Tastingculture PDF

Tasting Cultures
Probing the Boundaries
Series Editors
Dr Robert Fisher Lisa Howard
Advisory Board
Simon Bacon Ana Borlescu

Katarzyna Bronk Ann-Marie Cook
John L. Hochheimer Peter Mario Kreuter
Stephen Morris John Parry
Peter Twohig Karl Spracklen
S Ram Vemuri Peter Bray
A Probing the Boundaries research and publications project.

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/
The Making Sense of Hub

‘Food’
2015
Tasting Cultures:
Thoughts for Food
Edited by
Maria José Pires
Inter-Disciplinary Press
Oxford, United Kingdom
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First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2015. First Edition.
Table of Contents
Tastes and Cultures: Thoughts for Food vii

Maria José Pires
Part I Shaping Cultures: Food, Identity and Community
Italian Food in USA: It’s Fashion and into the Spotlight 3

Giovanna Costantini
Irreverence and Recreation of ‘Bacalhau’, the Portuguese 13

Faithful Friend
Maria José Pires
Colonial Food in Poetry: Hong Kong and Macau in 27

Leung Ping-kwan’s Food Poetry
Ames Siu, Yan-ho
Food Cultures and the Diaspora: Kerala Nurses in Brisbane 37

Preetha Thomas, Lisa Schubert, Andrea Whittaker and
Brigitte Sébastia
Part II Constructing Tastes: Food, Representations and Control
A Making Sense of New Food Technologies and Trust in Food 53

(1960-1995)
Filip Degreef
Designed Pleasure: How Advertising Is Selling Food as Drugs 71

Oliver Vodeb
Living under Control: Social Representation of Dieting for 81

Brazilian and Spanish Women
Maria Clara de Moraes Prata Gaspar and Lis Furlani Blanco
Being Faceless in the Fear of Food 91

Anne-Marie Gloster and Amber Leigh Thompson
The Common Oat as Food and Medicament in Greek Medical 99

Treatises of Antiquity and Byzantium, II-VII c. AD.
Maciej Kokoszko
Ham in Ancient and Byzantine Dietetics, 115
Medicine and Gastronomy
Zofia Rzeźnicka
Tastes and Cultures: Thoughts for Food
Maria José Pires

