Mediterranean culture is a unique melting pot because of its land and geographic location. Surrounded by Europe, Asia and Africa, the Mediterranean culture has allowed outside influences to shape its norms. At the Mediterranean basin, diverging cultures that previously can only exist separately from each other, converge to create a new culture of its own. The Romans have established a diet composed of wine, bread and oil which is still prevalent in the Mediterranean diet. Later on the Germanic culture influenced the mostly-Roman dietary habits to include meat. The Arabs then introduce new ingredients which were impossible to get before such as rice, eggplants and citrus fruits. Multiple historical movements and conquests then influenced the diet at that time to include the ornamental fruit tomato which now hugely defines the Mediterranean diet.
Pizza serves as a reminder of the multiethnicity of the Mediterranean cuisine. It would not get a tomato base without influence from Mexico. Olives and wheat are common ingredients brought in from Levant and the remains from Roman period. Through multiple geo-culinary influences, the basin creates its own identity by defining “good food” and forms a unique cuisine from its influences. This facet of Mediterranean cuisine from which so many distinct cultures combine to create a unique dietary habits is the defining feature that makes Mediterranean culinary a culture of its own such that no one ever thinks of pizza as a fusion food.
An identity constructed from national inclination is another way food preferences give rise to culture. Food eaten by people of the nation becomes a common culture and a civic ideology that everyone from that nation holds to be true. For example, the British take pride in their tea consumption. This event serves as a reminder that differentiate the Brits from other non-tea-drinking nation. It warrants to be known as a sole activity and it becomes a unifying symbol that ties who they are.
The multiple cultural integrations in many cuisines has redefine the norms and behaviors of the community. It dictates food preferences. As one group prefers one food over another, culinary practices and traditional diet become more well-defined and eventually diet becomes the separating tool to differentiate one culture from another. This has become an appropriate mechanism to define ethnicity, identity and community.
“Eating practices are not simply a way of reproducing identity but also constructing identities.” (Caplan)
Not only dietary patterns can define a group of people, but it can also define one’s identity. The trite “you are what you eat” is equal to saying the food you eat can tell a lot about who you are. The food that one eats symbolize social status, ethnic tendencies and memories of the said person. What one does not prefer to eat can also tell a lot about their identity.
Marie Gillepsie, a sociology professor at the UK, reports an observation about the food preference of South Asian migrants who come to London. They prefer to eat ‘British’ food or ‘American’ food. She proposes that this is a way for the migrants to disassociate themselves from those who ‘only’ eat South Asian food. To these migrants, their food choice is an identifying marker that constructs their identity as a migrant to London, not as an ‘original’ South Asian people. Through different cultural lifestyles, these migrants create a new social identity for themselves influenced by aspects of lifestyles from Asia and from British. To these migrants, food habits is one of the ways they connect themselves with a new culture and separate from the old culture. It becomes a social marker.
It is when people assert meanings onto food and food eating that culture, through dietary habits, gets enacted.
Values: What food means to me, you, us and them
When people put meanings onto food and food-eating, a new cultural paradigm emerges. In many religions, food is symbolic of relationship between man and God and among other men. Food symbolism and its importance in religious practice have become a way to define food culture. While the meanings can change across different religions, food still has the same role.
Food acts as a mediator for spiritual connection.
In Christianity, wine and bread become the means for communion between Christ and his believers. In Islam, halal diet limits the kind of meat preparation that can and cannot be eaten by its followers. In Judaism, certain food such as pork and shellfish are forbidden. In Hinduism, meat products from cow are forbidden. In Sikhism, killing of animals is considered inhumane and hence gives rise to vegetarianism. Despite having different practices, all of these religions congregate to view food as a way to practice a lifestyle that is in line with the religion teachings.
Religions consider food as a ‘worldly’ test to the temptations of the current world. Members that are able to curb their desire will be rewarded in the after world. Hence, fasting has become a lifestyle practice to redefine what food means to the believers of these religions. For most, fasting is a way to control the impulses of gluttony which is considered a sin or too ‘worldly’ that it can detracts from the worship of God. Food is also seen as pure or impure materials taken into the body. In order to preserve the purity of the body, many of these religions practice moderation in the consumption of food. Defining food in terms of its purity happens through many religious rules such as banning of eating animals that live on two habitat (i.e.; both the ocean and on land), carnivorous animals or herbivores without a cloven hoof. These limitations open up avenues for culture to evolve as it unites people who have the common dietary habits and define others who have a different dietary style.
