From a strictly qualitative perspective, the amount of food
people eat is represented by numbers so large that we end up
looking at them in awe, without understanding what they mean. The
maintenance of life is an expensive proposition. Nevertheless,
once we go beyond the energetic equation, i.e., in the realm of
desires, the numbers increase exponentially. It can be argued
that this increase (of an order of magnitude of 1,000) is higher
than that anticipated by Malthus. On the subject of what, how,
and why people eat, see:
Claudio Clini. L'alimentazione nella storia. Uomo, alimentazione,
malattie. Abano Terme, Padova: Francisci, 1985.
Evan Jones. American Food. The Gastronomic Story. Woodstock NY:
Overlook Press, 1990.
Nicholas and Giana Kurti, Editors. But the Crackling is Superb.
An Anthology on Food and Drink by Fellows and Foreign Members of
the Royal Society. Bristol, England: A. Hilger, 1988.
Carol A. Bryant, et al. The Cultural Feast. An Introduction to
Food and Society. St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1985.
Hilary Wilson. Egyptian Food and Drink. Aylesbury, Bucks,
England: Shire, 1988.
Reay Tannahill. Food in History. New York: Stein and Day, 1973.
Charles Bixler Heiser. Seed to Civilization. The Story of Food.
Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Margaret Visser. Much Depends on Dinner. The Extraordinary
History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos,
of an Ordinary Meal. Toronto, Ont.: McClelland and Stewart, 1986.
Esther B. Aresty. The Delectable Past. The Joys of the Table,
from Rome to the Renaissance, from Queen Elizabeth I to Mrs.
Beeton. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1978.
Maria P. Robbins, Editor. The Cook's Quotation Book. A Literary
Feast. Wainscott NY: Pushcart Press, 1983.
The Pleasures of the Table (compiled by Theodore FitzGibbon). New
York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Charles Dickens. American Notes. New York: St. Martin's Press,
1985. (pp. 154-155). On the symbolism of food, informative
reading can be found in:
Carol A. Bryant. The Cultural Feast: An Introduction to Food and
Society. St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1985.
Lindsey Tucker. Stephen and Bloom at Life's Feast: Alimentary
Symbolism and the Creative Process in James Joyce's Ulysses.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984.
In L'aile ou la cuisse (Wing or Drumstick), a 1976 French film
directed by Claude Zidi, Luis de Funés became, as the French
press put it, "the Napoleon of gastronomy" fighting the barbarian
taste of industrial food, seen as a real danger to the authentic
taste of France.
At the initiative of the Minister of Culture, a Conseil National
des Arts Culinaires (CNAC) was founded in 1989. Culinary art and
gastronomic heritage were made part of the French national
identity. Awakening of Taste (Le reveil du goût) is a program
launched in the elementary schools. A curriculum originating from
the French Institute of Taste is used to explain what makes
French food taste good. The CNAC provides a nationwide inventory
of local foods. A University of Taste (Centre de Goût) would be
established in the Loire Valley.
Jean Bottero. Mythes et Rites de Babylone. Paris: Librairie
Honoré Champion, 1985.
Reallexikon der Assyriologie. Vol. III, Getränke (Drinks), pp.
303-306; Gewürze (Spices), pp. 340-341; Vol. VI, Küche
(Cuisine), pp. 277-298. Berlin/New York, Walter de Gruyter, 1982.
La Plus Vieille Cuisine du Monde, in L'Histoire, 49, 1982, pp.
72-82.
M. Gabeus Apicius. De re conquinaria (rendered into English by
Joseph Sommers Vehling, New York: Dover Publications, 1977)
first appeared in England in 1705, in a Latin version, based on
the manuscripts of this work dating to the 8th and 9th
centuries. Apicius was supposed to have lived from 80 BCE to 40
CE. This book has since been questioned as a hoax, although it
remains a reference text.
Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella. De re rustica. (12 volumes on
agriculture. Latin text with German translation by Will
Richter). München: Artemis Verlag, 1981.
Roland Barthes. Empire of Signs. New York: Hill and Wang. 1982.
(Originally published in French as L'Empire des Signes, Geneva:
Editions d'Art Albert Skira, S.A.
"The dinner tray seems a picture of the most delicate order: its
frame containing, against a dark background, various objects
(bowls, boxes, saucers, chopsticks, tiny piles of food, a little
gray ginger, a few shreds of orange vegetable, a background of
brown sauce)...it might be said that these trays fulfill the
definition of painting which according to Piero della Francesca
is merely demonstration of surfaces and bodies becoming even
smaller or larger according to their term" (p. 11).
"Entirely visual (conceived, concerted, manipulated for sight,
and even for a painter's eye), food thereby says that it is not
deep: the edible substance is without a precious heart, without a
buried power, without a vital secret: no Japanese dish is
endowed with a center (the alimentary center implied in the West
by the rite which consists of arranging the meal, of surrounding
or covering the article of food); here everything is the
ornament of another ornament: first of all because on the table,
on the tray, food is never anything but a collection of
fragments, none of which appears privileged by an order of
ingestion; to eat is not to respect a menu (an itinerary of
dishes), but to select, with a light touch of the chopsticks,
sometimes one color, sometimes another, depending on the kind of
inspiration which appears in its slowness as the detached,
indirect accompaniment of the conversation...." (p. 22).
The writings of the various religions (Koran, Torah, New
Testament) contain strictures and ceremonial rules concerning
food. For cooking and eating restrictions in various cultures,
see Nourritures, Sociétés et Religions: Commensalités
(introduction by Solange Thierry). Paris: L'Harmattan, 1990.
On the microwave revolution in cooking, see:
Lori Longbotham. Better by Microwave. New York: Dutton, 1990.
Maria Luisa Scott. Mastering Microwave Cooking. Mount Vernon NY:
Consumers Union, 1988.
Eric Quayle. Old Cook Books: An Illustrated History. New York:
Dutton. 1978; and Daniel S. Cutler. The Bible Cookbook. New
York: Morrow, 1985, offer a good retrospective of what people
used to eat.
In World Hunger. A Reference Handbook (Patricia L. Kutzner, Santa
Barbara CA: ABC-Clio, 1991), the author gives a stark
description of the problem of hunger in today's world:
"With more than enough food in the world to feed everyone,
hundreds of millions of men, women, and children still go
hungry" (p. ix).
It is not the first time in history that starvation and famine
affect people all over the world. What is new is the scale of
the problem, affecting well over one billion human beings. In
June, 1974, in the Assessment of the World Food Situation,
commissioned by the United Nations Economic and Social Council,
the situation was described in terms still unchanged: "The causes
of inadequate nutrition are many and closely interrelated,
including ecological, sanitary, and cultural constraints, but the
principal cause is poverty. This in turn results from
socioeconomic development patterns that in most of the poorer
countries have been characterized by a high degree of
concentration of power, wealth, and incomes in the hands of
relatively small elites of national and foreign individuals or
groups. [...] The percentage of undernourished is highest in
Africa, the Far East, and Latin America; the hunger distribution
is highest in the Far East (in the range of 60%). Of the hungry,
the majority (up to 90%) is in rural areas.
Data is collected and managed by the World Food Council. The
Bellagio Declaration, Overcoming hunger in the 1990's, adopted
by a group of 23 prominent development and food policy planners,
development practitioners, and scientists noticed that 14 million
children under the age of five years die annually from hunger
related causes.
Among the organizations created to help feed the world are CARE,
Food for Peace, OXFAM, Action Hunger, The Hunger Project, Save
the Children, World Vision, the Heifer Project. This list does
not include the many national and local organizations that feed
the hungry in their respective countries and cities.