Food, Culture and Identity

As an essential component of our culture, food is also central to our sense of identity (Fischler, 1988). . What we eat, how we eat, and when we eat reflect the complexity of wide cultural arrangements around food and foodways, the unique organization of food systems, and existing social policies. Food plays a key role in human socialization, in developing an awareness of body and self, language acquisition, and personality development. As Barthes (1975: 510) argues “[s]ubstances, techniques of preparation, habits, all become part of a system of differences in signification” and we communicate by way of food. As we learn what to eat, how to eat, when to eat, we learn “our” culture, “our” norms and “our” values and through this process we learn who “we” are. Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote in the early 19th Century, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are." There exists a rich body of literature examining the socioeconomic and cultural variations in foodways, expressions of ethnocentrism through food habits, impacts of food taboos, and identification of “otherness” through food (Avakian, 1997; Bell and Valentine, 1997; Bordo, 1993; Caplan, 1997; Fieldhouse, 1996; Gabaccia, 1998; Lupton, 1996;Mennell et al, 1992; Warde, 1997). These studies examine how our food choices are shaped by various individual, cultural, historical, social, and economic influences. From a sociological perspective, patterns of change and resistance in food preferences also offer us insights about tendencies for acculturation, assimilation, adaptation, social distancing, integration and consequent improvements or risks to quality of life (Capella, 1993).