Oriental cuisine is an example of how meanings of food can dictate food culture. Chinese cuisine is centered around health and longevity. Every single thing from food preparation to food consumption (from ingredients to methods of cooking to ways of eating) are carefully and thoroughly observed to provide health to the eater. Diet becomes an important factor to health. For thousands of years, Chinese see the role of food as the primary way to improve and maintain health. For example, long thing noodles are eaten during birthday and new year celebration because the shape of the noodles symbolizes longevity. Some stores even sell infinity noodles which are long strands of noodle in a whole bowl as a dish. In Taoism, food is viewed in terms of its balance. Food has its yin and yang energy. Raw and fresh foods such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains are considered yin which tends to have richer and more energetic elements. Whereas ‘yang’ foods such as meat and refined, processed products have lost its ‘yin’ properties. So, Chinese people have specific food habits to balance the yin and yang energy in their food to preserve harmony and balance.
Practices: To understand food culture, look at eating habits
Even when people eat the same food, how they eat the food can be a social marker for cultural differences. For example, there are multiple ways to eat cereal. The old, important question cereal or milk first becomes a conversation piece that gives insight into cultural differences. The behaviors or rituals that surround food eating can be considered as eating habits, and just like how people have different behaviors to celebration and festivities, eating habits differ among different cultures. This can be a window to see how culture becomes prevalent because habits are formed during formative years and closely-associated community (i.e.; families, school teachers and friends) has a huge influence at creating this culture.
Behaviors around food eating can be present in many forms - as rituals, habits or routines. Food rituals refer to how the event of eating food consists of artifacts, scripts and orders that need to be followed. This usually manifests itself in the form of formal event such as wedding dinner that warrants a need for tiered cake, a full course meal and each dish is timed and follows a certain order. Habits or routines, while similar in function to rituals, are defined by actions that do not need “conscious reflections.” They exists in steps or procedural matters not as a checklist but as a heuristics, so that the actor of this habitual events do not need to think twice before performing it. It exists to help people breeze through mundane tasks and make everyday life easier. It gives a sense into what is considered “normal” and habitual. Even though these two food practices are defined differently, they both have a role to convey values, standards, lifestyles and to acknowledge identity in a social setting. Hence, looking at rituals or the environments which food become present can be a concrete manifestation of a culture.
A significant example of food rituals is practiced during dinner time. Each culture, each family even, has their own sets of rules and procedures that they follow during dinnertime. Below are two different dinnertime procedures in family institutions.
Dinnertime Procedure in the West
1. The Setting
Most families set their dinner on a square or rectangle table. Dishes are lined up at the middle of the table, and each member of the family would take portions of the dishes onto their own plates.
2. The Eating
A meal is typically separated into different sections or “courses.” One would begin with a starter such as a cheese spread or soup. Then the main dish is served. A typical main dish could be potatoes, stews, roasted chicken and baked pasta. Lastly, although not always necessary, the family finishes dinner meal with dessert such as cookies or ice-cream.
3. The After-Eating
Adults in the family would then continue with drinks of wine or alcohol. The younger members of the family would go on to play, watch TV or have juice. Normally, there is no separation of space between these two different activities.
Dinnertime Procedure in Eastern Asia
1. The Setting
Dinner in the East is usually presented in a round table. Each member on the table would have their own rice bowl, and share a few other side dishes which is put on a turntable at the middle of the main table.
2. The Eating
Tiered meals are a rarity in Eastern Asia. Meals often start with the main dish that contains the main rice or grain, meat dishes and vegetables. Desserts are also a rarity.
3. The After-Eating
After the main dinner, family would clean the dishes together and then have tea. Similar to the West, this activity is done together. The culture of drinking among the adults is usually hidden from the younger members of the family.
Eastern Asian food culture serves meals on a round table. It promotes everyone to see and engage with each other. The Lazy Susan roundtable also helps the side dishes to be shared among members of the table. Meanwhile in the Western tradition, sometimes meals are not shared between the children and the adult due to ingredients differences. A square or rectangular table would help compartmentalize the meal into kid-friendly and adult-friendly. Though these two tend to be different, for both cultures, dinnertime is a time for family members to get together and be social.
Rethinking the Culinary Triangle
“Cooking is the language through which society unconsciously reveals itself”
(Claude Levi-Strauss)
The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss introduces the “Culinary Triangle,” a model that illustrates the process by which cooking mediates the transformation of food from raw (nature) to cooked (culture).
