Omnivorousness: The Human Dilemma

 Food is classified in ways that attribute it cultural meaning.

• In the US, we typically classify foods according to their health value
• superfoods
• good fats
• organic
• artisan made
• locally grown
• natural
• whole

What does this tell you about the meaning of food in American culture?

Europe: Concern is with the "purity" of food and its ethical sourcing (HERE)

• Non-gmo
• "higher welfare" (assurance that animals were well treated)
• organic

• How have human dietary needs been shaped by cultural processes of classification and rule-making for organizing food consumption.
• this exposes the relationship between our biological selves (needs) and our cultural selves (wants/preferences)
• Diets are specific available foods that a population habitually eats and are the basis for cuisines.
• Humans will choose from available foods according to their preferences, and for a specific purpose.
• weight loss, health, religious strictures, morality
• Food ideologies carry all the cultural assumptions shared about the way things are and how people should behave
• Conformity to or deviation from food rules turns eating into a complex marker of individual and group identity.
• The Omnivore's Dilemma
• The ability to eat a wide variety of foods makes humans highly adaptable to a variety of environments. 
• Coupled with cultural technologies creates a high degree of plasticity for humans.
• Implies that one is able to eat a wide variety of foods -allowing for the acquisition of sufficient nutrients and energy.
• This heavily relies on the senses and culture to know what is edible.
• this may be a trial and error process guided by the sense
• appearance, taste, texture
• neophilia-neophobia (we do not know instinctively what to eat)
• SOLUTION: (Rozin) The interplay between three sources of information or experience:
• biological heritage - your genes & taste abilities
• unique individual experience- do not eat a food you have had a bad experience eating
• culture- mediated by age, gender, and social standing

CULTURE is the most important evolutionary advantage. The capacity to remember the appearance and taste of edible foods, and the ability to pass this information down in the form of cuisines, is all important.

• creating named classification systems
• creating rules about when and how to eat
• creating systems of preparation
• sociability allowed for these ideas to be shared and passed down
• creates a sensory memory to identity
• the senses act together to identify familiar foods that can provide a life-sustaining diet and this information is crafted into a cuisine that have supported populations for generations.

Food Classifications And Rules

• an intellectual, linguistic and behavioral framework of categoriesinto which different foods are placed. and assined value and meaning.based on their ability to satisfy social religious, economic, political and nutritional needs.CULTURALLY CONSTRUCTED FOOD TAXONOMIES
• Once cultural edibility has been established, the discernable properties of the food will be given subjective cultural meanings.-- e.g., 
• offers physical or emotional satisfaction (comfort food)
• preserves well for storage (hedge against famine)
• versatility in cooking (productive)
• this assigned value to foods transforms them into staples or luxuries, or assign a hierarchy of social uses
• the social life of foods involves transactions of correctly valued foods between people to communicate their relative positions in the social order.
• The classification of food , and their social values, parallels tha classification of people and their relationships with oneanother
• New foods are incorporated into the food classification system or rejected. Rules will shape the use of new substances.
• Normative food rules:
• shared consumption brings a sense of shgared cultural identity
• social differentiation can occur based on the consumption of high- and low-status edibles.
• evaluation of one's food becomes evaluation of the person, their relative social position, and maybe their culture
• adherence to food rules turns eating into an act that is open to social and moral judgements, reinforcing the order of society
• Omnivore's dilemma is  solved by ancestors when they create a CUISINE, elaborated on this solution, and passed it down to decedents.

THE LIFELONG PROCESS OF EATING WITH OTHERS...SOCIALIZES PEOPLE AND TRANSFORMS FOOD RULES INTO NORMS OF EVERYDAY PRACTICE.

