Students Again

It has been said that "The different behaviors of a people or a culture make sense only when seen through the basic beliefs, assumptions, and values of that particular group." Massimo Montanari stated the following in the introduction to his book, Food is Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006 [translation copyright – translated from Italian]:

“We too readily associate the idea of food with the idea of nature. That linkage is, however, ambiguous and fundamentally inaccurate. The dominant values of the food system in human experience are, to be precise, not defined in terms of ‘naturalness’, but result from and represent cultural processes dependent upon the taming, transformation, and reinterpretation of Nature.”

“ ‘A thing not of nature.’ That is how food had been defined by the doctors and philosophers of antiquity, beginning with Hippocrates, who included it among the factors of life that belong not to the ‘natural’ order but to the ‘artificial’ order of things. Or rather to the culture that man himself constructs and manages.”

If these statements do indeed reflect the nature of culture and food and the relationship between food and culture (and you may feel that the positions/beliefs expressed in these statements may or may not be so) -- when you think about food, culture, the environment, and/or the history of foods and beverages -- do you believe that food has always been  intrinsically involved with all the cultures of the world -- as well as the varied environments (geography, weather, etc.) of the world?

Consider these thoughts both from the modern perspective of today, as well as from an historical perspective. Also consider how some values, often thought to be fundamental to the U.S. culture might be related to this perspective (if they are related at all). Values often noted as being fundamental to the U.S. culture include values such as: "Informality", "Practicality and Efficiency", "Directness, Openness and Honesty", and "Equality/Egalitarianism". Are these values related to the foods, foodways, cultural practices, etc. found in the U.S. culture today?

Sure, I can see how food is vital in constructing culture, after all anthropologists have shown many times how this is the case. However, this still doesn’t negate the fact that food is a naturally occurring substance. Anyone can prepare it from inception to the dinner table in many different ways, but answer this one question; did the food I am about to eat come from a natural source or is it man-made? The answer every time is that the ingredients were, in their rawest form, a product of nature. Eating food is as natural as saying that you want to live. However, the cultural aspect is more about living well. It can be said that, for example, plants have been shaped by human interaction, however, isn’t it equally true that plants have altered human life in a profound way. The bottom line in answering this question is who is more dependent on whom. If humanity ceased to exist could plants survive and on the other side of the coin if plants ceased to exits could humanity survive. Saying food is a cultural phenomenon, rather than a natural product, is like “putting the cart before the horse.”