Food is an attitude. This could be the new thinking which allows for a world of
fresh possibilities when researching in this area of knowledge – food studies. Just
like any other area, researchers here breathe the present because they have already
absorbed the past and can easily try to devise the future. The history of mankind is
intimately connected with the history of food, production systems, and models of
consumption. Accordingly, our history determines and is determined by diverse
stories. These perceptions can be found in this eBook, as food for thought from
thoughts on food.
More than offering a snapshot, the aim is to portray readings on food and the
way they connect. There has been some stress on the need for a canon of taste,
similarly to other canons of our civilisation – those of literature, art, music,
architecture, religion, and science. The argument is based on the assumption that
there is currently what has been called a global palate and it is also held by the
consequent ‘new willingness to cross-pollinate and revivify regional foodways –
and even ways of staging food at the table’. 1 If this growing global movement tries
to establish a culinary canon (as a phenomenon of cultural psychology) and seeks
to restore the actual local ingredients that composed it, the changes in diet are
definitely not a one-area concern.
Shaping Cultures
The thought of shaping entails the concept of creation or fashion in the sense
that it brings about a source of conformity to a particular form. When we deal with
specificities in cases where cultural heritage faces assimilation from other
lifestyles, the question of authenticity and adaptability arises. In ‘Italian Food in
USA: It’s Fashion and into the Spotlight’, Giovanna Costantini focuses on Italian
immigrants’ pride on such cultural heritage when faced with the American way of
life, their eagerness to ethnically distinguish themselves, and the way they have
managed to preserve a unique identity. Nonetheless, the acculturation by
Americanizing some of the flavours of Italian dishes, along with the cultural
phenomenon of the diffusion of Italian-American institutions and a powerful
presence in social networks, has recently proved more than a challenge on the
legitimacy of the competition for a taste of the ‘authentic’ Italian culture when
reaching for trendiness and distinctiveness.
The same concern runs through the questions raised with reference to the
Portuguese choice of ‘bacalhau’ as a national dish, since it has always been caught
in foreign waters and the traditional cooking methods currently face some chefs’
irreverence. In view of that, the understood notion that we eat with our normative
cultural DNA and the recognition that this is related to our cultural heritage are
issues emphasised in ‘Irreverence and Recreation of “Bacalhau”, the Portuguese
viii Tastes and Cultures
__________________________________________________________________
Faithful Friend’, by Maria José Pires. The chapter draws attention to the need for
production to secure a social reproductive sphere, given that dishes, and not solely
raw products, should be at the centre of reshaping food systems and local food
networks. This is accounted for by researching references to ‘bacalhau’ in
cookbooks through history and by witnessing the adjustment of the well-known
axiom that we are what we eat to we are what we ate. The irreverence of recreation
comes from the use of cooking methods unrelated to the original main ingredient,
implicitly accentuating the gargantuan power of food as a symbol of the collective
self.
In a related manner, Ames Siu Yan-ho emphasises the transnational potential
for culture to travel in a similar way to people and food in ‘Colonial Food in
Poetry: Hong Kong and Macau in Leung Ping-kwan’s Food Poetry’. Diverse layers
of relationships are without doubt identified in the case of Hong Kong’s Tea-
Coffee, read as a cultural integration of the East and the West, just as this
integration and influx reflects in the neighbouring city of Macau. As a food poet
Leung regarded food not only as a substance, but as a cultural phenomenon and
was, thus, concerned about the fading culture and objectively documents the
changes in the cultural environment – the example of the future loss of the African
chicken flavour in Macau mirrors the diminishing Portuguese culture. In addition,
the translation of the two poems in the appendix – ‘Tea-Coffee’ and ‘At Bela
Vista’ from the end of the twentieth century – facilitates the perception of Leung’s
poetics of food as it clarifies the transformation of the two cities.
Still on the matter of integration but from traditional gender roles, religion and
social class concerns, the case of migrants from South India since the beginning of
the century brings about a view over the distinct food practices and the cultural
identity of a group of nurses from Kerala and their families who moved to
Brisbane, Australia. Preetha Thomas, Lisa Schubert, Andrea Whittaker, and
Brigitte Sébastia base their anthropological and medical perspective upon
interviews and ethnographic research in ‘Food Cultures and the Diaspora: Kerala
Nurses in Brisbane’. These nurses’ daily negotiations bear in mind the Malayalee
traditions and identity in this unique social network context and are shaped by a
dietary acculturation, as well as a transnationalism and globalization, along with
the desire to preserve tradition whilst facing change. Such a journey through their
food practices brings about the processes through which these immigrants save and
shape their cultural identity.
Constructing Tastes
If a single taste can resonate throughout an entire lifetime, just like Marcel
Proust’s unequalled ‘madeleine’, how are tastes constructed? How do we measure
the degree to which taste can be achieved in an objective way if not by comparing
it to a reference one? Not only do food researchers invariably come across the
power of representations, in deep association with culture and the society that
Maria José Pires ix
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produces them, but these researches face increasingly complex food systems
bearing diverse layers of control. An example are current public conversation on
healthy eating is saturated with Michael Pollan’s worldview and the perspectives
of ‘many scientists, physicians, food activists, nutritionists, celebrity chefs, and
pundits’. 2 According to Filip Degreef, the majority of the population lost control
over the meaning of food because of the lack of direct contact with the food chain
and that of production. In the chapter ‘A Making Sense of New Food Technologies
and Trust in Food (1960-1995)’ he deals with the way representations and ideas of
food safety and quality changed a propos food radiation and food additives, two
highly contested technologies – even if Degreef’s focuses on the need for further
research on more new technologies in the same period. As his research is built on
