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Conversely, I've realised I'm shite at remembering that food *is*, among all these other this, still fuel. Ie I can go all day without eating, wondering why I'm feeling a bit wobbly. Duh.
Food and cultures. I'll haveago.
(and I probably didn't make myself clear, I'm Bengali and Indian (as opposed to Ben/Bangladeshi) but as with many things 'Indian', you can't generalise about Indian food. Bengali is different to Gujerati is different to Tamil etc)
Food culture is closely linked to many of a a culture's distinctive notions: of family, domestic living arrangements/spaces, gender roles/formation (eg. Illmatic's talking about West Indian men being cheffy.), body image, viewpoints on mental/physical health etc
Something that reallly interests me about eating (and drinking) cultures is that they also intersect with physical factors such as racial/genetic differences (eg the Japanese/Asian susceptibility to alcohol, apparently due to a lack of/deficiency in a certain enzyme.) and geography/cultivation techniques/climate.
Eg how climatically hot countries often have traditions of spicy hot foods...
Oh, and one of the things Jonathan Meades was talking about in an interview I saw was that Britain does have good dishes, but very low standards in terms of what we'll accept in produce.
I think this is a very useful dinstinction to make. |
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