Food and nutrition is not just about training dietitians and culinary arts, but also about exploring how certain eating habits are culturally shaped and why. It studies how food is connected to culture, history, and the environment, and can extend into a variety of fields that can contribute to the quality of life and health of humanity.
What do you think of when you hear the term food and nutrition? Most people think of food and nutrition as a program that prepares you to become a dietitian, a home economics teacher in elementary, middle, or high school, or a culinary arts program. Indeed, there are courses in home education, dietitian preparation, and cooking labs. But that’s not the whole story. Food and nutrition can be applied in many different ways. For example, people who specialize in food nutrition can work for large food companies in product development, quality control, food safety, and more. They can also work in the public sector or for nonprofit organizations in roles such as food policy formulation or nutrition education programs. It’s not just about food, it’s about improving people’s health and quality of life.
In this article, I will introduce food and nutrition from the perspective of a major course called “Food and Culture” in the Department of Food and Nutrition at Seoul National University. This course goes beyond simply learning about ingredients and recipes, and explores how food is intertwined with culture to influence our lives. In doing so, students will learn how food is more than just a source of nutrition, but also plays an important role in social and cultural contexts.
What does it mean to eat a certain food in a region? It could be as simple as the availability of ingredients to make that food. But food often needs to be cooked or processed, and in many places, this form of cooking is fixed as a culture. And researching why people cook in a certain way can yield some pretty interesting results. For example, the Mayans and Aztecs ate corn as a staple food, but instead of just shucking the corn, they soaked it in lime water overnight and removed the husks after soaking. Eating corn this way prevented them from getting pellagra. Pellagra is caused by a lack of niacin, an essential amino acid, and since the kernels, the edible part of the corn, don’t contain the vitamin, you can’t get Pellagra if you only eat corn. However, when corn is soaked in lime water, a chemical reaction occurs that synthesizes niacin, making it safe to eat corn alone. Unlike the Native Americans, who had a long history of eating corn and had passed down their methods as a culture, the Spaniards and Europeans, who were new to corn, had pellagra.
Cultural context around food involves more than just recipes. A particular recipe or way of eating is closely tied to the ecological environment, climatic conditions, and social structure of a region. For example, Japan’s sushi culture has a lot to do with its geography as a coastal country. Fresh seafood was readily available, which led to the development of a unique way of cooking sushi. In this way, food is a cultural product that reflects the history, natural environment, and lifestyle of a region.
It’s not just the foods we eat that have a cultural context. Even foods that are not consumed have meaning. For example, there are certain foods that are considered “don’t eat!” in certain cultures. This phenomenon is called food taboo. There are many theories about the reasons for food taboos, the most recognized ones being functionalism, structuralism, rationalism, and psychosocial development. In fact, these four theories are not opposed to each other, but rather complementary, explaining the phenomenon from different perspectives. However, since rationalism is the only one we’re dealing with from a nutritional perspective, we’ll focus on it.
Rationalism assumes that there is a material cause for all food turbulence and argues that food turbulence is a function of optimizing nutrition in a limited area. For example, let’s look at the Jewish appetite for pork. Jews eat cows, sheep, goats, and other animals instead of pigs, and rationalism finds the reason for this in their ecological habitat. Unlike pigs, cows, sheep, and goats can digest fiber, which allows them to feed on things that humans can’t, whereas pigs eat a similar diet to humans and are limited to meat. This makes them more expensive to raise than the aforementioned animals of remembrance. By abstaining from pork, the Jews are practicing economical nutrition.
There are reasons why cultures favor or shun certain foods. Some reasons may be simple, while others may require research to uncover. These studies can contribute to our understanding of human history and culture, psychology and social structure, and more than just the relationship between food and nutrition. What you learn in food and nutrition can also be applied to the study of human history and culture and its origins. This provides a new perspective on the civilization and development of human beings, beyond just food and sustenance. That’s why I think food and nutrition can be a very attractive field of study.