the interaction of larger evolutions in society, technology, media, sub-politics and
food from the theory of risk society by Ulrich Beck, it allows to better perceive the
effects of those developments on the representation of expertise, products, and
technologies. He does so by studying a Belgian newspaper and the publications of
two consumer organisations.
Another perception on constructed tastes that connects food, representations,
and control is advertising and its strongly suggestive messages and means.
Representations of heavily engineered addictive food and ways of consumption are
brought to light by Oliver Vodeb’s chapter entitled ‘Designed Pleasure: How
Advertising Is Selling Food as Drugs’. Along with rhetoric marketing discourse,
chemical engineering plays an essential interdisciplinary partnership which
facilitates the construction of a superficial culture of pleasure. In line with Vodeb’s
research, such a pleasure driven advertising culture becomes a legitimate,
commercially enforced, and legal drug culture.
An additional image of control concerns the discourses and practices on eating
behaviour and body. Combining a dietary, sociological, and anthropological
knowledge, Maria Clara de Moraes Prata Gaspar and Lis Furlani Blanco analyse
the discourse of sixty semi-direct interviews in ‘Living under Control: Social
Representation of Dieting for Brazilian and Spanish Women’. They underline the
way diverse factors blend while discussing the motivation(s) subjacent to the origin
of food control as a complex phenomenon which carries other significations. The
social representations of food control and the different experiences of the young
women interviewed show how most feel judged by society over their
incautiousness and lack of discipline, as they feel the need for more self-control.
Moreover, when it comes to diets, these have a negative connotation and discipline
also equals acceptance in both Brazil and Spain.
The difficulty to deal with the need for approval and recognition is an
additional effect of the human nature, for people gravitate to spaces that summon
feelings of comfort and competence, unlike the kitchen, according to Anne-Marie
Gloster and Amber Leigh Thompson in their chapter titled ‘Being Faceless in the
Fear of Food’. Professionals, like culinary and food science instructors, are
x Tastes and Cultures
__________________________________________________________________
consequently required to guide students in order to overcome their fear of the
unknown. This educational approach on best practices concerning teaching food
science and culinary arts brings about the need for students to lose their egos, in
order to become faceless and be able to explore their creative side as they embrace
their fears. Fighting the current culture of kitchen desertion also requires an
increasing self-efficacy from each student, which is in line with Gloster and
Thompson’s teaching and learning experiences.
Drawing on other not so dissimilar research experiences that may be read as
another perspective on the construction of tastes, we decided to include the two last
chapters of the second part of the eBook on food history and health considerations.
Such a choice lies on the thought that we build the future on our knowledge of the
past and a taste of the past may also bring a taste of the future. Interested in the
history of gastronomy and dietetics, Maciej Kokoszko’s research focal point lies
not only on the common oat in terms of the range of its cultivation and dietetic
characterization, but also on the culinary application and therapeutic uses in
Antiquity and during the early Byzantine period. His chapter, titled ‘The Common
Oat as Food and Medicament in Greek Medical Treatises of Antiquity and
Byzantium, II-VII c. AD’, deals both with the perspectives of mass consumers and
medical specialists on the cereal, i.e., as foodstuff and a medicament. Furthermore,
as there is a concern about oat being used as a foodstuff in culinary procedures in
medical writings, Kokoszko also presents a thorough account of the main ailments
cured by means of oat itself and oat medicaments.
Also attracted by the history of food and medicine, Zofia Rzeźnicka puts
forward her research based on the weight of ham as food and medicine in Greek,
Roman, and Byzantine sources in the last chapter, ‘Ham in Ancient and Byzantine
Dietetics, Medicine and Gastronomy’. Her detailed study crosses time and place:
from Greek and Byzantine medical authorities and ancient and medieval Europe
and its ham curing, as well as Asia Minor, to writers on agriculture from the 1st c.
AD and the 10th c. AD, and the only remaining ancient cookery book. Moreover,
Rzeźnicka concludes that these same sources show the way ham production
technology remained almost unchanged. If the previous chapters entail the notion
of change, this last one confirms the taste of a case potentially opposed to the
majority.
Bringing about the precepts of food and cultural heritage, from an inherent
rituality of conception to a variety of representations, has brought about readings of
food production and consumption mainly as symbolic markers of identity and
influentially structural acts. Food, as in other manifestations of the social life of
different classes, has constantly been a vehicle of diverse meanings and this is
made clear when one researches deeply the history of food traditions. From
production to preparation and cooking and the consumption itself we find global
and coherent systems that have been studied in detail. Even though all the chapters
here discuss or simply suggest these stages, the former ones are in evidence in
Maria José Pires xi
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Degreef, Gloster and Thompson, Rzeźnicka, Thomas et al, and Vodeb’s chapters,
whereas the latter are clearly approached in Costantini, Gaspar and Blanco,
Kokoszko, Pires, and Siu and Yan-ho’s work. Accordingly, the multifaceted
knowledge of such food phenomena proves to be based on the need for
interdisciplinary looks from the humanities, the social and health sciences, and
technology, reaching an intersection of knowledge.
Notes
1
Jill Neimark, ‘Canon of Taste: Can We Restore the World’s Culinary
Masterpieces by Rescuing the Lost Ingredients and Flavours that Inspired Them?’
Aeon, 11 August 2015, viewed 15 August 2015,
http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/why-we-should-add-food-to-the-cultural-canon/.
2
David H. Freedman, ‘How Junk Food Can End Obesity’, The Atlantic,
July/August 2013, viewed 22 May 2015,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/how-junk-food-can-end-
obesity/309396/.
Bibliography
Freedman, David H. ‘How Junk Food Can End Obesity’, The Atlantic, July/August
2013. Viewed 22 May 2015.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/how-junk-food-can-end-
obesity/309396/.
Neimark, Jill. ‘Canon of Taste: Can We Restore the World’s Culinary

