Identity Through Food
Background:
While watching "Cooked" this week in class, Michael Pollen seemed to have a mantra that was said multiple times- "anyone can cook". Of course this is the same idea behind a Disney movie I felt inclined to watch this past weekend, Ratatouille. Ratatouille is the story of a rat named Remy, with a special sense of smell and taste which makes him able to identify flavors and what will pair well together simply by smelling the food. This of course is not what a rat should be doing (his father's words), a rat is supposed to eat what it can when it can in order to survive- to cook and to care about what you eat is to be human. Remy did not listen to his father and instead went into an old lady's kitchen to find some saffron to pair with a mushroom he found, the attic collapses exposing the clan, and Remy gets separated from his friends and family. Remy only then finds out all this time he has been hiding out in Paris, and lives near one of the most famous, high class, and recognized restaurants in the world. It is there that he sees a garbage boy, Linguini, ruin a soup in the kitchen by adding random ingredients. Remy cannot stand this so he fixes the soup with new ingredients without having any prior training, is then saved by Linguini when the other cooks try to kill him, and gets the chance to cook in the kitchen with the help of Linguini as Remy hides under his hat. Remy, although he is a rat, he identifies with the human characteristic of cooking and he cares about the food he is eating. Without this, Remy would just be considered another rat that looked to food as a means for survival instead of a source of pleasure. Throughout the movie, there are also instances where the sue chef orders the cooks to make food that would seem to be "bad" to try to expose Remy and Linguini's secret, and get Linguini fired. But alas, it is Remy that saves the night from embarrassment and is accepted as a cook by the other characters/ cooks.
Culture, identity, and food are so intertwined that these simple ideas are able to make up a kids movie and accurately depict so much of the real facets of the culinary world. The French are known for having the most cultured and high class dining practices, as well as some of the most famous chefs/ restaurants. This can be traced back to the french roots of cooking, but is more likely because the French believe that your day should be centered around eating instead of the other way around. It is also shown from the character of Colette that the majority of the kitchen staff and chefs are male, it is hard for women to make their way into a kitchen professionally. It shows that anyone can cook, and anyone can learn to cook despite where they come from or how they do it. And in the end, a dish that is considered "a peasant dish" is what ends up pleasing a highly accredited food critic, because the food itself brings him back to his childhood and memories of his mother.
In Food: The Key Concepts by Warren Balasco pages 28-31, he reminds us that food and memory have always been tied together in this same way as it was in Ratatouille. Balasco writes that food has been the staple of a culture and a key identifier for centuries. In the Holocaust, Jewish women in concentration camps would write down recipes and share them among the other women because this was a way to keep the culture and history of their people alive as the Nazis tried to strike it down. Prisoners of war, slaves, and poor immigrants have passed down certain recipes and family foods that are symbols of their oppression/ liberation from their oppressors. In this way, cultures are able to keep their history alive as others are trying to kill the future of it. He also writes that a certain kind of branding has taken place in order to appeal to the nostalgia of people- specifically Americans with processed/ unhealthy food. These companies of the processed and unhealthy foods seem to believe that if they can connect the food to a romanticized part of your past they can establish a sense of loyalty from people. For example, Kool Aid Jammers remind millennials of summers and outside birthday parties, and happy meals from McDonald's were considered a treat that were accompanied by a prize/ new toy usually having to do with a Disney movie coming out. Or how we were able to get Lunchables when there was a field trip at school. These examples have strong ties to our childhoods and therefore we form a sense of loyalty and identify with them despite what we know about processed foods. In this way, we look back on these foods fondly and do not denounce them even with our new knowledge of them.
Question:
So, why do Americans especially feel a sense of nostalgia and loyalty to processed foods, and foods that are unhealthy?
Speculative Answer:
Julie Thomson did a piece in the Huffington Post about food memory this past year. Thomson talked with multiple psychologists on this matter and came back with a few different theories. First Thomson says, “food memories are more sensory than other memories in that they involve really all five senses, so when you’re that thoroughly engaged with the stimulus it has a more powerful effect,” explains Susan Whitborne, professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts. You’re not just using your sight, or just your taste, but all the senses and that offers the potential to layer the richness of a food memory." Secondly, she states that food memory has one of the strongest ties to memories because of evolution, it was necessary that you learn which foods are okay to eat and which foods are not in order to survive.
