Eating Right in the Renaissance

5. Food and the Individual

chapter 5 Food and the Individual At first glance, it may seem that taste preferences and food choices are informed by simple biological and economic factors. A person eats whatever tastes good and can be readily obtained. In fact, it is almost never so simple. As a species, we learn to eat foods that are not immediately pleasant and sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to find calorically inefficient foods. We also spurn perfectly nutritious foods that can be had for the taking. Obviously “taste” is something profoundly shaped by cultural, social, and psychological factors. A food sacred to one society may be taboo to another. What may be a rare delicacy to one social group may be repulsive even to think of for another. Individual food preferences are also shaped by past experiences, idiosyncratic associations, and the preferences of family and peers. Within one culture, or even to one individual, the meaning of any given food can change over time, in different contexts, and among different social groups. To one generation, expensive alcohol may be an extravagant luxury, to another a crippling vice. To one individual, strange and exotic food is an exciting adventure into the unknown, to another it is threatening and dangerous. A simple dish of beans may evoke nostalgic memories of the homeland for one person, while it is nothing but lowly peasant food to another. All these attitudes reveal much more than the mere effect of food on the taste buds. Taste preferences give us an indirect glimpse at the concerns, fears, and prejudices of the individual , the group, and the entire culture. 163 164 Food and the Individual In examining food preferences found in a purely prescriptive literature , we are, of course, one step removed from actual consumption. There is really no way to be sure if anyone consistently followed the advice offered in dietary regimens. The fact that they often could not is itself revealing. In the past, just as today, the dietary ideal should not be taken as an indication of actual eating habits but rather as a mirror of cultural ideals. Take for example a slick new cookbook that explains how to throw elegant dinner parties. Whether readers actually throw these parties is perhaps less important and interesting than the cultural ideal embodied in sociability, savoir faire, and sophistication that is being bought by the readers of such literature. The cookbook is thus an idealization of values shared by a particular group and sought by the individual. In a society that constructs ideal beauty as a slim figure, logically diet books for weight-reduction will proliferate. Chances are that few people will ever attain the slim body promised, but the cultural ideal is still clearly spelled out in the literature and the success stories are touted publicly as an incentive to imitate. Any food literature, including nutritional science, can thus be read as an embodiment of cultural ideals and personal aspirations. Again, as discussed in the introduction, what people think they ought to eat is a re- flection of what they want to be. The individual who seeks out rare and foreign ingredients hopes to become cosmopolitan and erudite and in consuming these foods directly incorporates these qualities. The devotee of organic produce does become literally and psychologically clean and natural through choosing pesticide-free foods. The daring chili enthusiast becomes intrepid through the act of eating dangerous food and gets a quick thrill from downing the fiery condiment. The narrowly ethnocentric person sticks to familiar, safe food to avoid being tainted by the other. That is, each individual consumes his or her own ideal self image, or at least uses this ideal to inform specific food choices whenever possible. And naturally, these ideals change over time and under the influence of fellow diners by whom one wishes to be accepted. Nonetheless , a person’s favorite foods and his or her overall attitude toward eating almost always reveal something basic and integral to that individual ’s personality and conception of self. The sensualist, the control freak, the socially repressed—all are immediately exposed by their eating habits. Some of these ideal self-images are worked out into elaborate systems that may incorporate a philosophy, political agenda, or worldview. These Food and the Individual 165 systems might even be thought of as food ideologies. Vegetarianism is as much a way of life as a dietary choice, as were...