How Food Defines Us

Excerpts from the Paper

How Food Defines Us
This paper argues that studying food is a good way to understand a person’s culture and to also understand their family – or even our families, if we so wish. The truth of the matter is that the foods we crave tell us where we came from insofar as different parts of the world obviously have different crops that become the dominant crops of the region. As well, culture is transmitted to us through the food we eat: an Irish family that loves potatoes is also recapturing its Irish heritage via the consumption of this produce; furthermore, an African family that loves rice is drawing into itself the favourite crop of its indigenous native culture – a culture that most African-Americans were wrenched out of courtesy slavery....

..... the present is unfolding in a far-away place. We can also say that food which takes time to prepare is really an excuse for bringing people together at the kitchen counter or at the dinner table; people from cultures that value families coming together are people who have no problem with food that must be prepared whereas someone from a fast food, North American culture might object strongly. In a way, when a person only wants to eat food that can be made quickly (and thus consumed quickly), he or she is subscribing to the frenetic views about time that characterize our western society, where speed often trumps something more profound or meaningful.
Works Cited
Shange
,
Ntozake
. If I can Cook, You Know God Can. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.