The Omnivores Disgust - Essay Example

The Omnivore’s Disgust Food is made to carry cultural significance in the form of symbolic meaning. Your average English-speaking five-year-old knows that cake and ice cream symbolize parties and celebration, while an incarcerated felon knows that bread and water symbolize solitary confinement and punishment. And yet, bread is the staff of life, and water necessary for survival. In a starvation situation, bread and water equal cause for celebration. And, with the application of a little heat, fat, and herbs, bread and water can be transformed into toast and tea: nourishment for a recovering invalid, a quick breakfast, a cozy treat among friends, or a soothing bedtime snack. From earliest childhood, culture teach humans the meanings of food provided by their environment. Any food, or all food, can be given a negative symbolic meaning. Humans are capable of digesting plant and animal sources, and have a wide range of choices when it comes to eating, but being omnivorous doesn’t mean that all possible edible items are acceptable foodstuffs. This is the omnivore’s paradox, or the omnivore’s dilemma. Choice gives us ‘autonomy, freedom, adaptability’ (Fischler 1988), but we must incorporate variety, because ‘An omnivore, unlike a specialized eater, cannot obtain all the nutrients it needs from one food’ (Fischler 1988). The healthy human diet depends on diversity, but our paradox is that, to stay healthy, humans must remain suspicious of possibly dangerous substances. The dilemma follows: we must orally incorporate sustenance, but, as Rozin reminds us, ‘it is not possible to specify in advance what sensory properties will characterize sources of nutrition (or toxins) in any particular environment (Rozin 1987). Thus, it was historically important that humans learn patterns of rejecting potentially poisonous food prior to allowing it to breach the barrier of the mouth. Modern eaters seldom face this aspect of the dilemma. Humans have already identified the edible and inedible substances in their environment. Food can be contaminated or spoiled, and ‘All domestic animals are potentially hazardous to human health’ (Harris 1998), but modern cooks are usually aware of how to store, prepare, and cook to eliminate this problem. Prepared food have symbolic magic qualities as “the mythical representation of nature-culture transformation’ (Falk 1991). Food is removed from a raw, untamed state and made edible in a symbolic cultural sense. How can we reject it when it has clearly been made—transformed—into food? There is nothing inherently wrong with it. Humans have learned they can eat bitter foods like coffee and that even painful foods like chiles have beneficial effects, such that they ‘delay food spoilage...make the dwellers of scorching climates sweat in a way that cools them off…supply essential micronutrients and protective antioxidants’ (Nabhan 2004). Our food is safe, and we know it is food. There is no innate need to suspect broccoli or beef tongue. In general, people know that any food in the grocery store, whether they’ve eaten it previously or not, will not kill them. And yet, Mennell writes ‘that repugnance towards certain foods is universal, found in all cultures and throughout history’ (Mennell 1986). Why? As intelligent omnivores, wouldn’t it make more sense to exploit all possible sources of food? Having grown up in a culture, we retain Franz Boas’s ‘“Kulturbrille”, a set of cultural glasses that each of us wears, lenses that provide us with a means for perceiving the world around it, for interpreting the meaning of our social lives, and faming action in them’ (Monaghan 2000). Therefore, we do not look at our food objectively, but as a cultural construct, with meanings reflecting both our life experiences as well as the history of the culture group in which we were raised. How strong is the power of culture? It can imbue good, nourishing food with such strong negative symbolic value that it becomes anathema, and human beings may willingly starve to death rather than contaminate themselves with it. In an extreme example, we have anorexia, wherein almost any sustenance at all is given a negative connotation. Today, this ‘is related to powerful contemporary messages about body image and dieting’ (Brumberg 1999) in our culture. While starving may seem counterintuitive to survival, ‘Anorexics tend to think about food constantly (some may cook avidly, and feed others), but they hardly eat anything’ (Stacey 1994). The biological ideal that food is necessary for survival remains, but the cultural ideal, ‘that equates thinness with power, attractiveness, and self-control’ (Stacey 1994) turns food into an obsessive symbol. Control over eating habits becomes symbolic of a control over the self and reality. In the middle ages, ‘it was not uncommon for women to fast as a way or proving their religious faith and demonstrating a holiness that could rise above needs of the flesh’ (Stacey 1994). By doing away with a force that tied them so inextricably to life, anorexics symbolically conquered the material world. For girls in Victorian England, other societal factors influenced the desire to stop eating. Victorian attitudes toward ‘intimacy and material comfort, parental love and expectations, sexual divisions of labor, and ideas about gender and class’ (Stacey 