Local Food vs Globalization

Food products of giant multinational corporations such as McDonald’s have huge impacts on people’s food preference since fast food became so popular and is familiar all over the world that people’s food preference are often set by their eating experience of the fast food in their childhood. For some people, the fast-food tastes become the standards. On the other hand, more high-graded restaurants that serve local specialties with the local ingredients receive stars on the Michelin and other restaurant guides for gourmands. There seem two different standards on food formed by globalized fast food and traditional local cuisines among people. Local foods conflict with globalization and remain distinctive from other globalized and industrialized food products due to the traditional and cultural boundaries to the consumers.

People consume not only food, but also the social and cultural meanings of it at the same time. In Jonathan Safran Foer’s non-fiction book Eating Animals, Foer, who is a writer and also a vegetarian, gives an example of telling why “Eating and storytelling are inseparable” (16). He mentions that kosher was devised in order not to “subject the animals you eat to unnecessary suffering, either in their lives or in their slaughter” with “respect for the other creatures in the world and with humility” (Foer 43). Here the food has at least two aspects for a person: “individual biographies” and “social histories” (Foer 18). It can also be said about eating local foods. A person consciously or not consumes these meanings while eating. Family, local community, and culture have played an important role in sharing and passing down these food stories to the next generation. Even if one cannot feel any direct human touch with t...

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...it for their consumers. Moreover, there are a variety of cooking books available at book stores and thousands of cooking recipes can be found on the Internet. Families and communities may not be able to fully pass down their food traditions to the younger generation any more, but these remain in other forms and are still available for those who choose to have these no matter where they live.

Works Cited

Adendorff, Lee Anne. “McItaly – A Fast Food Evolution in Italy.” suite101.com. N.p., 1 Feb. 2010. Web. 10 Feb. 2011.

Foer, Jonathan Safran. Eating Animals. ebook ed. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009. PDF file.

Ide, Ella. “Italy Critics Trash McDonald’s Nationalist Food Bid.” Reuters. Thomson Reuters, 5 Feb. 2010. Web. 10 Mar. 2011.

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006. Print.