Masterpieces by Rescuing the Lost Ingredients and Flavours that Inspired Them?’
Aeon, 11 August 2015. Viewed 15 August 2015.
http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/why-we-should-add-food-to-the-cultural-canon/.
Part I
Shaping Cultures:
Food, Identity and Community
Italian Food in USA: It’s Fashion and into the Spotlight
Giovanna Costantini
Abstract
Since the first Italian immigrants landed in the USA, food has been the heart of the
Italian-American experience. Original ingredients, home cooking and family were
so meaningful to their traditions that the newcomers recreated the familiar
atmosphere of Southern Italy in the new world by planting gardens and raising
animals to cook for family dinners. Grocery shops, butcher shops, and street
pushcarts spread throughout the Little Italies of New York. Sunday dinners,
festivals, religious ceremonies, and educational manners became stronger and more
popular than the homeland, representing two new underlying meanings: ethnic
group identification and food abundance. Italian immigrants were so proud of their
cultural heritage that they did not want to fully assimilate to American lifestyle.
They adapted their habits, enriched their dishes with new available ingredients, and
Americanized some of the flavours. But tenacity and authenticity have always
distinguished this ethnic group from the others, even during food process
industrialization. Italians have used food as a distinctive source of ethnic pride and
this helped them to maintain a strong and unique identity until today. What is
happening in recent years is a cultural phenomenon: Italian-American associations,
clubs, and food experts are spreading all over the USA. With a strong presence on
social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, TV shows on
Italian home cooking are followed by thousands of Americans. At present, one of
the most famous Italians is MasterChef judge Joe Bastianich who runs several
Italian-American restaurants after his own name. About 260 cookbook titles are
being sold online, from chefs and authors such as John Mariani and Giada De
Laurentiis. Hundreds of blogs, websites, and homemade videos are crowding the
internet, where Lidia Bastianich and Mario Batali are the stars of Italian-American
food media and emporia. They’re all competing for a taste of ‘authentic’ Italy,
which makes them fashionable and original.
Key Words: Italian, American, home cooking, ethnic group, identity, culture,
phenomenon, fashion.
*****
1. The Settlement of Italians in USA

