Nutrition. We don t talk, we think about it, and we change it.
From all sides one hears about diet cholesterol, triglicerides, uric acid and much more. Of course, there are diseases in which diet or changes in diet with sometimes serious interventions are necessary in the habits of life. The classic examples are diabetes, severe diseases of the kidney and, something that is increasingly becoming a widespread disease, obesity.
For everything and everyone there are differentdiets. There are hundreds of books on nutrition and diets available. Billions are made worldwide on the topic, and the gurus of good diet change almost every hour. In contrast to my wife, I am not always the best example of someone who enjoys exclusively healthy nutrition. The ups and downs of weight and my eating habits have accompanied me for decades. Personally, I have found my own individual diet.
So, what are nutrition and food? Is it just a matter of energy and about supplying our body with what is necessary? Or are nutrition and food much more connected, in an overall context, to health and personal well-being? Food is more than the supply of digestible substances required to survive. In addition to the biological nutrition there are also social and cultural factors to food, and the term alone food has different meanings to different people. It includes objects and practices, it can appear staged and extravagant, or everyday and mundane.
Culture is nutrition nutrition is culture
What, when, and where we eat depends only on a few parameters such as digestibility and tolerability. Different diets however, such as the consumption of raw fish, are rather historically and culturally determined.
The type of processing and preparation as well as the process and time of consumption of a dish are also subject to the culture-specific rules and value systems into which each individual is born. As a cultural activity, however, food helps to shape social communities. But food culture is by no means rigid, but are constantly changing, as we can see by the triumph of sushi in Europe.
For us Central Europeans, in recent years and decades there have been strong changes in eating habits. Especially with regard to the eating habits of the 55+ generation, we are convinced that conscious age-appropriate nutrition is becoming increasingly important.
Food as a total social phenomenon
In 1923, in Essen, the French sociologist Marcel Mauss described food as a total social phenomenon. Because nutrition concern both individual and social aspects life, the study of food supply, food choice and eating behaviour can also be a study of different aspects of society. Food is individual and collective. Nutrition also describes interactions between society and the individual.