How does one connect food to literacy? In the first place, how we
eat is as important as what we eat and how we prepare it. There
is a culture of dining, and an entire way of viewing food-from
obtaining raw ingredients to preparation and to eating-that
reflects values instilled in the civilization of literacy. Food
and eating in the civilization of illiteracy are epitomized not
only by the pizza outlet on the Internet, by McDonalds, Burger
King, and the frozen dinner waiting to be thrown into the
microwave oven, but also by the vast industry of efficient
production of primary and secondary foodstuffs, the anonymous,
segmented processing of nutrition. It is not an individual's
literacy that characterizes the meal, but the pragmatic framework
in which people emerge and how they project their
characteristics, including dietary and taste expectations, in
the process.
The hunger-driven primitive human and the spoiled patron of a
good Italian restaurant have in common only the biological
substratum of their need, expressed in the very dissimilar acts
of hunting and, respectively, selecting items from a menu.
Primitive beings are identified by projecting, in the universe of
their existence, natural qualities pertinent to the experience
of feeding themselves: sight, hearing, smell, speed, force.
Restaurant patrons project natural abilities filtered through a
culture of eating: taste, dietary awareness, ability to select
and combine. These two extremes document a commonalty of human
self-constitution. Nevertheless, what is of interest in the
attempt to understand food and eating in the civilization of
illiteracy are actually differences. The nuclei of ancient
incipient agriculture, which were also the places of origin for
many language families, are distinct pragmatic frameworks
relevant also to the experience of cooking. Within agriculture,
absolute dependencies on nature are changed to relative
dependencies, since more food is produced than is needed for
survival. The food of this period is cause for some of the
rituals associated with the elements involved in producing it.
The layers between animal hunger and the new hunger, filter new
experiences of satisfaction or illness, of pleasure or pain, of
self-control or abuse. Symbolism (concerning fertility,
agriculture, power) confirms patterns of successful or failed
practical experiences against the background of increased
awareness of the biological characteristics of the species.
Notation and writing contribute to the change of balance between
the natural and the cultural. But the difference between the
primitive eater and the person who awaits his dinner at a table
derives from the distinctive conditions of their existence.
In the pragmatic framework that constitutes the foundation for
literacy, expectations regarding food were already in place:
slow rhythm, awareness of the environment, environment and
natural cycles, labor division according to sex and age (the
female was usually the homemaker and cook). Food preparation was
characterized by its intrinsic sequentiality, by linear
dependencies among its variables. Cooking was inspired and
supported by the sequence of seasons, local stock, and relative
immediacy of needs, affected by weather conditions, intensity of
effort, and celebration pertinent to seasons or special events.
In short, the relation to food was governed by the same
principles that notation and writing were.
In the civilization of illiteracy, personal attitudes towards
preparing food and eating, whether at home or in a restaurant,
are affected by a different pragmatic framework. Probably more
is known about food in the civilization of illiteracy than at any
other time in the history of agriculture and cuisine. But this
knowledge does not come from the direct experience of the food,
i.e., how it is grown and processed. Human beings in the
civilization of illiteracy know better why they eat than what
they eat. It is not what is in the food that concerns many
people, but what the food is supposed to do for them: maintain
and service the body through the proper balance of vitamins,
minerals, and protein; help people cope with residue; and,
eventually, conjure meaning as a symbol in a universe of
competing symbolisms. Fashion extends to food, too!
People feed themselves today according to expectations different
from those of primitive human beings-hunters, farmers,
craftsmen, and workers involved in pre- industrial experience.
Needs are different, and food resources are different. Many
layers of humanity stand between an individual projecting animal
hunger in a world of competing animals and an individual
expressing desire for French cuisine, in its authentic
variations, in its snobbish form, or in its fast food versions,
fresh or frozen, regular or dietetic. Pizza, spaghetti, falafel,
sushi, tortillas, cold cuts, and egg rolls figure no less on the
list of choices. Many filters, in the form of various taboos and
restrictions, as well as personal tastes, are at work. Meaning
is incidentally elicited as one chooses the recipe of a
celebrity cook, or decides on a certain restaurant.
The hungry primitive human, the human beings working the land in
the agricultural phase, the farmers, craftsmen, soldiers, and
scholars of the pre-industrial age expected only that food would
still their hunger. More is expected from the eating experience
today, and some of these expectations have nothing to do with
hunger. People take it for granted that they can buy any type of
food from anywhere in the world, at any time of the year.
Globality is thus acknowledged, just as the sequence of seasons
is ignored. In between these two extremes is the literate eating
experience, with its own expectations.
The experience of eating reflected a way of life, a way of
self-constitution as civilized, progressive, literate. Here are
the words of Charles Dickens, recorded during his visit to the
United States in 1842. He gave a vivid summary of American eating
habits west of the big eastern cities (Boston, New York) as he
observed them on steamboats and in inns where stagecoaches
stopped for the night in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Missouri. I
never in my life did see such listless, heavy dulness [sic] as
brooded over these meals: the very recollection of it weighs me
down, and makes me, for the moment, wretched. Reading and
writing on my knee, in our little cabin, I really dreaded the
coming of the hour that summoned us to table; and was as glad to
escape from it again as if it had been a penance or a
punishment. Healthy cheerfulness and good spirits forming part
of the banquet, I could soak my crusts in the fountain with Le
Sage's strolling players, and revel in their glad enjoyment: but
sitting down with so many fellow-animals to ward off thirst and
hunger as a business; to empty each creature his Yahoo's trough
as quickly as he can, and then to slink sullenly away; to have
these social sacraments stripped of everything but the mere
greedy satisfaction of the natural cravings; goes so against the
grain with me, that I seriously believe the recollection of
these funeral feasts will be a waking nightmare to me all my
life. Dickens was the epitome of the literate experience, and he
was addressing a literate audience that had literate
expectations in the experience of dining: what time meals were
held, who sat where and next to whom, the order in which certain
foods were served, how long a meal should last, what topics
could be discussed. Literate characteristics persist in the
literate frameworks of political and formal dinners: hierarchy
(who sits where), the order in which food is presented, the types
of dishes and eating utensils.