In this model, Levi-Strauss proposes that nature, or what is considered traditional, can have an antagonistic relationship with cooked food that has undergo cultural shift. While the model is a great visual system to differentiate many different cooking methods, Levi-Strauss fails to recognize that culture and nature has a synergistic effect.
One example to illustrate the synergistic effect of culture and nature is through what different cultures consider as raw food. To define what is cooked, raw or rotten is subjective because it depends on what the culture perceives as palatable. For example, the Japanese see raw fish as edible and the Westerners view cheese, rotten milk to some culture, as completely palatable. In Japanese culture, eating raw fish is not the opposite of culture, but instead a type of culture which get enacted through dependence on the nature of the food.
What the food cooking process can tell us is how different culture interacts with different starting materials and turn it into food. This is a feature that defines food culture. A group of people put values into invaluable objects, and they define values of raw food and the processes it takes to turn it into edible materials.
A look into multiculturality: The asian grocery store
As an Asian, I eat rice every day. I grow up eating rice. I eat rice for all breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every family in Asia buys a big (think a 6-month-old-child size) bag of rice for the house. So one of the things that my parents get worried about before I come to the US is where can I get food for sustenance. A few email exchanges later, Malaysians who have been in Michigan before told me that there is an Asian Store near Kroger that sells rice in child-size bag. At first I rejoiced at the fact that there is somewhere I can get my food from. Until I moved to Michigan, I did not realize that going to grocery stores in the US can be a culturally enriched experience.
I go to Way One Supermarket a lot. Besides the bag of rice, this store is where I get other ingredients that the normal ‘American’ supermarket does not have – decently sized shallots, chives, lemongrass, a specific brand of soy sauce, shrimp crackers and many more.
As is other grocery store, this store sells all kinds of produce and food but something else about Way One very specifically remind me of home. The back side of the store, tucked into a corner, is the household section that displays things from cutleries to tablewares to beddings. There is no specific place for these oddly paired together items like what people might find at Walmart. Instead they are just displayed on a makeshift shelf in whatever position that fits.
Besides giving me a place that can cure my homesickness, Way One also give me the opportunity to try out different cultures. I grow up surrounded by East Asian TV shows. Every evening after school, I would watch a show produced in Shanghai or Korean drama at night. Malay dramas and comedy shows include people from China and India. So I hear about the food that East Asian people eat, but never had the opportunity to try them out. Foreign ingredients are a rarity to find in Malaysia, but Way One aggregates all East Asian and South East Asian ingredients into one roof. I tried out kimchee, miso soup and dim sum thanks to all the ingredients that are available from Way One.
While grocers are a place to provide sustenance, it is also a place that gathers communities together. Near the entrance of Way One sits a tiny counter with what looks like USPS written all over in Mandarin. The displayed rates are not to domestic or international addresses but instead to specific provinces in China. The store also includes a herbal aisle where you can get Chinese herbal medicine and spices. Way One is the Mecca for people from East Asia and South East Asia.
Food is seen as a social event because people understand that a proper meal is a social occasion. Consider a regular family dinner – it is the time when all family members get together to eat. More importantly, this is the time (before everyone retreat to personal space) that parents get to ask their children what they have learned in school. Couples ask each other what has been going on at work or what is happening in politics currently. Extending this idea further, through religion food can also derive culture. For example, some religion with diet restriction need to circumvent around those restrictions to prepare their meals. This gives rise to cultural grocery store such as halal butchery, kosher butchery, etc.
Food is something that people can identify with. This reminds me of the annual social arguments that happen between Malaysia and Indonesia – “Where does rendang (a local dish of stewed chicken in coconut and other spices) originate from?” People from both countries claim the dish to be theirs. While in a larger perspective, being so geographically close, it makes sense for these two countries to have similar food culture. However, claiming a dish belongs to a nation is probably related to the how the nation wants to identify itself. Take curry for example. An Indian curry is different than a Japanese curry – and it’s important to differentiate between the two because contrary to what the name implies, these two can be seen as totally separate dishes. Now, claiming what something is, what it is not and how it’s different from similarly named thing is not wrong. Instead it just shows how culture can deviate and reshaped to be a born as a new completely different culture. Just like in evolution class, things diverge and one sister taxa is not any more important than the other, they both equally contribute as a whole.
