"Learning Food Stories"

[Carrot Top]

Although this interactive website looks as though it were designed for children, it is interesting for those of us who sometimes call ourselves grownup (though never when eating lollipops).

Where does the food on your plate come from? How old is the recipe? Who invented it and where did it come from? How were the ingredients produced? Where and when were the vegetables picked? Who picked them?

It is focused on the foods of Britian, but of course there is information about other cultures, too, as somehow it does appear, that aside from the idea of regional food, we actually have interacted with each other over the centuries.

The sections are on Food, Nation, and Cultural Identity; Ritual and Tradition; Consumer Knowledge and Power; Retail Experience; Changes in Eating Habits; Food and Regulation; Technology and Change.

From the section on Food, Nation, and Cultural Identity:

As we travel to other countries or sit down to eat with people from different

cultures we naturally question our surroundings. And our sense of taste is as

important as our sense of sight and sound. Tasting the foods of others is a

powerful way of exchanging ideas and traditions. The foods we eat help to

transport us to different worlds and to different times. Our meals might

connect us to places we’ve lived in or travelled to, or to the rituals of past

generations.

Identity crisis

But the associations that are formed between food and identity can often

slip into stereotypes. The English, for example, are associated with fish and

chips; Americans with hamburgers and chewing gum, and Italians with pizza

and parmesan cheese. It is not uncommon for these stereotypes to offend:

the Germans are said to eat only pickled cabbage, the French said to eat

only snails and frogs' legs. Racist abuse often links particular communities to

certain food smells or ‘strange’ flavours.

A good list of food scholars has contributed to the site, Claudia Roden among them.

Here's a link: Food Stories, British Library

You'll find it less dusty than the stacks.

Or so I hear.

(Edited to correct typo which said "Cultural Indentity" which sounded like cultural indenture which it sometimes can be but of course I meant to write the *much* freer word "identity". )

Edited June 7, 2007 by Carrot Top (log)