As defined by Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, food is “material consisting essentially of protein, carbohydrate, and fat used in the body of an organism to sustain growth, repair, and vital processes and to furnish energy.” However, can food not provide something more than simply nourishment? For ages, scientists all over have been noticing patterns in the ways various cultures think of food and make it parts of their everyday lives. These patterns teach us more about these cultures, as well as the many ways that food affects them. Food influences many parts of these cultures, such as religion, relationships, gender, and finally communication. Communication is a vital part of one’s everyday life and Anthropologist E.N. Anderson describes food as “second only to language as a social communication system” (Anderson 124). Thai director Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman and Latin American director María Ripoll’s Tortilla Soup, a Latino re-make of Lee’s film, reveal the similarities of two seemingly different cultures and their use of food as a means of communication.
Anderson claims, “One main message of food, everywhere, is solidarity. Eating together means sharing and participating” (Anderson 125). In both films, Sunday dinner gives the families a break from everyone’s busy lives where they can enjoy a meal as a family. For both Master Chu and Martin, this Sunday tradition is a necessary way to get the family together for at least a little while. However, to the girls it is the “Sunday dinner torture ritual” (Eat Drink Man Woman). Although the girls feel this way, the only family bonding seen is the sharing of this exquisite food. Therefore, food provides the means by which families can come together.
In both films, ...
... middle of paper ...
...nest with each other and not worry about harsh judgment.
Tortilla Soup and Eat Drink Man Woman feature cultures from complete opposite sides of the world; however, there are numerous similarities in the way the families use food as a means of communication. Food helps these families express feelings they would normally not be able to express without this connection. While food does provide nourishment, it also is a major aspect of many cultures and their daily lives.
Works Cited
Anderson, E.N.. Everyone Eats: Understanding Food and Culture. New York: New York
University Press, 2005.
Eat Drink Man Woman. Dir. Ang Lee. Ang Lee Productions, 1994. DVD.
“Food” . Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Encyclopedia Britannica. 21 March 2011.
< http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/food>.
Tortilla Soup. Dir. María Ripoll. Samuel Goldwyn Films, 2001. DVD.
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”.
“Hungry for Change” is an eye opening documentary made to explore the role that food plays in peoples’ lives. The experts, ranging from authors to medical doctors, address a variety of claims through testimonials, experiments, and statistical evidence. They not only state the flaws in this generation’s diet but also logically explain the reasons behind the downfall in peoples’ diet and offer better ways to approach our health.
...ctivity. It is the means of identifying the in-group.” Alourdes then says, “You eat with people, you always have food. You eat by yourself, you don’t have nothing (Brown 43).” Within the Haitian community, food is often represented as someone’s happiness and well-being. If one day, Alourdes said that she was not going to eat for a whole day, which meant that she was most likely depressed or upset.
Michael Pollan makes arguments concerning the eating habits of the average American. Pollan suggests, in spite of our cultural norms, we should simply “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.”
The American boyfriend’s family came for the first time to meet his Greek girlfriend’s family as they were roasting a huge pig in the lawn. The Greek family was large; and had the blue, white Greek flag on the lawn standing tall. The foodways in this film represented the Greek culture. In a scene the Greek girlfriend tells her aunt that her American boyfriend does not eat meat, she responds my saying “He don’t eat meat? That’s ok, I make lamb” (clip of video from class). Meat is the main food product for Greeks, so for her to be so embedded into her culture to not think that other people can’t eat meat was fascinating and it displays her way of identifying with her own culture. The movie was a way for the Greek culture to show how they identified with food and their way of being. This clip connects with the Smithsonian Folk life Festival (clip of video from class). Every year cultures have the opportunity to broadcast their culture through food, music, language and art at the Smithsonian Folk like Festival. The festival is a movement and helps cultures who are not often known or presented to become recognized, by the displaying of the foodways of that origin. Having this type of resource is a way where people can learn about the culture through a more personalized lens. This festival is an opportunity for cultures to become recognized and to identify their way of
Throughout the book, we go through several examples of how food can have an influence on people and how they are affected. The emotions range from joy to grief and sadness. We see this happen with Tita and Pedro and their communication through food and how their connection is strengthened through cooking and food. Nacha’s passing was sudden but it shows that food and depending on the situation and mood can have a great effect on a person. And although some of the events that took place in this book is over exaggerated, food can in some ways, have an influence on
Food plays a very important role in every religion and culture. Good nutrition is a great symbol of healthy food/diet. In order to keep ourselves healthy, it is very important to watch what we are eating. Food habits come from parents, which later on developed according to the environment. Food is one of the ways where humans describe themselves as cultured. Food is the most significant segment of our lives. Different types of food explain verities of the belief that we have in all over the world. Ones’ food discipline and choice, tells about which culture/religion they belong to. Food, Religion,
Food influences us in many ways. These ways include food as nutrition, how we see nature, in our culture, it is a social good, it is a source of inspiration in an artful way, food is a primordial desire, and food influences our spirituality. Food is a substance that derives from the environment in the form of plants, animals, or water. The primary function of food is to provide nourishment to an organism. It is a basic necessity that all humans want and need in order to live. Food has an intrinsic value separate from its instrumental value to satisfy human needs. Food has a significant impact on a culture. Each society determines what is food, what is acceptable to eat, and when certain things are consumed. Food is the object of hunger
Pollan states that food is not just a necessity to survive, it has a greater meaning to life. Pollan explains how food can cause us happiness and health by connecting us to our family and culture. Warren Belasco, in “Why Study Food”, supports Pollan’s idea that food is something social and cultural. In Belasco’s description of a positive social encounter food is included, whether it involves a coffee date with a colleague or a dinner date with a loved one. Belasco states that food forms our identity and brings our society together.
