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the relation between food and culture
food culture and its impacts essay
the relation between food and culture
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Around the world there are many common factors that link cultures to one another, but one of the main factors that separates cultures is the food they eat. People travel the world specifically to taste the intricate cuisine from each culture around the globe. Its importance lies within the fact that all living things need it to survive, and in particular humans need a wide range of nutrients and vitamins to survive and the culture that it derives from makes it special. From China to Mexico, the wide assortment and tastes found relate directly to the culture that the food originates from. The preparation, cooking, and consuming of these diverse food leads to a wider view of that culture as a whole. In America, it is special to see all the …show more content…
Is it not sad that the Indian culture can be defined by food with a multitude of spices combined with rice, noodles, and many other tasteful ingredients and then American food is viewed as the golden arches? But, this is not how American cooking began. Before fast food restaurants and enough grease to clog a person’s arteries, there was good old fashioned home cooking comprised of fresh farm vegetables and meat, alongside a homemade apple pie. Yet, this is not how many people view American cooking and even though it is a better combination than the Dollar Menu, it is not enough to define a culture so diverse with one meal. Moreover, even though the rest of the world may see American food as a hamburger and fries, it is crucial to realize that there is not one specific type of food that can represent America, just as there is not one culture or religion that can define the American people. The American culture cannot be simplified to one specific food type, just as many Americans would not appreciate some of those titles. Nearly every region of the world has influenced the culture of the United States in some way, and one does not have to look far to find a wide assortment of restaurants and stores providing food from around the
In Lavanya Ramanathan’s Washington Post article published in 2015 titled “Why everyone should stop calling immigrant food ‘ethnic’”, she discusses about people’s preconceptions on the type of food that should be labelled ethnic. Ashlie Stevens also touched on a similar topic in her Guardian article published in 2015 titled “Stop thinking and just eat: when ‘food adventuring’ trivializes culture”. She talks about how people assume that just by eating food from a certain culture, they are able relate to the culture as a whole. Both authors acknowledge the importance of appreciating authentic cuisines, but takes different approaches to convince the audience. Both authors establish credibility by using a wide range of substantiated evidences. While,
In the writing “If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?” Geeta Kothari describes the differences in the American and Indian cultures through her unique description of the food differences. As a little Indian-American girl, Kothari curiously wanted to eat what of kids her age ate, tuna salad sandwich, hot dogs, and foods of such nature. Kothari describes her first encounter with a can of tuna fish as it looks “pink and shiny, like an internal organ” (947). As Kothari ages, it becomes clear that she sees American food much the way her parents saw it- “repugnant… meat byproducts… glued together by chemicals and fat” (947). Even though Kothari describes American food as strange, disgusting, and foreign; it was also “infidelity” to eat it (951).
The icon that represents fast food culture for most people is McDonald's, though the fast food culture developed long before the creation of that restaurant chain. Schlosser considers the impact of such fast-food chains but also considers the primacy of the hamburger in the American diet and some of the dangers it poses. McDonald?s reliance on hamburger is a questionable item for a steady diet in a more health conscious age, and interferes w...
Many scholars have written about the particularly intimate connection between food and family prevalent in Italian-American culture. Herbert Gans interprets this to be a legacy of the traditional Southern Italian peasant culture that the immigrant generation successfully passed down to the younger generations in America. Thus, the connection is implied to be a “transplanted” cultural trait. However, when viewed in light of the social changes in America, this bond was inevitably affected by the Italians’ experiences in America. Italian-American food culture was a tradition shaped by changes outside and inside the family. An examination of the Italian-American family of the interwar years (c.1919-1940) demonstrates that the critical role food came to play in the family life of Italian-Americans was very much the product of inter-generational negotiation. The second generation , largely affected by public discourse, originally viewed “Italian” food as a marker of social inferiority. Therefore, food became a major source of family conflict between generations. But, through inter-generational negotiation, food was ultimately to become a fundamental unifying force of the Italian-American family. Today, in light of the rise of inter-ethnic marriage rates between Italians and Italian-Americans in America, a new form of negotiation centering on food is taking place within the Italian-American family—‘inter-spousal’ negotiation.
Michael Twitty is a food writer and culinary historian best known for preparing, preserving and promoting African American food ways and its origins in Africa. He emphasizes how African food culture has made a great impact on the American South. His cooking helped him to learn about his identity and culture. He describes “identity cooking” a way to better understand him and his culture as a Jewish-African American. A project he developed called “The Cooking Gene” is what he explains as a means of “exploring my family history through food, from Africa to America, from slavery to freedom.” Race, food and ethnicity all have a more complex and cultural meaning especially when fused together. Different
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.