Food practices among populations have always represented a means of
communication. The choice of ingredients, rituals, and habits show what we are
and how we appear outside the ethnic group. Today, food, cooking and family are
considered central components of Italian lifestyle: a matter of pride, a piece of
identity, and a gathering point of community but it was not the same in the past. 1 In
4 Italian Food in USA
__________________________________________________________________
fact, from the 1880s to 1930s millions of Italians, mostly from Southern Italy,
immigrated to the USA because of hunger. When they moved to America they
found abundance of food at a low cost and they made the culture of cooking the
focus of the Italian-American experience. 2 In the new world, new ingredients were
available: meat, sugar, coffee, pasta, and milk, and they were introduced in the
original and regional Italian recipes by changing them into Italian-American
recipes. Some dishes were revised, reinvented and adapted with new ingredients
that gave rise for example to Veal Parmigiana, Spaghetti and Meatballs, pizza (the
current version), etc.
Italians did not want to fully assimilate the American lifestyle because they
were proud of their cultural heritage and they distrusted American customs. In fact,
they were differentiated by the definition of their group identity and the affirmation
of their ethnicity. As the historian Simone Cinotto cited in his book, Italian
immigrants used ethnicity as strategies of power in two distinct situations: by
occupying large spaces for food market in the streets of New York, and by
educating their American born children to food culture. As for the former, the
newcomers opened grocery shops, butcher shops, greengrocers, bakeries
throughout the Little Italies of New York; moreover, pushcarts full of fruit and
vegetables, bread and ice cream spread in every corner of Mulberry Street,
Elisabeth Street, Prince Street, etc. What is more, Italians recreated the familiar
atmosphere of Southern Italy in the new world by planting gardens everywhere:
front yards, roofs, windowsills, and raising animals such as pigs, chickens, goats or
rabbits in the kitchens or basement of tenement houses. As for the latter, they
educated their children according to traditional familiar habits, such as food
consumption and conviviality at home and during Sunday dinners or feast dinners
in order to control them and not to allow them to get assimilated to the local
culture. 3
2. From Sunday Dinners to Table d’Hote