Modern Food Culture
The Food Revolution
Food culture shifts into a new paradigm after the Second World War. This event marks the period where food becomes an opportunistic and optimistic economy.
Food preparation has turned into food manufacturing.
Food is no longer a means to survival and social needs, but has transformed to be a business. Technological advancement has allowed food to be cooked in a different way and with it comes the most important aspect that shapes the present food culture: speed.
The McDonald’s Phenomenon
McDonald’s popularizes a new wave of consumption. The grab-and-go concept coincides with the state of economic boom at that era when people are working long hours and need a quick meal to take on the way home. The company redefines food into profitable sectors in terms of production, marketing and consumption. Food that were eaten at a table in a sit-in manner and requires protocol and rules is considered an alternative to consuming food on-the-go. People at that time were relieved from the norms of table rituals and completely adapt to a more efficient and forgiving system. McDonald’s has introduced the world at that time, a new way to look and think about food.
McDonald’s shows that food can be industrialized. No longer do men need to hunt and gather food and women cook and prepare the food. Machines can do that all. In order to keep up with the growing customers demands for their famous hamburgers, McDonald’s has employed industrial tools to facilitate food production. This is a significant cultural shift from kitchen tools and utensils that are what Levi-Strauss might now considered closer to nature (i.e.; using fire/heat, forks, roasting, etc.). The company has revolutionized cooking method from home-cooking into fast food production. The value that it creates is not that of ‘good food’ but that of ‘convenient and efficient food.’
The company also revolutionizes food production in terms of quantity. If pre-war era sees food mainly made for family members and small gatherings, food since the McDonald’s phenomenon has been mass-produced. McDonald’s describes its food production in terms of how many billions of hamburgers they have produced for a particular year. The company has diverge from the religious belief in moderation. However, a change is not always bad. This is a new cultural shift and one that is at the opposite end of what people think of food thus far. Mass-production of food at that time is not considered as ‘uncultured’ but instead an invention.
The company employs strong marketing strategy to advertises its food. This is a fairly new aspect of food culture that has not been present thus far. The ability of food to be advertised at all would be considered unthinkable and does not fit the values and norms of the previous era. McDonald’s marketing appeals to their customers’ ideals and values. Appropriate terms are used to present McDonald’s foods as still close in relation to how the previous era think of food. While doing so, it has constructed a new power to be able to dictate what the public should think of food.
McDonald’s also popularized the franchise model. Food has since been shared and expands into different part of the national and international regions. This is a new concept that hugely contributes to the state of food nowadays. The franchise model shows that food culture can go into a new environment and survive in that different cultural situation. It allows food to be mobile and be introduced to different parts of the world. It creates fusion food, while still staying true to its original form as a fast-food hamburger shop. While the Mediterranean diet sees cultural movement and influence from different parts of the world, McDonald’s is different in the sense that the company itself influences how other people see food and redefine the behaviors that people have towards food until then.
In short, McDonald’s has challenged the universal rules across food culture that promotes home-cooked, humble meal and take the most antagonistic approach to food by offering fast food. While it is practical to have fast food, the rise of McDonald’s-styled food systems have changed the way people think of food from that of convivial rite into a culinary curiosity that pushes the culture to start thinking of food in a non-regional way but instead as a culinary experience.
Street Food Redefined
Fast food franchises exist across Asian countries, but what is unique among these countries are a type of food similar in concept to fast-food but with different execution – “fast-serviced” food which takes the form of street food. Street food are usually food that people eat on a daily basis, but the service is quick much like the food served at cafeteria or food court. What differentiates street food from fast food is that street food are not mass-produced. The hawkers are usually local people who open up stalls and small booths selling food that they prepared from home. The food ranges from finger food to a complete meal with rice and side dishes.
Another distinct feature of street food that makes it able to persist as a culture is the fact that it is home-cooked. This is important as home-cooking relates to what people perceive as a ‘proper meal.’ Away from the automatized and mass production of fast food, the way street food is prepared puts care into what machines cannot do. For some culture, having home-cooked meal is better for the body because the food is cooked without preservatives and unnecessary ingredients. The culture of street food has grown huge until there are weekly night markets in a neighborhood when stalls would line up and offer food from snacks to drinks, to a full meal.