But even more than this, I think it has a lot to do with brain chemistry as well. It is now more possible than ever to receive the kind of food you want at the exact moment you want it. And since lots of our food nowadays is processed and made with an excess of sugar, fat, and salt it makes our food more pleasurable than ever as well. When you eat foods that are high in these ingredients it can literally make you addicted to these foods. The more you eat these unhealthy foods the more you crave them, and if willing, the more you eat them. These ingredients made into addictions will also release dopamine, one of the happy brain chemicals.
In turn, Americans, who eat more unhealthy and unnatural processed food than the majority of the world start to have affiliations with these kinds of foods. So if Americans eat this kind of unhealthy food from the very beginning of their lives until they are an adult and are then choosing for themselves what they eat they are going to have a problem getting away from these foods because they have happy memories associated with them. As it states in Food: The Key Concepts on page 29, "Sometimes modernity itself is the stuff of nostalgia... a 7-11 slushie bought on the way to grandma's. It is the cheap artificially flavored crushed ice, not grandma's home cooking that sparks this memory." Because processed food has taken over the American market in the past 60 years or so (since it was implemented after it was used in the army) it is still evolving and creating new snacks. And in doing this, the memory associated with it changes as well.
In the end, I think the reason Americans form this bond and have loyalty towards these foods is really because we value experiences and memories more than we value our health and food. I think with modern medicine people believe that if their health were to go south or something happened that modern medicine would be able to save them. Because of this they do not worry as much about what they put in their bodies. In this same way, there are so many other things Americans value above food such as jobs, education, and their relationships that our most fundamental needs get put on the back burner. This is because society has progressed so much now that we have the ability to not worry about if we will find food that day, if we will have clean water, or if we will find shelter. Americans now have the luxury of looking to food for pleasure more than sustainability. So if the food that is processed tastes better than the natural food, it triggers happy memories, and does not immediately endanger us then of course you will keep a sense of loyalty to the food despite what it does to work against you.
Word Count: 1508
While watching "Cooked" this week in class, Michael Pollen seemed to have a mantra that was said multiple times- "anyone can cook". Of course this is the same idea behind a Disney movie I felt inclined to watch this past weekend, Ratatouille. Ratatouille is the story of a rat named Remy, with a special sense of smell and taste which makes him able to identify flavors and what will pair well together simply by smelling the food. This of course is not what a rat should be doing (his father's words), a rat is supposed to eat what it can when it can in order to survive- to cook and to care about what you eat is to be human. Remy did not listen to his father and instead went into an old lady's kitchen to find some saffron to pair with a mushroom he found, the attic collapses exposing the clan, and Remy gets separated from his friends and family. Remy only then finds out all this time he has been hiding out in Paris, and lives near one of the most famous, high class, and recognized restaurants in the world. It is there that he sees a garbage boy, Linguini, ruin a soup in the kitchen by adding random ingredients. Remy cannot stand this so he fixes the soup with new ingredients without having any prior training, is then saved by Linguini when the other cooks try to kill him, and gets the chance to cook in the kitchen with the help of Linguini as Remy hides under his hat. Remy, although he is a rat, he identifies with the human characteristic of cooking and he cares about the food he is eating. Without this, Remy would just be considered another rat that looked to food as a means for survival instead of a source of pleasure. Throughout the movie, there are also instances where the sue chef orders the cooks to make food that would seem to be "bad" to try to expose Remy and Linguini's secret, and get Linguini fired. But alas, it is Remy that saves the night from embarrassment and is accepted as a cook by the other characters/ cooks.
Culture, identity, and food are so intertwined that these simple ideas are able to make up a kids movie and accurately depict so much of the real facets of the culinary world. The French are known for having the most cultured and high class dining practices, as well as some of the most famous chefs/ restaurants. This can be traced back to the french roots of cooking, but is more likely because the French believe that your day should be centered around eating instead of the other way around. It is also shown from the character of Colette that the majority of the kitchen staff and chefs are male, it is hard for women to make their way into a kitchen professionally. It shows that anyone can cook, and anyone can learn to cook despite where they come from or how they do it. And in the end, a dish that is considered "a peasant dish" is what ends up pleasing a highly accredited food critic, because the food itself brings him back to his childhood and memories of his mother.
