A hedonistic approach to the anthropology of food.

Several of my more academic readings have led me to ponder what we really mean by 'food'. To me, it *means* a lot. I enjoy eating it, I enjoying cooking it, a lot of my social life somehow revolves around it, I love exploring it, I used to be employed as a professional preparer of it, and now I spend a great deal of time writing about it and studying it. It also gives me most of the nutrients I need in order to survive and function as a human being, but for me, that is not the reason for my interest in it.

Food is nutrition. Humans need some form of food to fuel the body. On a purely reductionist/scientific level, I personally need 2000 calories, containing 5g salt, 70g fat, a little calcium, about 20 different vitamins and a certain amount of fibre and carbohydrate per day. All this is to be washed down with about 2 litres of water. That 'diet' in pill form if necessary, would sustain me, and keep my own four-buckets-water-and-a-bag-full-of-salt form mobile and functional. It would not, however, allow me to 'live' a fully human life.

Instead, and allowing for human interaction, culture, pleasure-seeking, and all round messiness, we choose a far less efficient method of fuelling our bodies. We have a huge range of edible susbstances in our world, and the variety is added to by a seemingly infinite number of combinations and cooking methods. So basically, we eat what we choose, based on personal preference, and social norms. Whether or not our chosen diet patterns give us all the nutrients we require is left virtually up to chance. I know I ought to eat fish to get my omega 3, I know I ought to cut down on my caffeine intake and stick to my recommended number of alcohol units, I know that fruit is far better for me than anything else I normally snack on, and I know that Friday-Night Drunken Kebabs have no useful content whatsoever. But in terms of what I actually consume, and choose to consume, nutritional value is almost irrelevant.

Should I take more of an interest in nutrition then? Is there a place for it in anthropology? Maybe, on some level. At least in the Western world there is a trend nowadays towards reconnecting with the food we eat. Spurred on perhaps by food scandals in the media, the situation European farmers find themselves in, food regulatory legislation, global warming scares affecting our crops, awareness of 'food miles', the Slow Food movement, Britain's rising obesity epidemic and so on. I'd like to think some of this awareness occurs because people are finally beginning to notice how awful fast food and convenience food actually is. There are very many fashionable schemes to eat locally, that is, to eat things produced in this country. Organic food is lauded as being healthier - for the environment if not for your wallet. We are supposed to eat our Five-a-day fruit and veg, McDonalds has even attempted to do salads, Smoothies are the new power-food, more and more Fair Trade products are on the shelves, obsessive dieters starve themselves to size 00 and celebrity chefs and diet programs are taking over our TV sets. It can be argued that we are now more aware of what is good for us, and good for the environment, than at any other time.

This is not to say, however, that because we are aware of it, we choose our food differently as a result. There is always an element of luxury and food-hedonism involved. There are very few people in the world who can stick to healthy, nutritional diets if they do not actually like the healthy nutritional food they are supposed to be eating. My three favourite 'luxuries' are coffee, red wine and chocolate, all served as dark, strong and as full bodied as possible. Despite reassuring claims from the psuedo-science community that a glass of wine a day is good for you, and that caffeine can ward off alhzeimers and dementia in women and that chocolate makes you produce happy-chemical in your brain, it is a pretty safe bet that none of these things are particularly nutrient-rich or 'good for me'. In nutritional terms, a standard (10oz) cup of black coffee on its own is 32 calories and 0.125g of caffeine. To fulfill my daily calorie allowance, I would have to drink 62.5 cups of the stuff, giving me 7.8g of pure caffeine. 10g is enough to kill me. All this is conjecture because, despite popular belief, I do not exist off coffee alone, and even on my most caffeinated days, I've never got anywhere near 62 cups. The point is though, that I am aware of the lack of nutritional content of my favourite foodstuffs, I am also acutely aware of the dangers of addiction and hypercaffeination. But I love coffee.

What nutritionists and hard-core diet fanatics don't take into account is the fact that foods serve other functions besides substinance. They have social meanings too. Throwing a dinner party is a social event, 'going for lunch' with someone shows friendship, tea breaks at work provide a welcome excuse to interact with colleagues. In a time when we no longer 'break bread' with new acquaintances, we have substituted the informal invite of 'come over for a cup of coffee sometime'. "Are you coming up for coffee?" asked after a date is a very useful euphemism; whether or not the coffee is drunk, or even actually made is irrelevant, but in this sense coffee is vital to the reproductive survival of the human race... (ahem).

It is short-sighted to ignore the nutritional aspect of our food when studying our eating habits, but it is equally pointless to focus entirely on that and not account for the social and cultural functions and customs. Our little luxuries in life may not be healthy, ethical or environmentally friendly, but cracking open a bottle of wine with an elaborate dinner party, queuing up or stuffing chocolate cakes in the cafe with friends are part of our culture. These actions have other, less scientific reasons behind them, and a little culinary hedonism is what makes life enjoyable.