Night market is a prominent event in the everyday lives of Asian culture because it is also a communal place where people meet and get their groceries done. Much like aisles in the typical grocery stores, night market typically has categorical aisles for raw ingredients and for cooked food. The raw ingredients include vegetables, onions, anchovies, fruits, chicken, beef, fishes and other wet ingredients typically needed for cooking. There are also aisles for household items, clothes and toys. Socially, this is also the place where people get to form relationships with the hawkers as regular customers. Some are even loyal to the stall and keep coming back to the stall every week. Among this food interaction is also social exchange when small chats about work life and family get mentioned. Without the tipping and tax system, the night market offers an honest interaction between hawkers and their customers to be in the same space brought together by the shared need for food and social interaction.
Culinary Curiosity
Nowadays food that is good to eat is no longer defined by the rules of regional preferences and abundance. People have re-establish food culture using nutritional values and aesthetics. It pushes people to create unique experiences around food. Previously, people make meanings out of food because as a mode of sustenance, it could have so much more values. But with culinary curiosity, the food itself drives people to produce new experiences that are centered around the lifestyle of that particular food group. In modern day, culinary curiosity presents itself in the form of modern diet such as keto diet, veganism and ethical and sustainable diet. Below are three examples of modern dietary habits that are defined differently than what have been discussed before.
Plant-based diet and the new culture paradigm
People become vegetarian or vegan (non-meat eaters) because of either religion or philosophical reasons. For those who choose to abstain from meat products due to philosophical reasons, they are grounded on the basis that killing of animals is non-ethical and a diet high in plant nutritions is considered healthier due to lesser toxic substances.
While historically plant-based diet existed regionally, nowadays people do not view plant-based diet as originating from a specific region. Instead it originates from an idea or opinion and belongs to a group of people who share that belief. How people have discussed culture so far, even those not relating to food culture, has almost always been focusing on regional differences. But through the emergence of modern food culture, it shows that there are new ways to think about culture in the modern day.
Ethical and sustainable diet
Another example of philosophical origins of food culture is in sustainable diet. There is growing concern that the natural resources the world has now wouldn’t be sufficient to continually support the growth of humanity. Hence, eating habits have been associated with environmental and economical connotation.
Starting with the idea that in order to sustain life we need to have sustained resources, this diet focuses on every aspect of food culture from production to consumption. Raw ingredients are grown or bred in a sustainable and ethical manners, while food preparation is done with minimal waste. This diet introduces a new concept in the food culture: to eat responsibly.
Fusion diet
While most food culture seems to separate groups of people, cultural exchanges happen to promote solidarity and bring two distinct people together. As is any type of culture, it tends to change and transform caused by many factors of which one is outside influence. This exchange creates a fusion of culture. In food culture, this creates food pairings of ingredients and spices from different parts of the world.
In Korean food, a fusion dish called budae jjigae is an example of a cultural exchange. Literally translated to ‘army base stew,’ the budae jjigae is a spicy stew dish with noodles, spicy broth, eggs, spam, sausages, baked beans and cheese. The dish got its name from the word ‘military base’ where the U.S. army bases have a lot of surplus food leftover after the Korean War. The dish got created when people living around the U.S. army bases experienced scarcity of food and had to get ingredients from the army bases. Evidently, the dish consists of a Korean food base and garnished by Western ingredients that are not native to Korean land until then.
The reverse of this example also exists. The Korean food ‘bibimbap’ is now a popular dish served at Asian restaurants in the Western world. The dish consists of a rice base, topped with vegetables, an egg, meat and gochujang (Korean chilli paste). Due to its health benefit, many restaurants adopt this dish to be served in their restaurant. Perhaps a more prominent concept of convergence food culture is through the ‘poke bowl’ food concept. This is a rice dish similar to bibimbap but is prepared according to the typical American sandwich franchise where customers can choose their ingredients.
This converged food is an example where culture can exist as one even when they are different. It also illustrates that while culture has set boundaries and definitions, they are often malleable depending on the conditions and willingness of the people to be open to adapt to different cultures.
New Meanings and Beginnings
To eat responsibly, one must think consciously
These new areas of food culture opens new opportunities to look at what the future of food culture will look like. Histories are continually being made. In food terms that means even when our relationship with food now is no longer defined as a product of war or localization. With mobility, and moral reasonings, food nowadays takes on a new values. People have started to think of food as a genre, a subject, a course, or a research topic. It is now a valid and reasonable topic that deserves more focus and thorough examination. We have establish a closer relationship with food as a part of our daily life that is not unconscious choices. We think of food consciously now and that is the direction food culture is going towards.