In Michael Pollan’s “The End of Cooking” shares the message of what we are losing something important in this day and age because of all our pre-made and processed foods. This can be compared with Kothari’s “If You Are What You Eat, What Am I?” and her argument that food is part of one’s own identity. By using the examples from these two texts you can analyze the state of food and culture in the United States today. All of the processed and pre-made foods are causing people all across America to lose their sense of Culture. We no longer know what it’s like to make one of our cultures specialty dishes from scratch which can help people identify with their culture. This process helped newer generations see what it was like for those before them to cook on a daily basis and could help them identify your sense of culture.
Food passes along cultural identities and gives people insight of variations among civilizations. That attribute promotes how big of an influence it has for generations to come. Several ethnic groups possess particular “rituals” towards food within the United States. One of the interesting locations to observe the phenomenon of food in culture is here in South Texas. South Texas brings a genre of food known as Tex-Mex. It is characterized by the usage of beef, beans, and spices. This type of cuisine differs from Southwest platters from places such as New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Arizona.
Though, the plantation colonies didn’t not always abide by this lesson, and often cared more about their money than they did about the food they needed to survive. At the same time, they were still able to survive and have enough food to sustain themselves unlike the people of Jamestown, showing that they learned where the line between need and want was. The American Pageant provided as a main source of evidence from this financial point of view. Page 36-37 paragraph 4 gives the first piece of evidence stating, “Carolina prospered by developing close economic ties with the flourishing sugar islands of the English West Indies...They also established a vigorous slave trade in Carolina itself.” These are a few of the financial support systems
Pothukuchi, Kameshwari. "Book Review of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal(Eric Schlosser, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001." U-M Personal World Wide Web Server. Web. 19 May 2011. .
I was born in one of the countries in Asia, and our staple food is rice. Rice is always at the center of the table, and the rest of the viand surrounds it. Here in the United States, my household still eat rice every day, accompanied by cooked vegetables and meat. My food choices are influenced by culture and family. Vegetables and fruits of my choice are abundant at the International Market and other Asian grocery stores. Vegetables are also available for a cheaper price at the farmers market. I myself buy these foods to ensure its freshness, prepare and cook them for my entire family. Inspired by Asian and American cuisine, our food is prepared with variety of cooking styles; such as dry like barbecues, baked and fried, with sauce
The other aspect of the Americanization of different cultures’ foods is lessening the spiciness of certain foods. For instance, foods from Thailand usually have a significant amount of heat and spice based on the Thai food culture that largely incorporates vegetables. In this case, Americans lessen the spiciness through changing a major ingredient of the ethnic cuisine in order to prepare an Americanized Thai cuisine. Therefore, Americans have primarily Americanized different cultures’ foods through salting, adding sugar, or frying and lessening changing major ingredients of the native cuisine.
The way in which we choose our foods can stem from events that occur during early childhood. When I lived in Jamaica as a child, I was only fed 'Jamaican style' cuisine. This involved lots of rice with peas, chicken, jerked pork, etc. However, I remember that my parents would take my brothers and I out to restaurants a few times a year as a treat. Our favourite place was a specific Chinese restaurant in a tourist area nearby our house. The food was prepared by Chinese workers and we got to experience what we believed was authentic Chinese cuisine. Another place in which we would enjoy was KFC. KFC represented an exotic 'Other' which allowed us to experience a different kind of social space. According to Finkelstein, this is known as an 'America place'. It is world-famous American food. Food consumption can be a social event where it is done solely for the experience. Interactions in restaurants are conditioned by existing manners and customs. Dining out allows us to act in imitation of others, in accord with images, in responses to fashions, out of habit, without need for thought or self-scrutiny. The result is that the styles of...
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. N. pag. Print.
American culture is changing dramatically. In some areas it’s a good thing, but in other areas, like our food culture, it can have negative affects. It is almost as if our eating habits are devolving, from a moral and traditional point of view. The great America, the land of the free and brave. The land of great things and being successful, “living the good life.” These attributes highlight some irony, especially in our food culture. Is the American food culture successful? Does it coincide with “good living”? What about fast and processed foods? These industries are flourishing today, making record sales all over the globe. People keep going back for more, time after time. Why? The answer is interestingly simple. Time, or in other words, efficiency. As people are so caught up in their jobs, schooling, sports, or whatever it may be, the fast/processed food industries are rapidly taking over the American food culture, giving people the choice of hot