Food culture
1926 mots
8 pages
As a French Erasmus student in Hungary, since September 2008, I have realized that Hungary’s cuisine was a lot more than goulash and heavy or fatty dishes. During every of my travel abroad, I am very interested in discovering the gastronomy of the visited country because it reflects for me perfectly certain characteristics of its inhabitants. I was therefore eager to study the topic of meals and table manners. I have chosen to orientate this paper on food culture or “foodways”. What goes under the term of food culture and does this notion still has a meaning in our contemporary world?
The first part of this essay will aim at giving a brief overview of this vast term. The second part of the paper will aim at discussing if food culture is threatened, by what and to which extent.
What is actually food culture?
The author of “Food wars” describes the food culture as such: “a constellation of socially produced values, attitudes, relationships, tastes, cuisines and practices exhibited through food”.
Food culture can be characterized by two elements:
• The set of rules that naturally regulate a citizen to its relationship with food, like for example, in France time of meals are set up and most of the people respect it, whereas in USA, snacking all day long is very common.
• The ability to cook and identify few national dishes, like for example in Hungary, with the fozelek, or pogacsa, or in England with the Fish and Chips.
We can say that each culture has its own ways of enjoying food and constructing its food culture.
When researching about food and its relation to culture, another term comes out: “foodways”.
It is the study of the procurement, preparation and consumption of food or also the culinary practices of a people, a land, historical and popular. This term is usually used by anthropologists and has a more geographical and historical connoted term, whereas food culture has a more universalistic and scientific connotation.
Hence, my personal