Our civilization of illiterate nourishment is based on networks
and distributed assignments. The change from self-reliance to
affluence corresponds, first and foremost, to the change of the
pragmatic context within which the human condition is defined.
We project a physical reality-our body-that has changed over time
due to modifications in our environment, and the transition from
practical experiences of survival to the experience of
abundance. The room for invention and spontaneity expands the
more we discover and apply rules that guarantee efficiency or
limit those preventing it. There might be several dozens of
sauces one can select from, and no fewer cereals for breakfast,
many types of bread, meat, fish, and very many preprocessed
menus. It would probably be an exaggeration to say that all taste
alike. But it would not necessarily be false to ascertain that
behind diversity there are a limited number of changing
formulas, some better adapted to succeed in the marketplace than
others, and some better packaged than others.
Yes, people are nostalgic. More precisely, people are subjected
to the nostalgia- triggering stimuli of mass media: the
attraction of the homemade, homestyle, Mom's secret recipe.
This is not because the majority of us know what these icons of
the past are, but rather because we associate them with what is
no longer possible: reassurance, calm, tradition, protection,
permanence, care. We also hear the voices of those who demystify
the literate cooking of yesteryear: women spent their lifetime
slaving in their kitchens. They did so, the argument goes, to
satisfy males, only too happy to be taken care of. Both voices,
those idealizing and those demystifying the past, should be
heard: We enslaved part of nature and took it upon ourselves to
annihilate animals or, worse, change their genetic structure. In
order to satisfy our appetites, we sacrificed the environment.
And, giving in to gluttony, we effectively changed our genetic
constitution. The truth, if there is any above and beyond the
cultural and economic conditions of cooking, is that transitions
from one scale of humankind to another subjected practical
experiences of self-constitution to fundamental modifications.
Trying to understand some of the patterns of life and work, as
well as patterns of access to food or of preparing it, requires
that we understand when and why such changes take place.
Language stored not only recipes, but also expectations that
became part of our nourishment. The culture of food preparation
and serving, the art of discovering new recipes and enjoying
what we eat and drink, is more than language can convey.
Truffles, the food of kings and nobles, and more recently of
those who can afford them, bear a whole history, obviously
expressed in language. Whether seen as the spit of witches, a
more or less magic aphrodisiac, or a miraculous life-prolonging
food, truffles gain in status because our experience, reflected
in the language pertinent to cooking, led us to regard them from
a perspective different from those who first discovered, by
accident, their nutritive value. It is in the tradition of
orality that fathers whispered to their sons the secret of
places where truffles could be found. Practical experiences
involving writing, and later literacy, raised the degree of
expectancy associated with their consumption. They affected the
shift regarding the eating of truffles from the sphere of the
natural (the pigs that used to find them, and liked them
probably as much as the gourmets, had to be replaced by
specially trained dogs) to the realm of the cultural, where the
interests of human beings prevail over anything else. Through
language processes paralleled by the semiosis of high
gastronomy, truffles enter the market as sign-of a
discriminating palate, of snobbery, or of actually knowing why
truffles are good.
Language and food interact. This interaction involves other sign
systems, too: images, sounds, movements, texture, odor, taste.
Through the influence of language and these other sign systems,
the preparation of food and the appropriate drinks becomes an
art. In the age of illiteracy, the languages of genetics,
biology, and medicine make us aware of what it takes to avoid
malnutrition, what it takes to maintain health and prolong one's
life. Literacy was reinforced in the convention of how people
eat, what, when, and how satisfaction or disappointment was
expressed. In our new nutritional behavior and in our new
values, literacy plays a marginal role (including interaction at
the dining table). The artificial truffle is free of the mystique
of origin, of the method for finding truffles, of secret
formulas (except the trade secret). It is one item among many,
cheap, illusory, and broadly available, as democratic as
artificial caviar or, as Rousseau would have put it, government
by representation.
Identical in so many ways, the cafeterias that extend an
industrial model in a post-industrial context feed millions of
people based on a formula of standardization. Hierarchies are
wiped away. This is no place for truffles. One gets his tray and
follows those who arrived before. There is no predetermined
sequence. All that remains is the act of selection and the
execution of the transaction-an exercise in assemblage not far
removed from composing your own pizza on a computer monitor. When
the language of available nourishment is standardized to the
extent that it is in these feeding environments-elegant coops
stocked with shining metal coffee, tea, and soda dispensers,
refrigerated containers of sandwiches, cake, fruit-the language
of expectations will not be much richer. The increased
efficiency made possible this way accounts for the wide
acceptance of this mediocre, illiterate mode of nourishing
ourselves.