Food Can Transform And Create

In this week’s lecture the thought that ‘food can transform culture and culture can transform food’ (Kuttainen, 2015) was discussed. This thought resonated with me as I have had a recent change in my life that had this type of knock-on effect. About a year ago my mother was diagnosed with a disease that disables a large portion of her hearing and can cause her to have large periods of vomiting and dizziness- as in days of this. There wasn’t much information on this disease, and there’s hardly a single permanent fix, but my family and I scoured the internet and any books we could find and we discovered that a diet with low-to-no salt and sugar, raw foods diet could help to at least prevent the dizziness and vomiting. So we implemented this diet and I have noticed a vast change in the way my family approaches meals. We were never very unhealthy but we did all love our salt. Now ever meal we have has zero added salt and its ingredients have low salt content. It’s transformed the culture of our household to one that is more creative with food, especially the use of herb and spices to substitute the salt loss. In this way, I have been able to experience the transformative properties food has on a culture and vice versa.

This concept is also relevant to Tumblr, as is the concept in the reading that ‘food is an expression of identity’ (Atkins & Bowler, 2001). On an individual blog, if there are mainly pictures of ‘healthy’ foods, as in this blog, then the identity of the blogger is seen as a healthy person and from there assumptions are made. Likewise, if someone once posted about mainly fast foods or indulgent foods and then gradually changes their aesthetic to the one previously mentioned, a person following that blog will assume they are endeavouring to change their habits in real life as well.

References

Atkins, P and Bowler.I (2001). Food in Society: Economy, culture, geography. London, United Kingdom: Hodder Headline Group.
Kuttainen, V. (2015). BA1002: Food Networks [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from learnjcu.jcu.edu.au

Essie (2015) NourishingEssie [Blog] Retrieved from http://nourishingessie.tumblr.com/ 

Image credit 

Crossman, V. (2015) Vegan Family Recipes [Screenshot of Blog] retrieved from http://veganfamilyrecipes.tumblr.com/