• Food rules receive further legitimacy through the actions of specialists (when food has cosmological significannce)

FOOD PROHIBITIONS

• prohibitions can mark food as 
• unsafe
• polluted
• unclean
• unfit to be eaten
• haram/halal
• kosher/traife
• these are overseen by religious specialists and when taboos are publically followed, they signal membership in a religion and extend religiosity into everyday necessary acts like eating.
• while others are marked as 
• pure
• safe
• clean
• fit to be eaten
• Mary Douglas: Koshrut
• the strength of any prohibition rests on its perceived consequences for violation. Biblical classifications of the natural world represent the cognoitive categories of pastoral Jewish culture of the times. here, herd animals are part of culture, but others are deemed outside of culture and therefore taboo. 
• Hindus and taboos on Beef
• Marvin Harris- the ecological importance of cattle as a draft animal necessary for agriculture led to a taboo on the slaughter of oxen. The religious taboo strengthened the need to keep cattle alive for the benefit of agriculture and the subsequent worship of the gods of abundance. keep them for long term benefits rather than short term benefits of food.
• But this ignores Hindu's understanding of their own practices, which they attribute to the structure of the universe. Food classification is a mirror of the social order and ephemeral order classifications (the nature of the universe).

Food classifications: placement into ordered, evaluative,  and meaningful categories, surrounded by rules to encourage or forbid consumption can never be isolated from the rest of people's way of life-- they are all intimately tied together into a dynamically adaptive tradition.

FOOD AND HUMORAL MEDICINE -- Eating for Health

• INDIA: ayurveda "The Science of Life" (Indian medicine and food) 

Ayurveda is a 5,000-year-old system of natural healing that has its origins in the Vedic culture of India. It is one of the seven sister sciences (along with yoga). Although suppressed during years of foreign occupation and British colonial rule, Ayurveda has been enjoying a major resurgence in both its native land and throughout the world. Tibetan medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine both have their roots in Ayurveda. Early Greek medicine also embraced many humeral concepts originally described in the classical ayurvedic medical texts dating back thousands of years.

More than a mere system of treating illness, Ayurveda is a science of life (Ayur = life,Veda = science or knowledge). It understands that there are HIDDEN ESSENCES IN FOOD that affect one's unique composition to create "health" ---understood as the balance of humors.

1. food choices are associated with personality types (constitutions- the way that people are classified (dosha) according to their essence (gunas). Food and everything else in the universe is comprised of these same "essences". 
2. Demands conformity to the dietary rules, since violation of food rules is simultaneously a violation of the laws of nature and the social order. 
3. All things are organized on a scale of purity versus pollution. 
• purity is derived from proximity to the sacred cosmos (Brahmins), source of the supernatural, ascribed by birth and achieved by practices like ritual worship and eating. 
4. Meals are supposed to be balanced: hot/cold, the six tastes (hot: pungent, acidic, salty) and (cold: sweet, astringent, bitter); have textural variety.
5. THESE NOTIONS ARE AT THE BASIS OF INDIAN CUISINE (tradition)

• It offers a body of wisdom designed to help people stay vital while realizing their full human potential. 
• Providing guidelines on ideal daily and seasonal routines, 
• diet, 
• behavior and 
• the proper use of our senses

Ayurveda reminds us that health is the balanced and dynamic integration between our environment, body, mind, and spirit. There is no standard therapy as in Western (allopathic) medicine, so that the only limitations are those of the physician.

Recognizing that human beings are part of nature, Ayurveda describes three fundamental energies that govern our inner and outer environments: movement, transformation, and structure. Known in Sanskrit as:

•  Vata (Wind), 
•  Pitta (Fire), and
•  Kapha (Earth)

these primary forces are responsible for the characteristics of our mind and body. Each of us has a unique proportion of these three forces that shapes our "constitution" (nature).

• If Vata is dominant in our system, we tend to be thin, light, enthusiastic, energetic, and changeable. 
• If Pitta predominates in our nature, we tend to be intense, intelligent, and goal-oriented and we have a strong appetite for life. 
• When Kapha prevails, we tend to be easy-going, methodical, and nurturing. 

Although each of us has all three forces, most people have one or two elements that predominate.

For each element, there is a balanced and imbalance expression. 