Most of Italians settled in New York or in the cities of the coast like Boston or
Philadelphia. In the new world, cooking and family assumed a new meaning. Even
if families were poor, food was always available there. Abundance of food
represented the social conquest and the realization of the American dream, which
is why they showed it excessively in any social occasion: at home, at Sunday
dinners with relatives and friends, during feasts and family reunions, at funerals.
Food became the symbol of their success and it had to be shared within the
community in order to affirm that social conquest inside their identity group. This
means that foreigners were not allowed to join family dinners because it was
referring to the private sphere of Italianess, whereas habits and roles were well
defined and shared by the whole community.
The family was not the transposition of the family system of Southern Italy, as
many might think. As Donna Gabaccia argues at the beginning of the 1880s, rural
Giovanna Costantini 5
__________________________________________________________________
families of Mezzogiorno did not form a harmonious group to be active for the
common good, envy, jealousy, and suspicion could be included. La familia was a
product of emigration and of a new life in the States. It was an adaptive response to
socio- economic contingencies and to the needs and anxieties related to the
migration process. At a time of instability, the family and the group were the most
stable and reliable sources of material and emotional support. In this entourage,
food defined the position of the family in the group of identity, created and
strengthened ties in the group of relatives in the community, it served to keep alive
the relations between the families who lived far. 4
Home cooking and its consumption became the symbol of Italian-American
ceremonies. Naturally, Italian women had to make adjustments to their cooking
habits because not all the foodstuffs which they had access to in Italy were
available in the United States. Other adjustments were made, for example, poor
dishes were enriched by meat, such as spaghetti with meatballs; meat of any kind
and pasta were consumed daily. Barley coffee was replaced by black coffee and
water by wine, while sugar was used for sweets.
Home cooking was the feeding for lots of single Italian labourers who
emigrated without family, in search of better living conditions. These men lived in
the boarding houses which were houses rent by enterprising Italians that would
open these establishments to meet the demand of single workers, by providing
them with a bed and a daily meal at a low cost. Here, the whole family or the single
woman offered a meal for the boarders made up of meat, pasta, cheese, fish and
vegetables.
When single men returned to Italy or were joined by their families after World
War I, these establishments did not survive. Some converted to family-run inns
which represent the first rudimentary forms of the Italian restaurant industry. The
inns were located in the front rooms of Italian accommodations on the ground
floor, while in the back side the owners’ family had their beds. All male and
female members of the family prepared and sold homemade food to people in
search of an exotic taste. It was cheap and varied and managed by a friendly staff.
These inns were small and simple because they addressed male immigrant workers,
and not to rich Americans. The local residents considered these houses
inappropriate for the American upper class, the only social class which could
afford eating out at dinner. But, with the development of industry and the rise of
middle class, the proliferation of artists and English-American rebels against
Victorian formalism, the Italian-American inns attained a great success.
The bohemians were the first clients of the proto Italian-American eateries:
they enjoyed the European cultural diversity of their neighbours and the friendly
staff to welcome them. The massive presence of artists, students, and later office
employees inside the Village changed the image of the area. From a land of
immigrants and poverty, that district became a land of comfort and entertainment.
Inns changed to table d’hôte with a set menu lunch which attracted the new middle
__________________________________________________________________
class for lots of reasons: low prices, exotic taste, and friendly staff recently
emigrated from Italy. 5 The staff was completely Italian because owners wanted
only people from their own identity group, either a sign of distinction from the
clients or as a confirmation of the own ethnicity in the new country.
Italian manners and home cooking were the main attractions of Italian-
American restaurants. In order to meet the demand of American people, some
regional dishes were replaced by approved and stereotyped few Italian dishes, as
for example spaghetti and ravioli, and some flavours were Americanized because
they were considered inconvenient and unpleasant to America palates. This led to
the strategic hybridization of Italian dishes into Italian-American ones. They were
Italian in the content, in terms of style and recipes, and American in the form
because they were abundant and excessive. What is more, Italian entrepreneurs
took advantage from the years of Prohibition between 1919 and 1933 to sell their
homemade wine and alcohol in general in false cans, thus increasing the number of
their American clients.
At the beginning of the 1930s, Italian-American restaurants of New York
welcomed famous Italian opera singers, who were used to eat and to perform by
singing. 6 This typical Italian taste for art and culture in general, the exotic
atmosphere, the stereotypical image of creative chefs, waiters, and maitre d’hote of
being Italian, together with good home cooking, were the response to the
expectations of American clients. Italian-Americans increased their success by
transforming their restaurants in beautiful, adorned and attractive Roman villas. In
this way, Italian-American restaurants became the emblem of the food in America
and the ethnic pride for Italian immigrants. Italian restaurants and pizzerias spread
all over the country, some of them are still open today.
3. The Raise of Food Industry and the Food Business

