connection between food and culture

1. The connection between
food and culture

2. What’s the connection between food ?
In this lesson, we'll talk about connections among food, culture, and society. Food is important
for our nutrition, but it also has important cultural and symbolic meanings that make it more
than what's on our plates
Do you have childhood memories of eating a favorite food?
If you stop and think about it, you probably associate some of your favorite foods with
family memories.

3. you probably remember your grandmather’s special cake

4. or your father favourite dishes ...

5. Food is clearly important for nutrition, but it's also meaningful to humans in other
ways. Think about it: we're the only mammals that cook our food. This makes our
consumption of nutrients much different.
Culturally speaking, food is very important.
Food can be nostalgic and provide important connections to our family or our
nation. Food can be a bridge that helps immigrants and their place in a new
society. Food can have a number of different meanings that might not be
immediate to us when, for example, we take our rst bite of our favorite dinner.

6. This is Claude Lévi-Strauss’ theory: humankind
born when starts cooking food.
the anthropologist explains this theory in the essay
“The raw and cooked”, published in 1964, the first
volume of 4 “Mythological” parts, a great work in
which he collected all the South America’s Myths.
We can sum up his research saying: “Kitchen is the
start up of humanity, the big bang of any
civilisations”. In many Amerindian cosmogonies, in
fact, the birth of the first woman and the first man
have been gave … cooking.

7. So, at the beginning there was
fire in this sense too.
Fire is the starting-point of every
mythology and is the origin of all
metamorphosis.
Fire gave humanity the
possibility to cook food and the
act of cooking food took us from
a “natural phase” into the
Culture. Referring Levy-Strauss
theory, Culture = cooked while
Nature = Raw.
In the moment we started using
fire, the Fire started producing
humankind as well

8. Think of the expression, to break bread with someone. This is referring to the way
that food brings people together and is important in our relationships.

9. Anthropologist Margaret Mead famously wrote about how
food is for gifting.

10. What Mead meant by this is that food provides us with something
more symbolic than simply nutrition (though that's certainly
important). Food is meant to be exchanged and shared with family
and friends

11. Food provides an important link to our cultural heritage. Imagine an Italian
grandmother who immigrated to the United States and is teaching her
grandchildren, who have never been to Italy, how to make an authentic Italian
meal. This is an important experience in maintaining connections to one's cultural
heritage.

12. Habits
Cultures also differ in the types of habits they associate with food. For example, in some cultures, it is
common to eat with your hands. In other places, however, this is considered rude. Or, at the very least,
you'll get some odd looks from your dinner companions. Sometimes, nishing all of the food on your plate is
considered polite, whereas in other contexts, it signals to your host that he or she did not feed you enough.

13. RELIGION AND RITUAL (ALSO LAICAL RITUAL)
Food is also tied to religion and ritual. In some religions, such as Hinduism, followers generally avoid eating
meat, particularly cows, since they are considered sacred animals by many Hindu sects. Food can help us
feel like we're part of a bigger group or that we have a special link to a particular community, like a religious
group. Everything, from a tribe in Papua New Guinea roasting pigs for a ceremony to an American child
celebrating his birthday with a frosted cake, points to the importance of food for our rituals.

14. The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss once observed that we save our fanciest food items for
special occasions. He suggested that this is in part because we like to use food to impress other
people. So, you probably won't break out the caviar by yourself for a weekday lunch, but you might
for a Saturday evening dinner party!