• When Vata is balanced, a person is lively and creative, but when there is too much movement in the system, a person tends to experience anxiety, insomnia, dry skin, constipation, and difficulty focusing. 
• When Pitta is functioning in a balanced manner, a person is warm, friendly, disciplined, a good leader, and a good speaker. When Pitta is out of balance, a person tends to be compulsive and irritable and may suffer from indigestion or an inflammatory condition.
•  When Kapha is balanced, a person is sweet, supportive, and stable but when Kapha is out of balance, a person may experience sluggishness, weight gain, and sinus congestion.

An important goal of Ayurveda is to identify a person’s ideal state of balance, determine where they are out of balance, and offer interventions using diet, herbs, aromatherapy, massage treatments, music, and meditation to reestablish balance.

Ayurveda: the science of health PP 

Click here for power point presentation

TAKE YOUR DOSHA TEST HERE

EUROPEAN HUMORAL SYSTEM: hot/cold, wet/dry

Consumption rules rebalanced the body and resulted in improved health. Beginning in 1500, science began to uncover the molecular structure of food, and transitioned from a classification system based on the humors to one based on the molecules (chemistry and calories) NUTRIENTS. 

• Macronutrients: fat, protein, carbohydrates
• Micronutrients: vitamins and minerals
• caloric values (energy)

Legitimacy now lies in science and experimentation rather than religion and faith. 

• offers different rules than cultural traditions 
• overlook emotional and social needs
• overlook cuisines and foodways

MODERN DIETS: ARE THERE TOO MANY RULES, TOO MANY CHOICES- TOO MUCH FOOD?

• Gastro-anomie (normless meaningless eating) arising from the disintegration of cuisines and the limited transmission of culinary knowledge within western industrial societies. 
• unable to make wise choices
• rise of dietary related NCDs - diseases of malnutricion-too much food.
• uncoupling of food from received culinary knowledge of past generations, and to the presence of too many competing voices giving a variety of often conflicting solutions. TOO MANY RULES rather than a lack of them-we don't know who to listen to and they are always changing. 
• responsibility is now on the individual to make healthy choices
• Universal diet endorsed by objective, impartial science, suited to human biological needs rather than social or cultural preferences. NUTRICIONALISM
• make choices about what "good food" is
• and what a "healthy body" looks like
• But people are different in their biological makeup and nutritional needs
• Affects of "Nutricionalism"
• food is now classified as good or bad
• provides rules to organize you consumption for a healthy body (food pyramids, etc.)
• DIY: some are questionable in terms of science
• KETO
• Paleo
• presumes an original diet of our paleo ancestors- no domesticated foods, 65% meat. Same for everyone 
• assumes we stopped evolving
• assumes we all have the same needs in a wide variety of environments
• Looks nothing like the modern H/G diet
• we do not know exactly what our ancestors ate
• Mediterranean Diet
• "backed" by science and UNESCO
• Led to the explosion of the popularity of olve oil

While scientific knowledge of nutrition is important, it cannot shape a specific menu of dietary choices for the whole species. There is much more to people's eating than sourcing a range of nutrients. In many ways, it REDUCED FOOD TO MERELY BIOLOGY AND IGNORES THE CULTURE OF FOOD AND EATING. This moves it from a DIET to a meaningful or memorable part of human life -a cuisine. 

BRAZIL

Brazil understands the importance of cultural meaning and cuisine. There recommendations are to 

• avoid ultra-processed foods
• become informed
• be wary of food advertising and marketing

It is about eating foods, combined to make meals, that are eaten regularly, carefully, and in company. It is inclusive and realistic about understanding the obstacles- 

• information access
• cost
• cooking skills
• time
• marketing 

and provides practical solutions to the DYI modern standards. It endeavours to put the cuisine BACK INTO nutritional science, and return food to people's social and cultural lives, as opposed to their biological needs. It also calls for LOCALIZED, MEANINGFUL EATING which can sustain environment and community.

• MORE HERE