Peter Menzel and Faith D’Alusio conducted a photographic study of what families around the world eat during the course of one week. They then compiled their work into a book called “Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.” Included are photographs of 30 families from 24 different countries. This photograph allows the viewer to witness the immense differences and surprising similarities in diets around the globe. The photos are beautiful, but it is the questions brought about by the staggering comparisons that make these visuals so provocative. Each photograph contains one week’s worth of food, and the cost spent on that food. One of the families that Peter Menzel chose to photograph was the Patkar family of Ujjain, India. India has a population of 1.237 billion, and of those, 80.5% identify themselves as Hindu.
In the photograph, there is the recognizable fact that the Patkar family practices some form of Hinduism. There are multiple aspects of this photograph that make this evident. The first aspect is the red dot, known as a bindi, on the mother’s forehead. Married Hindu women wear this symbol, exhibited brightly between her eyebrows. The bindi is said to represent female energy, which is believed to protect women and their families. Another aspect of the photograph that proves that the Patkar family is Hindu is that the absence of meat in their weekly diet. Hinduism is a major religion in India, and thus most of India’s population abstains from eating meat. Hindu scriptures proclaim the interconnectedness of all existence – including humans, animals, along with all of nature. Traditionally, followers of the Hindu religion were careful to take great care in what they ate. According to Hinduism food is a gift given from God. Theref...
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...al religious and cultural beliefs. Yet, the carefree placement of the packaged foods woven throughout the traditional Indian dishes exemplifies the casual influences of the Western diet on the strong cultural history of India. There are many individual parts that comprise this photograph, but this entire photograph is a snapshot of India as a whole. The most important aspect is that this food not only brings the Patkar family together to enjoy their meals and connect to one another, but it is a giant system connecting the community to their meal. By appreciating the bounty of food provided by the local market the Patkar family is one part of a larger whole. Hinduism teaches that all things are sacred and that all things are interconnected. The Patkar family of India is a beautiful example of how even old traditions hold out against the ever-changing Western world.
Four people sit kneeling around a small table in a small room laden with food. A room where a serious man in a black box holds out a can of something altered and edible, and a young girl perched near her mother clutches a bag of potato chips to her chest as if claiming it as solely her own. This is the scene depicted in a photograph of the Ukita family in Kodaira City, Japan as part of a series taken by Peter Menzel for the book “What the World Eats”. This series of photographs illustrates not only what people eat in different parts of the world, but also how their families, and lives as fellow humans can so closely resemble our own.
In the essay “Escape from the Western Diet”, an excerpt from the book “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto”, Michael Pollan pitches in on the debate regarding the dietary regime of Western culture. Pollan brings into equation various theories on how the Western diet has led to our society becoming one of the unhealthiest countries in the world. He also asserts his own position on the topic while briefly responding to each individual theory. So what is the principal blame for the diseases and illnesses associated with consuming a Westernized diet?
Traditions control how one talks and interacts with others in one’s environment. In Bengali society, a strict code of conduct is upheld, with dishonor and isolation as a penalty for straying. Family honor is a central part to Bengali culture, and can determine both the financial and social standing of a family. Usha’s family poses no different, each member wearing the traditional dress of their home country, and Usha’s parents diligently imposing those values on their daughter. Those traditions, the very thing her [Usha] life revolved around, were holding her back from her new life as an American. Her mother in particular held those traditions above her. For example, when Aparna makes Usha wear the traditional attire called “shalwar kameez” to Pranab Kaku and Deborah’s Thanksgiving event. Usha feels isolated from Deborah’s family [Americans] due to this saying, “I was furious with my mother for making a scene before we left the house and forcing me to wear a shalwar kameez. I knew they [Deborah’s siblings] assumed, from my clothing, that I had more in common with the other Bengalis than with them” (Lahiri ...
1.) Intro: I decided to focus my Religious Ethnography on a friend whom I recently have become close with. Adhita Sahai is my friend’s name, which she later told me her first name meant “scholar.” I choose to observe and interview Adhita, after she invited me to her home after hearing about my assignment. I was very humbled that she was open to this, because not only was it a great opportunity for this paper, but it also helped me get to know Adhita better. I took a rather general approach to the religious questions that I proposed to the Sahai family because I didn’t want to push to deep, I could tell Hinduism is extremely important to this family. Because this family does not attend a religious site where they worship, I instead listened to how they do this at home as a family instead.
In his introduction, he argues that international food prices do not necessarily effect the poor and malnourished people in the world. He reveals that, even though rice prices have fallen 40 percent since a price spike in 2008, the number of undernourished people have increased from the 850 million who were victims of hunger in 2008 (611). Later, as he attempts to prove that modern farming techniques have helped poor countries in the past, he gives the example of India. In the 1960s, high-yielding wheat and rice seed were introduced many poor countries. In India, wheat production doubled between 1964 and 1970, and by 1975, it had ended its dependence on international food aid (613). To show that modern farming is becoming more environmentally friendly, he writes that even though food production went up 5 percent in modernized
Perterson, L.K., & Cullen, Cheryl. 2000. “Hindu symbolism and colour meanings dominate Indian culture and society,” in Global Graphics: Gloucester, Massachusetts:Rockpoint Publishers, pp.175-176.
