The interplay between food and culture has existed from the time humans starting developing distinct cultures and ways of life. Looking at specific historical examples can be helpful, but an all-ecompassing history is difficult to capture. So, below is a brief overview of food and culture over time, and below that, there are histories of specific foods. Finally, there is a comparison of food history regarding local and popular culture.
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As society progressed, food habits continued to influence culture. In China, for example, the prevalence tea affected rituals and culture. For example, tea is often offered in formal apologies, an age old tradition. Also, the tea and spices that grew in China helped it become a major player in the global trade, as there was a huge demand for these goods. Furthermore, tea helped fuel the First Opium War with England in the 1800s which dramatically affected Chinese culture. (This also involved opium poppies growing in England.) Essentially food habits can influence everything from passed-down traditions to trade exports to warfare. Food and culture has helped shape history, but it's still very relevant today.
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Confused about the First Opium War? Here's a summary in four pictures:
For more on the First Opium War and the factors that led up to it, click here.
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"A soup ... is not the work of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup.”
-Willa Cather, famous American author |
Humans still interact with their environment in ways that might make them need to change food practices, and thus alter their cultures. However, a lot of the effects of food on culture are passed down, such as rituals and traditions. That being said, the interplay between food and culture is still very relevant in the modern world.
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Additionally, technology, in the form of improved transportation, communication, and connectedness, has allowed places to adopt food practices and items that weren't initially their own and incorporate them into their cultures. However, this increased connectedness can also make it difficult to preserve cultural practices, now that food from around the world is readily available and sometimes cheaper than food produced domestically. Increased mechanization also threatens traditional farming practices.
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Not all ten of these examples pertain to food, but many of them do. This is an example of how increased connectedness with other countries influenced American culture, as America adopted food products from other cultures and integrated them into their own.
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Cookies, by their technical definition, have a existed for a long time, due to their portability and long shelf-life. These "cookies," however, weren't nearly as sweet as the cookies we've come to know and love. Real cookies didn't emerge until the 600s in modern day Iran. Large-scale travel was just becoming more common at the time, so many travelers brought the easily transportable and delicious treat along with them, popularizing the cookie throughout Europe.
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Much later, the Dutch brought cookies to New York in the early 1600s, but cookies in their most modern form probably didn't develop until sometime around the 1700s.
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Fun Fact: The word "cookie" is actually derived from Dutch.
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Ice cream dates back to the 2nd century B.C.E. This consisted of snow flavored with fruits, juices, honey, or nectar. Marco Polo brought a more modern sherbet-like ice cream recipe back from East Asia (and this region's also credited with inventing pasta!) Truly modern ice cream emerged around the 1500s in Europe.
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In the United States, the first mention of ice cream came in the mid 1700s. However, ice cream wasn't accessible to most until the invention of the insulated ice house around 1800. Availability was further improved by ice cream manufacturing becoming an industry by the 1850s.
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Fun Fact: When he wasn't busy conquering or forever changing the course of Western culture, Alexander the Great often enjoyed ice cream (which, in his time, was just flavored snow).
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FOOD IN LOCAL CULTURE
Food in local culture doesn't usually change that much over time and more directly relates to the environment. For example, pig taboos in the Middle East persist today after thousands of years and developed as a response to the hot climate. Most local culture food habits emerged because they were efficient and practical in the specific conditions of their surroundings. These customs are then shared and passed down through generations, so they typically last a much longer time.
However, local culture traits can change, especially in the onslaught of popular culture and increased mechanization, but they usually adopt popular culture eating habits rather than developing new local cultural traditions. Shifts in these local customs, like the switch from pork to beef eating or horse meat's popularity declining, can usually be attributed to new technologies or pop culture. They don't often disappear on their own.
Because of the threat of popular culture to local food habits, cultures often need to work to preserve their customs. This preservation can be conducted through governments protecting and promoting their country's culture or the cultures themselves ensuring that customs and traditions remain intact. |
FOOD IN POPULAR CULTURE
Food trends in popular culture, on the other hand, are extremely transitory and often have little to no direct connection to surroundings. Hamburgers have swept the globe. McDonalds now has nearly forty thousand restaurants in over a hundred countries. The first McDonalds only opened about sixty years ago. Popular culture traits diffuse incredibly quickly, especially now with increased global connectedness and space time compression.
However, this high speed global environment means they don't always last very long either. The frozen yogurt fad that briefly swept the globe started in about 2011 and has already almost completely come to a close in many places. Pop culture food trends also have very little connection to their surroundings. Hamburgers made sense in the United States, due to a variety of social, economic, and environmental conditions, but once they diffused around the world, they didn't emerge as a response to specific surroundings in any other place.
Also, the widespread nature of the hamburger threatens local cultural foods by providing potentially cheaper and more accessible options, giving, particularly young people, the opportunity to deviate from their culture's customs. |