1994) made girls powerless and influenced their eating habits. Further, ‘a general female fashion for sickness and debility’ (Brumberg 1999) encouraged behavior that led to poor health. Robustness was associated with a working-class lifestyle. A thin, pale, and anemic look signified higher social status; only a woman of leisure could afford to appear sick. Anorexic patterns in middle or upper class young women were not considered unusual; ‘It was relatively normal for a Victorian girl to develop poor appetite and skip her meals’ (Brumberg 1999) and the prevailing medical literature of the day suggested, ‘women were prone to gastric disorders because of the superior sensitivity of the female digestive system’ (Brumberg 1999). Women were told it was normal to suffer discomfort as a result of eating. Mennell suggests that this problem continues in England today, with children deliberately fed ‘only very plain, simply cooked, weakly flavoured food’ (Mennell 1986). The cultural attitude developed that children’s stomachs were too delicate to accommodate the full range of possible meals. From here, a cultural distrust of food in general develops among a population. After a childhood of being told that a wide variety of foods are apt to produce illness, is it no wonder Mennell reported that English teenagers shunned many familiar foods, while a similar group of French teens willingly tried foreign foods without prejudice. At a traditional tea, ‘the French children ate theirs with enjoyment; the English “proved a nightmare” with their various dislikes (about the scones, clotted cream, or jam, and demanding Coca Cole instead of tea to drink)’ (Mennell 1986). Prevailing cultural attitude taught these children that food encompasses the possibility of danger, even in familiar items. But danger is not the sole reason we reject nutritious food sources. Monaghan’s anecdote about the Mixtec demonstrates how arbitrary our cultural preferences are. The anthropologist’s indigenous friends were excited to knock down a beehive and present him with ‘a big glob of comb, honey, and squiggling bee larvae’ (Monaghan 2000), which they had been eating with gusto. The anthropologist, determined not to be rude, ate the larvae quickly, holding his breath. For him, insect larvae were symbolically disgusting, despite their good protein content and the anthropologist’s knowledge of many cultures that utilize similar food sources. When he offered his friends onion soup, he learned that this fragrant root, considered healthful in some cultures, has a symbolic value to the Mixtecs: ‘Onions have a terrible odour and, if you eat too much of them it makes you stupid’ (Monghan 2000). The anthropologist swallowed down food he considered merely disgusting. At least one Mixtec guest refused to touch the soup he considered threatening to his intellect. Culture fosters biases toward and against various available food sources, which, in the modern world, are plentiful. Jeffrey Steingarten, an avowed picky eater, stumbled upon his own omnivore’s paradox when he took a job as a food critic. Realizing that refusing to eat certain foods would hinder his career, he ‘sketched out a Six-Step Program to liberate my palate and my soul. No smells or tastes are innately repulsive, I assured myself, and what’s learned can be forgot’ (Steingarten 1998). After studying food phobias, he learned that repeated exposure really does allow for acquired taste, and he found himself enjoying nearly all the items on his list of hated foods. He says, ‘In just six months, I succeeded in purging myself of nearly all repulsions and preferences, in becoming a more perfect omnivore’ (Steingarten 1998) and was sometimes nearly unable to choose from among a variety of options, as everything seemed equally attractive. Steingarten solved his own dilemma, and provided a good lesson for the rest of the world. We are fortunate to face an entire world of culinary possibilities, a planet full of raw materials humans may transform into food and grant meaning. Just as culture can endow any food with a negative value, it can choose to create a new symbolic value for food in general. Works Cited Brumberg, J. J. 1999, Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia. Random House, New York. Falk, P. 1991, “Homo culinarias: Towards an Historical Anthropology of Taste’ Social Science Information. Volume 30, number 4, pp 757-790. Fischler, C. 1988, ‘Food, Self and Identity’ Sociology of Science, volume 27, number 2, pp. 272-292. Harris, M. 1998, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture, Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Mennell, S. 1986, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England, Blackwell, London. Monaghan, J. & Just, P. 2000, Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, New York. Nabhan, G. 2004, Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity. Shearwater, London. Rozin, P. 1987 ‘Psychobiological Perspectives on Food Preferences and Avoidance’, in Food and Evolution: Toward a Theory of Human Food Habits, ed Harris M. & Ross E. Temple University Press, Philadelphia. Stacey, M. 1994, Consumed: Why Americans Love Hate and Fear Food. Simon & Schuster, Sydney. Steingarten, Jeffrey. 1998, The Man Who Ate Everything and Other Gastronomic Feats, Disputes, and Pleasurable Pursuits, Knopf, New York. Read More