The book The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food, by Wayne Roberts introduces us to the concept of “food system”, which has been neglected by many people in today’s fast-changing and fast-developing global food scene. Roberts points out that rather than food system, more people tend to recognize food as a problem or an opportunity. And he believes that instead of considering food as a “problem”, we should think first and foremost about food as an “opportunity”.
Food has been used as a tool by many cultures as movements to help with their culture become recognized, to identify their way of being, and to show their class and status. By exploring different author’s articles, and movie clips this will be visible. Food has created many cultures to explore these outlets and in return has had a positive impact on their culture.
For residents of Banaras, the rituals of death are continued time and time again. Whether they are directly involved or not, funeral practices underpin life in Banaras. The continuity of funeral practices over time means they gain importance, and are seen are imperative to the society. Parry discovers that ‘enquiries about the purpose of this or that rite commonly meet with the terse response that it has been ordained by the scriptures and handed down by ancestors’ (Parry, 1994, p.1). This further reinforces social cohesion during mourning periods. In some way, these funeral practices are comparable to Webb Keane’s theory of the ‘bored schoolboy who has memorised a credo which he recites by rote’ (Keane, 2008, S116). Clearly, it is possible for people to engage in funeral practices without fully understanding, or even believing, in them. If this is the case, then it is especially useful to consider religion as performing a social function. One variety of funeral practice, is performed by the Mahabrahman, the funeral priest. In this practice, the Mahabrahman will eat the ground up bones of the deceased. This process serves as a social function as it is not ‘merely a matter of the Mahabrahman representing the deceased’ there is ‘some kind of identity between them’ (Parry, 1994, p.77). Though the Mahabrahman finds the act disgusting, he will still carry it out, as he recognises the overwhelming importance in the
We wear traditional Indian clothes, cook Indian food and sweets, worship the God with hymns and prayers, and recite stories to children explaining about the ancient period in India and how the culture, beliefs and values are passed from generation to generation. Festivals unite us together and brings out an immense joy and happiness. During such festivals, cooking plays a vital role for women as making scrumptious sweets enlightens the whole day. Before eating those appetizing sweets, an important ritual precedes as those sweets are kept before the God and prayer occurs. Festivals are always filled with embellishing colors and joy that spreads across from children to elderly people. Another most important cultural tradition that Indians follow is respecting the elder people, usually youngsters touch elderly people’s feet to gain their blessings on important occasions and festivals. This tradition is followed wildly across India because in our tradition old people’s words and blessings are very powerful and respecting them is
In India there are many religious rituals. Some are the same as in the United States of America. They have Muslim and Christian rituals. Some of these rituals the Muslim and Christians of the United States of America participate in. Religious rituals make a huge impact on India’s culture. India’s culture would not be the same without these religious rituals. (“Indian Culture”)
There are many problems confronting our global food system. One of them is that the food is not distributed fairly or evenly in the world. According “The Last Bite Is The World’s Food System Collapsing?” by Bee Wilson, “we are producing more food—more grain, more meat, more fruits and vegetables—than ever before, more cheaply than ever before” (Wilson, 2008). Here we are, producing more and more affordable food. However, the World Bank recently announced that thirty-three countries are still famine and hungers as the food price are climbing. Wilson stated, “despite the current food crisis, last year’s worldwide grain harvest was colossal, five per cent above the previous year’s” (Wilson, 2008). This statement support that the food is not distributed evenly. The food production actually increased but people are still in hunger and malnutrition. If the food were evenly distributed, this famine problem would’ve been not a problem. Wilson added, “the food economy has created a system in w...
Pandey, T. N., 2014. Lecture 1/9/14: Culture of India: Aryan and Indigenous Population. Cultures of India. U.C. Santa Cruz.
Reading through Chapters 9 and 10, I thought it might be appropriate to integrate some information from the Hindu theology. In her essay: Why Bodies Matter, Meredith B. McGuire mentions how food and its consumption can be a spiritual practice. Further, how preparing and eating food within the “black Pentecostal church” is considered as a religious and spiritual expression. The actions point to the love of togetherness that can be perceived among this community. Shifting the conversation to how the two couples used Buddhist practices as an expression of spirituality, one is reminded of the thought behind the mindfulness of preparing food and eating it together. Two thoughts come to my mind when I reflect on the reasons for “a near-meditative
One of the most complex issues in the world today concerns human population. The number of people living off the earth’s resources and stressing its ecosystem has doubled in just forty years. In 1960 there were 3 billion of us; today there are 6 billion. We have no idea what maximum number of people the earth will support. Therefore, the very first question that comes into people’s mind is that are there enough food for all of us in the future? There is no answer for that. Food shortage has become a serious problem among many countries around the world. There are many different reasons why people are starving all over the world. The lack of economic justice and water shortages are just merely two examples out of them all.