The process of industrialization between XIX and XX century transformed
food supply and the daily feeding of Americans. Food production, preservation,
distribution and mass communication led Americans to alter their cooking habits
by consuming prepared and processed food, in a can, for example, or frozen food.
This meant that women had much more free time than ever because they did not
need to cook.
Italian women did not assimilate to this new culture; on the contrary, they kept
planting gardens, raising animals, and cooking with traditional methods. It is
during this time of revolution that Italian food and home cooking underwent the
process of Americanization, by becoming Italian-American. 7
The making of some Italian food was so easy-to-do, as for example pasta with
tomato sauce that entered lots of American houses. This spread was possible
thanks to the process of industrialization that created new Italian-American
products, for example canned tomato paste, tuna in olive oil, or canned prepared
pasta. Food was easier to make with these prepared ingredients or to eat in cans;
__________________________________________________________________
even flavours were more familiar than ever, that is why Americans appreciated
Italian-American food. On the contrary, Italian immigrants were sceptical about
consuming prepared food: they were used to go to the market and buy fresh food
every day, and often to produce it by their own. These practices took on the
meaning of a collective ritual of ethnicity rather than a material need.
Since they landed in America, Italians were interested in using food and
ethnicity in their economy; in fact they opened grocery stores, bakeries,
greengrocers, pasta laboratories, and hired pushcarts. When New York was
urbanized and Little Italy open markets were removed, Italians opened chain
stores, shops, and run covered markets. With the advent of the process of
industrialization, they had to find a new way to make business with food and to
affirm again their ethnicity. In this new socio economic scenario, the second
generation of Italian-Americans, raised and educated in the new world,
transformed the small family business in big ones. Some Italians opened new food
companies because they understood that, in a time of evolving market, they might
have achieved a decisive alchemy: to produce industrialized food with an Italian
brand at the Italian style. Italian-Americans had their know-how and ethnic skills
to afford it. They did not need manufacturing or to import original products from
Italy anymore, because they could do it at a cheaper price. During that time,
several Italian-American companies emerged on the American and international
market, for example Ronzoni Macaroni Co and Chef Boyardee for pasta. 8
4. The Evolution of Italian-American Food

