People do not eat only to obtain nutrients and ward off hunger and starvation. People’s eating habits are strongly influenced by culture. Rituals around preparing, sharing, and consuming food serve social roles as well as biological ones.
Religion sometimes plays a role in what, and when, people eat. Followers of the Jain religion, for example, strongly believe in nonviolence toward all living things. Strict Jains never eat meat. Many Jains also refrain from eating potatoes and other tubers because many small organisms are harmed as the tubers are pulled from the earth.
Jewish kashrut law and Muslim dhabihah law outline many rules for eating. Both include a ban on pork. Food that is prepared according to kashrut law is called kosher, while food that is prepared according to dhabihah law is called halal.
During the month of Ramadan, Muslims fast, or avoid eating, during daylight hours. Typically, Muslims will eat one meal before dawn and one after sunset, but nothing at all while the sun is shining. Ramadan is considered a time for inner reflection, devotion to God, and self-control.
Feasting is also an important ritual, both for religious and nonreligious reasons. Most religious fasting periods, such as Ramadan, are followed by holiday feasts. Eid al-Fitr is the Islamic holiday following Ramadan. One of the ways Muslims celebrate Eid is to donate food to the poor.
Nonreligious holidays often include feasts as well. In the United States, people gather to eat turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. In China, families celebrate the Chinese New Year with foods that symbolize luck and prosperity, such as long noodles, chickens, fish, oysters, dumplings, tangerines, oranges, and sticky rice cakes.
Many people make dietary choices based on ethics—beliefs about what is right and wrong. For instance, some people choose not to eat meat out of concern for the environment. Livestock is one of the leading contributors to carbon emissions, and some people reduce the amount of beef they eat to reduce their “carbon footprint.” Many people avoid eating meat out of concern for animal welfare.
Vegetarians avoid eating all meat and fish. Vegans avoid all animal products, including eggs, milk, cheese, and honey. Some people who are not vegetarians may raise or buy humanely produced animal products such as free-range chicken and grass-fed beef.
Other ethics-based food practices include choosing organic or locally grown foods. People who choose organic foods may do so because of the reduced number of chemicals in the food. Organic food relies little on genetic modification or pesticides. Organic food also releases fewer chemicals into the environment in the form of runoff.
The “locavore” movement values the reduced environmental impact of local foods. There are fewer transportation costs, such as greenhouse gas emissions, with local foods.
The way we serve and eat food is as culturally important as what foods we consume. In East Asian countries, most people use chopsticks to pick up their food. In Europe and the Americas, a variety of utensils serve different purposes. A full, formal place setting can include a salad fork, dinner fork, dessert fork, teaspoon, soup spoon, butter knife, and dinner knife. In other countries, such as India and Ethiopia, many foods are picked up with pieces of flat bread rather than utensils.
Table manners vary widely from culture to culture. Manners include rules about how and where people should sit, when to begin eating, which utensils to use in certain situations and with which hand, and what behaviors might be considered rude.
In East Asian countries, it is considered rude to point at people with your chopsticks, or to rest your chopsticks standing upright in your rice. In Malaysia, eating with your left hand is considered unclean. In Japan, it is acceptable and even encouraged to make slurping noises while eating hot noodles, but not while eating soup. In Russia, it is considered polite to leave a bit of food after eating, but in Brazil, people are expected to eat everything on their plates.
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