The Importance Of Food As A Diet

Food provides an effective lens through which to illuminate human life and thus food inevitably becomes a marker of who we are. Food reflects our broader values, our politics. We are what we eat: morally, spiritually, socially and politically.
Humoral theory perceives diet as a moral practice. In order to properly assess this claim one must define the term “moral practice”. The word moral alone lends itself to both metaphysical and philosophical debate. The oxford dictionary defines moral as “concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character” . Using this definition of moral one can conclude that moral philosophy lies at the heart of humoral ideology.
Ancient Roman theorist, Galen, presents his humoral doctrine in various texts. Galen’s “On the Humors” introduces the four humors “yellow bile, blood, phlegm and black bile”(Galen,14), of which the human body is composed. He discloses that “health is [characterized] by the equality and symmetry of these humors”(Galen,15), and thus logically disease “occur[s] when the humours decrease or increase contrary to what is usual in terms of quantity, quality, shifting of position, irregular combination or putrefaction of whatever has rotted”(Galen,16). Hence, according to Galen, disease signifies an imbalance of humors.
Throughout Galen’s prose, moral emphasis manifests itself very clearly. When Galen explains “predominance of the humours generally changes according to the passing of the various stages of life, just as it seems the characteristics of the soul change”(Galen,17), he directly associates a change in humors with a change of character. Similarly, Galen later affirms that “the character of the soul can be altered in dise...

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... and food for animals. In Graeco-Roman society, food was marker of ethnic and cultural difference. Food and cuisine express fundamental human attitudes. The cooking of society is language into which it unconsciously translates its structure. Food reflects who we are, but as we create and recreate cuisine we may change the way food expresses identity.

Conclusion notes
The act of ingestion and digestion involves the incorporation of food into our own flesh. What we eat literally becomes us, and we become it. Logically, therefore food is among the most powerful expressions of identity, for both the individual and the group.
How we eat, what we eat are the most fundamental reflections of who we are physically, emotionally, politically, and spiritually. The blurred lines between one’s regimen and one’s lifestyle act a direct expression of one’s values and worldview.