13.3: Food

Food

Introduction: Why do we eat this stuff?

What you eat and where your food comes from are fundamental issues. Our foodways greatly affect agricultural practices both near and far away. In turn, agricultural practices have profound effects on the environment, the economy, our diets, and our health.

Why we eat the things we eat is a complex question. The answer might seem as simple as “I eat what tastes good”, or “I eat what my mom cooks”, but as any mom who cooks for her family will tell you, opinions often vary wildly on the issue of “what tastes good” among individuals, even within the same household. Despite the presence of picky eaters in almost every family, it’s easy to identify food preferences that characterize towns, regions, countries, and even continents. Food preferences of individuals are generally conditioned by their geography or the geographic histories of their family. So, what tastes yummy to people in one location might be considered disgusting to people elsewhere. Consider Vegemite, a type of sandwich spread much beloved by Australians, yet considered horrid by most Americans. Within the US, crawfish is a favored delicacy to many Louisianans, but many other Americans find crawfish too gross to eat. Foodways are so varied across the US and the world because there are so many variables that affect what we eat. It is often said, “you are what you eat,” and that might be true, but geographers might add “what you eat depends on where you eat.”

Migration-Ethnicity

One of the main variables explaining what Americans eat can be found by looking at our immigration history. European immigrants to the US established many mainstream American foodways because they migrated to North America early and in large numbers. The first Europeans to arrive in the Americas would readily recognize many modern American dietary staples, such as beef, pork, chicken, bread, pasta, cheese, and milk, as well as a number of the fruits and vegetables we commonly eat today.

Figure: New Orleans, LA – This dish of boiled crawfish represents a lengthy history of folk adaptation to a locally abundant, food source. The preference for crawfish seems to have evolved among the Cajuns who dwelled among the swampy regions of Louisiana, and diffused outward from there. Source: Wikimedia

The grandparents of the first Europeans arriving on American shores, those living before the Columbian Exchange, (1492) would not have recognized many foods we eat regularly today, including maize (corn), tomatoes, and potatoes – all of which are native to the Western Hemisphere. It’s hard to imagine, but tomato-based marinara sauce is relatively new to Italy. The tomato was not introduced to Italy until the 1500s. Germans once drank beer and ate sausages without their famous potato salad, because the potato was not introduced to Europe until the 1500s.

Figure: Antwerp, Belgium. Chocolate is a national obsession in Belgium. Brought from Meso-America by the Spanish in the 1600s, chocolate has become an important part of European culture, and a valuable export.

The French, Belgians, and Swiss, who so love chocolate, had none before transatlantic trade. Alternatively, bananas, onions, and coffee were unknown to the people of the Americas before 1492. The exchange of agricultural wisdom and food processing techniques between the indigenous people of the Americas, Africans, and Europeans is largely responsible for most food traditions and agricultural practices found in the US today. Several elements of the North American’s diet are also traceable to Asia (e.g., citrus, sugar, rice, soybeans) as well, though much of those traditions were introduced to the Americas via Europe, rather than being directly imported by Asian migrants. Can you think of new foodstuffs and foodways actively entering the US diet? Your diet?

Our eating habits also offer an interesting glimpse into how certain cultural practices function. Eating is a daily ritual, which helps deeply engrain our food preferences into our cultural habits. This is evident by looking at how resistant to change our foodways are, even over generations. This fact is a causal factor in America’s obesity crisis. Our lifestyle has changed rapidly as technologies have helped us become more sedentary, but many of our foodways have not evolved accordingly. The diets that served our ancestors, who worked exceptionally long hours, engaged in strenuous activities, provide far too many calories and/or fat for modern people working and living in the digital age. Cultural lag is the concept that describes the inability of cultural practices to keep pace with changes in technology and the economy. Numerous behaviors exhibit cultural lag, and culturally conservative regions, many of which are geographically isolated, exhibit more cultural lag than less isolated places where greater exposure to new ideas and greater exposure to food traditions from afar alter local foodways.

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Alberts, Heike C., and Julie L. Cidell.

"Chocolate Consumption Manufacturing and Quality in Western Europe and the United States." Geography (2006): 218-226.