Food Culture

Factors Influencing Food Habits and Culture Eating food is essential for all of us, it keep us alive and also gives us enjoyment at the same time. Food can be defined as any substance that can be metabolized by an animal to give energy and build tissue. (ilearn) In ancient time, when people feel hungry, they eat. However, as human history keep developing and evolving, we have a higher standard on choosing food that we like to eat nowadays. In this paper, we are going to evaluate factors that are influencing our food habits and food culture.

Those factors can be divided into two main categories, internal factors (individual preference and values) and external factors (geographical, religion, social, economic and political). Internal factors are the factors that is not influenced by others or the outside world but individual. Individual preferences is considered a most important factors among the other factors because it is a choice of oneself and we as human are suppose to enjoy the freedom of choice in our own will. Each individual have their own unique taste of food, such as some like spicy, some don’t.

Taste is very subjective, everyone is having different tastes, and sometimes there is no explanation. In terms of food habit, Individual values can be explained by different reasons. For example, being fat and short is considered as not looking good, and being slender and tall is considered as the best body shape for female in today social norms. This concept will installed to an individual values, then he or she will choose the food that they think would help them to look better. Fat people will tend to choose low calories food to control their weight.

There are different kind of external factors influencing food habits and food culture. Geographical factor is one of those. People who live in different location will have different food habits and food culture. For example, people who live in cold region will tend to eat food that will keep them warm, such as eating sheep meat. Russians are famous of drinking beer, and part of it might because of the cold climate and beer can keep their body temperature high. Another example would be Chinese like to eat hot pot in winter to keep them warm. In the northern part of China, there are more picy dishes than the southern part of China. This is because eating spicy food will keep people warm. In costal region, there is more seafood than the inland region. The reason is because it is easier to get fresh seafood in costal region than in the inland region. Japan is an island surrounded by sea, and that is why eating seafood is famous in Japan. Some locations are better for growing specific food, for example China have the climate advantage in growing tea, and France have the advantage in growing wine. Religion is another external factors influencing food habits and food culture.

Different culture has different religion, different religion has different custom and food is an important part of a religion. Some religion such as Muslims, consider eating pork as a dirty food, and people should not eat them. Buddhism do not recommend members to eat meat, because they think that is cruel to kill an animal and that we should respect them so we should not eat them. Therefore, a lot of Buddhism followers are vegetarians. Hinduism followers do not eat cow because they think that cows are scarce. People who believe in a religion will follow the rules of the religion, so this will influence their food habit.

Some religions do not have rules about food, but they have specific food to eat. Being in a social group meaning that group members share the similar values and perspective, and also can mean having the similar food habit. Psychologists say that people will act how others act, which means majority of people do not like to act so different from others because others might think he or she was weird. For example, culturally and morally eating dogs and cats are not allowed, so people would not eat them. Besides social influence, family influence is a key factor too.

People who come from a vegetarian family, tends to become a vegetarian when he or she grows up. In America, The overall national costs related to obsity reach $117 billion. (Marcia, 2007) Fast food culture is one of a mainstream food habit. There are many fast food restaurants around the country. This causes majority of Americans tends to eat more fast food than people in other country, which causes obesity also. However, when people started to aware of the problem of obesity, fast food is becoming less and less popularity in America. For a country, economy is the most important element.

For food habit, economy is also an important factor that will influence the food habit and food culture. In poor country, people tend to eat cheaper food or stay home to eat. Since they are poor, they might not be able to keep a balance diet, eating enough vegetables and fruits. In contrast, people in rich country tend to eat out more and they will have more budgets to eat better and healthier food. Also, when a country is doing good, meaning that the economy is recovering, people in that country tend to spend more on food, they tend to eat out more and eat better food.

When a country is doing bad, people will tend to do the opposite. Finally, politics is a factor that will influence people’s food habit and food culture. When there are tensions or wars going on between countries, there will be less trading transactions between them, then some of the food might become scarce. For example, during the period when China and Japan fight for an island that they both claimed that it was theirs, trade between the two countries decreased by a lot. The Chinese refused to eat Japanese food.

This will influence the food habit in China for a period of time. Japanese restaurant in China might get out of the Chinese market. Also, legislation of laws will influence the food habit and food culture. For example, there is a law that is going to legislate in San Francisco, which is prohibiting eating shark fin, and will not let any restaurant to import shark fin. (Hsu, 2012) This become controversy because the government argue that eating shark fin is cruel to the shark, but some also argue that all part of the shark should be prohibited, not just the fin.

In conclusion, there are internal and external factors that influencing the food habit and food culture. In order to cause people to have certain food habit and food culture cannot be cause by just one factor, but all the factors above add up together. For example, if an individual is rich and is trying to lose weight, then he or she might not eat out but rather stay at home and cook and follow his or her planned diet. I believe that the food habit and food culture will change over time. When there are new factors, people response by changing their food habit and food culture by a little.

However, there is one thing that is for sure, that is there are not a single food habit and food culture that is consider the best, variety is always good. Source cited David M. , F. (2011). foreigners and their food. California: University of California. Hsu, T. (2012, July 21). S. f. chinese group sues over shark fin ban. Los Angeles Times Kittler suchre, N. (2012). Food and culture. (Sixth ed. ). California: pre media global. Marcia Amidon, L. (2007). Obesity & food policing. United States: ABDO publishing Company.