What is your Food Culture?
What we eat is primarily influenced by who we are and where we live. Our individual food choices represent multiple layers of our identities, which come from social and physical environments. Our food choices are based on wealth, social trends, food habits passed down from generations that result in the creation of a food culture.
Food Culture is our unique meaning to food, subjective to every individual, perspectives which are dynamic and constantly evolving. It is a medium to retain your cultural identity while still exploring and adapting to new food styles, cuisines and traditions. The way we engage with food, in rituals and routines says a lot about our cultural identity and in turn our food identity.
Anthropological studies have highlighted how food came to be used as an identity marker within different cultural groups across the world. The way it is prepared, consumed and served is distinct to society and traditions and has been continuously reconstructed since human history. Food is a medium to bring communities together, build relationships and make memories. Food is closely associated with memories, each one of us has grown up eating food that is particular to our culture, it can simply be the smell of freshly baked cookies or caramelised onions which brings back recollections from childhood. So every time we get a whiff of a familiar smell we associate it with our past food memories. Therefore on a larger scale, food is not just a part of culture it defines one’s culture too.
My definition of food culture is a Roti, a flatbread brushed with ghee which I have grown up eating with lentils, curries and vegetables. It is where I find comfort, call it my own, it will always remain closest to my heart while an arepa, a taco, pizza, a crepe, naan, a manoushe and bao are the new features to my food identity.
So the next time, you have your favourite meal, pause and ponder over your food culture?