It is the act of mixing ingredients, boiling or stir-frying them,
and the preparation of everything, the testing of different
proportions, of new ingredients, of new combinations that
results in the food we care for so much. The awareness of the
entire process during which humans distanced themselves from
nature is reduced in our understanding to some simple facts:
instead of devouring the hunted animal, humans cooked it,
preserved some parts for other days, learned how to combine
various sources of nutrition (animal and plant), noticed what
was good for the body and the mind. What is generally not
accounted for is the fact that the break from the direct source
of food to the experience of preparing is simultaneous with the
emergence and establishment of language. Consequent changes are
the use of methods for preserving, the continuous expansion of
the food repertory (sources of nourishment), the development of
better artifacts for increasing the efficiency of production and
preparation of foods, and industrial processing. These changes
parallel differentiations in the status of language-based
practical experiences: the appearance of writing, the emergence
of education, progress in crafts, the pragmatic of industrial
society.
With the experience of literacy, human awareness of food
experienced as a necessity, and as an expression of human
personality and identity, increases. Claude Lévi-Strauss, among
others, forcefully dealt with this subject. The basic idea-of
human dimensions expressed in nourishment-becomes more
significant today. None of the many writers infatuated with the
subject have noticed that once the limits of literacy, as
limits of the pragmatics that made it necessary, are reached, we
transcend the age of McDonalds, of synthetic nutritional
substances, and of an infinity of prefabricated foods. This is
also the age of endless variations and combinations. The human
personality and identity are more difficult to characterize. It
is expressed in our nourishment, as well as in how we
dress-choosing from an infinity of available cloths-our sexual
behavior- free to experiment in ever-expanding possibilities:
patterns of family life, education, art, and communication. The
infinity of choices available in the civilization of illiteracy
eradicates any center, and to some extent undermines commonalty,
even at the level of the species.
In this civilization, the investment in self is less
community-related and more an act of individual choice. These
choices are embodied in precise, customized diets based on
individual requirements as defined by dietitians. Computer
programs control personalized recipes and the production of any
meal or menu. The balance of time and energy has changed
totally. Experiences of work, free time, and fitness mix. The
clear borderline between them is progressively blurred. It is
not clear whether one burns more calories today in jogging than
in working, but it is clear that discipline, in particular that
of self-denial, is replaced by unpredictable self-indulgence.
Consequently, to maintain the body's integrity, individual diet
and exercise programs are generated, given a new focus through
the transition from the economy of scarcity to that of
consumption. Illiterate subjects accept that the market decide
for them what and when and how to eat, as well as what to wear,
with whom to pair, and how to feel. The appearance is that of
self-determination. Independence and responsibility are not
instant-mix experiences. Whether embodied in fast food chains, in
microwave nourishment, in the television cooking shows, there is
an illusion of self-determination, continuously reinforced in
the seductive reality of a segmented world of competing partial
literacies.
The appearance is that one can choose from many literacies,
instead of being forced into one. The fact is that we are chosen
in virtue of having our identity constituted and confirmed
within the pragmatic context. Awareness of and interaction with
nature, already affected in the previous age of industrial
processing of basic foods, are further eroded. The immediate
environment and the sources of nutrition it provides are
assimilated in the picture of seasonless and context-free
shelves at the supermarket. Space (where does the food come
from?) and time (to which season does it correspond?)
distinctions, accounted for so precisely in literacy, dissolve in
a generic continuum. One does not need to be rich to have access
to what used to be the food of those who could afford it. One
does not need to be from a certain part of the world to enjoy
what used to be the exotic quality of food. Time and space shrink
for the traveler or TV viewer, as they shrink for the
supermarket patron. They shrink even more for the increasing
number of people shopping through the World Wide Web, according
to formulas custom designed for them. With brand recognition,
brands become more important than the food. The rhythms of
nature and the rhythm of work and life are pulled further apart
by the mediating mechanisms of marketing. The natural identity of
food vanishes in the subsequent practical experience of
artificial reality. There is little that distinguishes between a
menu designed for the team of the space shuttle, for the
military personnel in combat far from home, and the energy
calculations for a machine. A little artificial taste of turkey
for Thanksgiving, or the cleverly simulated smell of apple pie,
makes the difference.