EE2: Rough Draft

Sarah Heermann

5/22/2012

Writ EE2

Final essay

Cultural Chaos

            The relationship people have with food is more complex than simply a means to gain sustenance. Choosing what to eat has evolved from a fight for survival to standing in front of a kiosk full of choices for a minute and ordering. This new, easier way of obtaining food is safer and convenient, but it also comes with it’s own costs. With so many products out for our picking, what is it that helps us choose what to eat? Such a decision doesn’t happen just randomly, we have taste preferences and food consequences in mind when we choose each meal.  I never stand in front of food choices and think, “I don’t care at all what I eat; I’ll just order haphazardly from the menu” since I fear ending up with something I will dislike. I will always favor some dishes over others. There are always reasons for picking a meal the way I do, and I assume it is the same or similar with everyone else. For me, my cultural and religious backgrounds help define the meals I eat and what those meals mean to me. Additionally, my gender and the stereotypes the American culture place on females also helps govern my food choices.

            The values I hold are strongly connected to who I believe I am as a person. These values are shown through my actions, and this includes the choices I make with food. As with most people, I consider my cultural background a major part of who I am, therefore what I eat is not only a reflection of who I am but also my values. In our first reading for the class, “Home Run” by Roy Ahn, he talks about how eating Taiwanese food (he was born in Taiwan and raised by Taiwanese parents) was important to him for strengthening and reconnecting with his culture. He described it as a self-journey, where he not only reconnected with his dead parents but rediscovered himself after he had begun to eat and cook with Korean foods once more.

“Food reinvigorated my innate sense of Korean-ness. I’m not at all certain about the synapses that get fired when human beings experience emotions from cooking and eating the foods of their childhoods. All I can say for sure is that something sublime happened in that mecca of Korean cuisine—the Rockies—where I rediscovered my native food heritage.” (Ahn 12-15)

Here the connection between the inner awareness of oneself, culture, and food is obvious.  Food is a way to physically let a culture become a part of your body, and though you cannot actually get a feel for the entire culture of any group of people by simply tasting the food, it does seem to describe and define cultures well. Whether it is the stereotypes of a culture that we associate with a food that give us a cultural education while eating or the association of that food with a culture that gives us hints, we gain cultural knowledge by simply eating cultural foods. 

When I eat at an “authentic” restaurant I feel as though I am taking a small trip through a time machine that conveniently gives me the feel of being in that country. I use the word authentic with quotation marks because so few restaurants in America are actually authentic. For our field projects in visiting a restaurant of our choice I went to Brio, a large Italian food chain restaurant that was placed close to the mall. One of my major findings was how hard the restaurant tried to appear as authentic as possible. It adopted as many stereotypical Italian characteristics as possible. Brio, and all the chains it owns, has menus in Italian offering Italian-like dishes and playing soft guitar and accordion music in the background. According to a marketing website, atmosphere adjustments are done on purpose because they increase sales by giving the customer the impression that this is a fancier and more unique dining experience than it actually is("MarketingTeacher.com"). If this is the goal then why Americanize the food? Americanizing ethnic foods is very popular among chain restaurants. Just like any large corporation that seeks to gain the approval of the masses, changing their product to appeal to a more “American” taste just makes sense especially when considering profits. According to “La Gazzetta Italiana”, only one-third of supposed Italian food actually comes from Italy.  Freshness and quality after being shipped is also in question. (Janice Therese) Of course under these new considerations few people will ever have “true” Italian food, but even the recipes involved in cooking and methods of production have differed to appeal to a more American taste. Authentic Italian food comes in smaller portions, with much simpler ingredients, uses less cheese and toppings if none at all, and most surprising to me Italians do not use tomato sauce at all. They focus on freshness, and make meals from scratch so waiting a long time for a meal is a major difference. (Ledblimp, 2010) However even with these differences, eating the food in the encouraged atmosphere I felt more connected to the Italian culture than if I had been in Italy eating McDonald’s.

My personal cultural influence on food choices is German. The town I grew up in is a small agricultural town where roughly 85% are from German ancestry. My town’s average dinner plate consists of meat, bread and potatoes. Growing up on these foods makes me automatically gravitate toward them as a source of comfort and familiarity. Religion also places bread at the top for desired foods for me. In an article we read for class the author of “Eating White”, Nicholson, talks about his mother’s strange eating habit of consuming all white foods. Nicholson had a theory about his mother’s attraction. He believes her religion (Catholicism) and the purity symbolism the catholic religion places on the color white subconsciously attracts her to “purify” her body.  This was an interesting theory, and when the author described his experience of eating a communion wafer I realized my own connection to the same type of food. I love bread, and I use love instead of like for an honest emphasis. Usually the bread at the beginning of dinner consists of about a third of my whole dinner. When I dine out with my family they take one piece and split it amongst themselves and pass the basket to me! And I always remember being this way. It makes me wonder if all of the images and emphasis of importance on bread I saw and heard during church services (that my parents brought me to even as a baby) influenced me into loving bread. Bread is so ingrained into the religion that during the Lord’s Prayer (something said at church every Sunday and nearly every church function) we thank God for providing us our “daily bread”, and it is consumed in communion with high importance. As a child I remember being board during church services and staring at a stained glass window we always sat by. In its center was a golden cup of wine, a bunch of grapes and a large loaf of bread. The sun shining through it made the bread light up, and after staring at that for an hour I was always hungry for bread afterward. I prefer the large, soft sourdough bread to the hard, crunchy French begets. The picture in the window could have influenced this, but I also believe that my town, and it’s strong German background influenced the types of food I eat today.

However, there are several factors that push me away from such foods. Culturally, Americans have come across the dieting period of fearing carbs. The Atkins diet and other similar diets have claimed carbs as the main source of energy to avoid, unfortunately for me this means the foods I love the most and are culturally close to me. Bread and potatoes have now become the enemy, and now we have a strange out-of-bounds relationship, where I feel guilty for enjoying such foods. As a woman, and the typical American stereotyped pressures placed against me, I feel even more pressured to eat healthy and skip the high-carb foods I love.

Resources

Ahn, Roy. "Home Run: My Journey Back to Korean Food."Journal of Food and Culture. 9.4 (2009): 12-15. Print. 

(Ahn 12-15)

. "Situational Influences and Atmospherics."MarketingTeacher.com. CHICHESTER , 2012. Web. 22 May 2012. <http://www.marketingteacher.com/lesson-

("MarketingTeacher.com")

Janice Therese, M. [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.lagazzettaitaliana.com/italian-food-american-history.aspx

Ledblimp. (2010, August). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.lifeinitaly.com/forum/threads/11472-Differences-between-Italian-amp-American-style-Italian-food

Nicholson, Geoff. "Eating White." Journal of Food and Culture. 10.1 (12): 21-23. Print. <http://blackboard.du.edu/bbcswebdav/courses/2009.201230/Eating White - Nicholson(1).pdf>.

(Nicholson 21-23)