Food is symbolic

Food is symbolic. I encountered this idea early on in my studies in food anthropology. It is often presented as one of reasons why food is useful as a ‘lens’ through which to explore wider social, cultural, political and economic issues. But what does this really mean?

It took me a while to gain more than a superficial understanding. As I write this it becomes clear why that might have been. I had never been encouraged to think beyond the macro level. The idea that food is symbolic remained an abstract concept, referring to food in general and applied broadly.

A few months into my studies I had a eureka moment. I read two papers in which the authors honed in on a single foodstuff of particular importance to the society they were studying. Their focus on a specific food in a particular context made it much clearer to me why food is symbolic and how this can be a useful way of exploring other issues.

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Sugar consumption, a tale of seduction

This post is based on a presentation I gave at the end of my first term on the MA Anthropology of Food course. In groups of two or three we had to pick a foodstuff and talk about aspects of its history or ‘journey’ that interested us. I chose sugar because I was keen to read more of Sidney Mintz’s monograph, Sweetness and Power, which we had looked at earlier that term in relation to the industrialisation of agriculture. My part of the presentation focused on consumption.

Today we think of sugar as a basic foodstuff, but it has not always been that way. Sugar was first recorded in England in AD735, but more frequent mentions of its use do not appear until the 12^th century, when it was used exclusively by royalty. Sugar did not begin to filter down the social spectrum until the 17^th century, when tea and coffee were introduced to the UK, and it did not become widely used by the lower classes until the industrial revolution. 

Use and function

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