In Food: The Key Concepts by Warren Balasco pages 28-31, he reminds us that food and memory have always been tied together in this same way as it was in Ratatouille. Balasco writes that food has been the staple of a culture and a key identifier for centuries. In the Holocaust, Jewish women in concentration camps would write down recipes and share them among the other women because this was a way to keep the culture and history of their people alive as the Nazis tried to strike it down. Prisoners of war, slaves, and poor immigrants have passed down certain recipes and family foods that are symbols of their oppression/ liberation from their oppressors. In this way, cultures are able to keep their history alive as others are trying to kill the future of it. He also writes that a certain kind of branding has taken place in order to appeal to the nostalgia of people- specifically Americans with processed/ unhealthy food. These companies of the processed and unhealthy foods seem to believe that if they can connect the food to a romanticized part of your past they can establish a sense of loyalty from people. For example, Kool Aid Jammers remind millennials of summers and outside birthday parties, and happy meals from McDonald's were considered a treat that were accompanied by a prize/ new toy usually having to do with a Disney movie coming out. Or how we were able to get Lunchables when there was a field trip at school. These examples have strong ties to our childhoods and therefore we form a sense of loyalty and identify with them despite what we know about processed foods. In this way, we look back on these foods fondly and do not denounce them even with our new knowledge of them.
Question:
So, why do Americans especially feel a sense of nostalgia and loyalty to processed foods, and foods that are unhealthy?
Speculative Answer:
Julie Thomson did a piece in the Huffington Post about food memory this past year. Thomson talked with multiple psychologists on this matter and came back with a few different theories. First Thomson says, “food memories are more sensory than other memories in that they involve really all five senses, so when you’re that thoroughly engaged with the stimulus it has a more powerful effect,” explains Susan Whitborne, professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts. You’re not just using your sight, or just your taste, but all the senses and that offers the potential to layer the richness of a food memory." Secondly, she states that food memory has one of the strongest ties to memories because of evolution, it was necessary that you learn which foods are okay to eat and which foods are not in order to survive.
But even more than this, I think it has a lot to do with brain chemistry as well. It is now more possible than ever to receive the kind of food you want at the exact moment you want it. And since lots of our food nowadays is processed and made with an excess of sugar, fat, and salt it makes our food more pleasurable than ever as well. When you eat foods that are high in these ingredients it can literally make you addicted to these foods. The more you eat these unhealthy foods the more you crave them, and if willing, the more you eat them. These ingredients made into addictions will also release dopamine, one of the happy brain chemicals.
In turn, Americans, who eat more unhealthy and unnatural processed food than the majority of the world start to have affiliations with these kinds of foods. So if Americans eat this kind of unhealthy food from the very beginning of their lives until they are an adult and are then choosing for themselves what they eat they are going to have a problem getting away from these foods because they have happy memories associated with them. As it states in Food: The Key Concepts on page 29, "Sometimes modernity itself is the stuff of nostalgia... a 7-11 slushie bought on the way to grandma's. It is the cheap artificially flavored crushed ice, not grandma's home cooking that sparks this memory." Because processed food has taken over the American market in the past 60 years or so (since it was implemented after it was used in the army) it is still evolving and creating new snacks. And in doing this, the memory associated with it changes as well.
In the end, I think the reason Americans form this bond and have loyalty towards these foods is really because we value experiences and memories more than we value our health and food. I think with modern medicine people believe that if their health were to go south or something happened that modern medicine would be able to save them. Because of this they do not worry as much about what they put in their bodies. In this same way, there are so many other things Americans value above food such as jobs, education, and their relationships that our most fundamental needs get put on the back burner. This is because society has progressed so much now that we have the ability to not worry about if we will find food that day, if we will have clean water, or if we will find shelter. Americans now have the luxury of looking to food for pleasure more than sustainability. So if the food that is processed tastes better than the natural food, it triggers happy memories, and does not immediately endanger us then of course you will keep a sense of loyalty to the food despite what it does to work against you.
Word Count: 1508
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