With every experience that we have with food, a memory is created. Our experiences with food begin when we are infants. The memories can be traumatic or they can be pleasant, but they will affect the way we think, act, and shape our ideas about food in the future. Just like our language, the clothes we wear on a daily basis, our individual customs, and the values and beliefs that we have, food is important in constructing our overall identity too. If the way a person speaks, dresses, and thinks can reveal a lot about who they are as individuals, then doesn't food also define us? Everything that revolves around our food from what we choose to eat and how our food is obtained and prepared to when and how we eat tells us so much about
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 carbohydrates and calories that maintain any culture. Food offers a dynamic cross-section of man's tendencies. "Nourishment, a basic biological need," argues anthropologist Sidney Mintz, "becomes something else because we humans transform it symbolically into a system of meaning for much more than itself" (7). By examining food consumption and preparation, much is discoverd regarding the intricacies of culture. The preparation and consumption of food in Puritan society are reflected in Mary Rowlandson's The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. Rowlandson's view of food and admissions of hunger in the infancy of her captivity cast a revealing light upon the roots of her conceptions and ideas about food and, more generally, about her culture's conceptions and ideas about food. As the conflict between her soul and her stomach raged over food, Rowlandson's attitudes toward the Native Americans' preparation and consumption of food reflect the socialization of the Puritans to believe that every meal ...
Food—it is that precious substance our bodies need to survive. Whether it brings feelings of nostalgia and comfort, or unites families together, we can all agree that food is a vital source of nourishment. However, our definition of food has changed drastically with the advent of modern technology, which has given rise countless food trends. The desire for the cheap mass-production of food has induced an unspoken transition from slow cooked chicken and steamed veggies to frozen tv-dinners disguised to look like actual food worthy of consumption. Hence, food trends and technology effects the way we produce, purchase, and consume food in the United States.
Commensality can be defined as the notion of eating with others. It is the act of two or more people consuming a meal together (Pearsall J 1999). The purpose of commensality is much more than that of allowing survival. It pushes beyond this and becomes a practice of socialisation. Anthropologist Martin Sahlins suggested that not only does it provide opportunities for people to integrate socially, but that it can be the starting factor and maintaining factor in which enables relationships to form and develop. For example, he found that at the beginning of relationship formation commensality tends to involve the sharing of drinks and snacks. As relationships develop the meals become more complex. He claimed that the traditional cooked dinner of meats and vegetables is one mainly shared among families and rarely with friends (Lupton 1996). This suggests that commensality is often used as an expression of closeness and the extent of such closeness can be discovered by looking at ...
In her book Semiotics and Communication: Signs, Codes, Cultures, Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz describes the wide use of food as signs, and also as social codes. The reason foods are so useful as signs and social codes is because they are separable, easily adaptive to new environments, and it is not difficult to cook, or eat for that matter. Food is a major part of our daily lives, Not only for survival, but it plays a substantial social role in our lives. We will look deeper into the semiotics of food, how food is used as identity markers, and also the role that foods play in social change in our lives. First let us start with the semiotics of food.
It is interesting how people of various parts of the world are able to use food to describe something or someone metaphorically. Although most of the food idioms arise with some relation to food or the action of eating, most of the food idioms in present days have meanings that evolve to have not relativity to food or