After the success of Italian-Americans in the food business, American hands
tried to make Italian food by acquiring promising companies from ethnic owners.
Pizza-Hut and Taco Bell are two examples of ethnic fast food. Several non-ethnic
industrials entered the pasta industry, while non-Italian consumers introduced it in
the domestic consumption. This caused an increasing success of Italian food and a
‘ethnic cross-over’, as stated by Donna Gabaccia. 9
In the years to come, some dishes were invented as Italian or Italian-American,
but they have nothing to do with Italy, except for the origin of the name. It is the
case of Chicken Alfredo or Caesar Salad. Other dishes were crippled by adding
inappropriate ingredients or completely different ones, for instance lasagne or
braciole. 10
From a social point of view, the end of assimilation emergency opened a new
era of reflection on the customs of ethnic food. In fact, in the years to follow, the
phenomenon of economic globalization and immigration from South America led
to the food globalization. Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indian, Latin restaurants were
spreading all over the country, making Americans aware of new foods and
flavours. In the last fifty years, Italian-American cuisine, as it was known until that
moment, began to decline and a new era of Italian cuisine would come.
__________________________________________________________________
5. The New Trends
After years of stereotyped food, messed up and invented Italian-American
dishes, thirty years ago, GRI association (Gruppo Ristoratori Italiani) started to
promote the Italian genuine food and culture in Ney York and the rest of USA.
Their goal is to open a dialogue with American consumers and to teach them the
real, authentic, and traditional Italian food. It is necessary to conquer again the
public and to satisfy its demand in order to eat in as many restaurants as possible,
thus promoting the interest in this cuisine. Today, 800 restaurants are members of
the association, most of them are located in New York. GRI joined Casa Italiana
Zerilli-Marimò in order to plan a series of lectures, presentations, meetings, about
Italian food and wine culture. The two GRI founders and restaurateurs, Tony May
and Gianfranco Sorrentino, observe that the magic ingredients and secrets of Italian
cooking are the raw materials. Although expensive and difficult to find, they are
essential to the success of the recipe. Tony May added that education is necessary
in matter of food. 11
As John Mariani suggests in his last book ‘How Italians conquered the
world’, 12 the new cuisine, inspired to real and authentic food, appeared in US at the
beginning of 1970s, with the opening of the Italian restaurant Valentino in Santa
Monica by the Sicilian entrepreneur Piero Selvaggio. He brings modern and highly
refined Italian food and wine in Southern California. Three years later, Silvano
Marchetto opens Da Silvano in NYC. It becomes the first chic trattoria to attract
the downtown arts and music crowd as well as uptown fashionistas. In the years to
follow, several Italian restaurants opened throughout the country, all of them
sharing elegance, modernism, original Italian taste, (or a supposed one), a refined
cuisine, and authenticity. Only in recent years, with a better social position of third
and fourth generations of Italian-Americans, the Italian cuisine became more
educated, refined, and elaborated. Time to show a new position and a higher social
status has come: the new Italian-Americans do it through food, their business card.
Quality of life and Made in Italy are a recent evolution, or better rediscoveries. But
that was not possible if the foundation was not made of hard work, macaroni,
spaghetti with meatballs, etc accomplished by early Italian immigrants, and non-
Italians later.
What is happening in very recent years is a cultural phenomenon: Italian-
American associations, clubs, and food experts are spreading all over the USA.
With a strong presence on social networks such as Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter,
and Instagram, TV shows on home cooking are followed by thousands of
Americans. Cooking is no longer seen as a domestic drudgery; it is now a form of
entertainment and a way to connect: one can talk about food, read about food, eat
food, and watch food being cooked, because anyone can necessarily participate in
it to some degree. At present, American people spend more time watching food TV
shows than cooking food, in fact the public watches home cooking shows then
goes out for pizza. While the Food Network still dominates the cooking show
__________________________________________________________________
medium, Bravo, the Travel Channel, the Public Broadcasting Station (PBS), The
Learning Channel (TLC), the network television stations, and the recently launched
Cooking Channel (sister station to the Food Network) all fight for viewership. But
it is not just images of delectable dinners that entice us to sit in front of the
television instead of at our kitchen tables; many viewers tune in because they want
to see what their favourite celebrity chef is cooking up for dinner. 13
One more time, in matter of food, Italian-Americans have taken advantage of
this situation by joining TV shows, reaffirming their ethnicity and their pride of
being Italian. At present, one of the most famous Italian food showman is
MasterChef judge Joe Bastianich who runs several Italian-American restaurants
after his own name. The last season 2013 winner of the cooking reality show is the
Italian Luca Manfè. Top Chef, whose judge is the Italian-American Tom
Colicchio, is another food reality show debuted in 2006. The winners of seasons 6
and 11 are respectively Michael Voltaggio and Nicholas Elmi. Some of the
winners of the cooking show Iron Chef are the Italian-American Marc Forgione in
2010 and Alex Guarnaschelli in 2012. Giada De Laurentis is the ‘queen’ of
television. She is an Italian-born American chef, writer, television personality, the
host of the current Food Network television program Giada at Home, and a
contemporary celebrity. Mary Ann Esposito is an Italian-American chef and the
television host of Ciao Italia, which started in 1989 and is the longest-running
television cooking program in America.
To switch from TV to publishing, about 280 cookbook titles are selling online.
Hundreds of blogs, websites, and homemade videos are crowding the internet,
where Lidia Bastianich and Mario Batali are the stars of Italian-American food
media and emporia. They are both celebrity chefs, television hosts, cookbooks
authors, and at present they are running Eataly of New York and Chicago. Eataly is
a multi-level, warehouse-sized Italian food emporium, full of grocery stores,
cookbooks stores, cooking class centre, 14 etc. Italian-Americans caught this last
food trend, as they did in the past, and made it the current hallmark of their ethnic
group. They were able to follow every style in food. At the moment, food
represents fashion and entertainment and Italian-Americans are fashion and funny
in the kitchen. What is the next trend? Will they be able to adapt to the next
custom? We will see.
Notes
1
Will Levit, ‘From Family Meals to Four Stars: The Establishment of Italia-
American Cuisine in New York City’ (BD diss., Wesleyan University, 2012).
2
Ibid.
3
Simone Cinotto, Una Famiglia che Mangia Insieme (Torino: Otto Editore,
October 2001), 18.
__________________________________________________________________
4
Donna Gabaccia, From Sicily to Elisabeth Street (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1984), 59.
5
Cinotto, Una Famiglia che Mangia Insieme, 366.
6
Ibid., 387-388.
7
Levit, ‘From Family Meals to Four Stars’.
8
Cinotto, Una Famiglia che Mangia Insieme, 269-299.
9
Ibid., 292. Printed in Donna Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and
the Making of Americans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
10
‘Italian-American Cuisine’, Wikipedia, viewed on 1 July 2014,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_American_cuisine.
11
Alessandra Grandi, ‘È la Cucina Italiana Vittima del Suo Stesso Successo?’, i-
Italy, December 14, 2009, viewed on 2 July 2014,
http://www.i-italy.org/12168/la-cucina-italiana-vittima-del-suo-stesso-successo.
12
John F. Mariani, How Italians Conquered the World (New York, NY: Palgrave
Macmillian, May 2012), 167-187.
13
Malen M. Devon, ‘Accessorizing with Food: Cooking Shows and Cultural
Values’ (Degree of Masters of Art diss., University of Washington DC, April
2011), 5-6.
14
Levit, ‘From Family Meals to Four Stars’.
Bibliography
Barretta, Valentina. ‘Genuinamente Italiano. Il Giusto Peso all’ Alimentazione e al
Gusto’. i-Italy. 5 May 2010. Viewed 2 July 2014.
http://www.i-italy.org/14171/genuinamente-italiano-il-giusto-peso-
allalimentazione-e-al-gusto.
Bastianich, Joseph. Restaurant Man. Milano: Rizzoli, 2012.
Cinotto, Simone. The Italian American Table. Chicago, Illinois (USA): University
of Illinois Press, 2013.
Cinotto, Simone. Una Famiglia che Mangia Insieme. Torino: Otto Editore, 2001.
Devon, M. Malene. ‘Accessorizing with Food: Cooking Shows and Cultural

Values’. Degree of Masters of Arts in Public Communication Dissertation,
Washington DC, 2011.
Esposito, Mary Ann. Ciao Italia. Viewed 11 July 2014.

http://www.ciaoitalia.com/.
__________________________________________________________________
Gabaccia, Donna R. From Sicily to Elisabeth Street: Housing and Social Change
among Italian Immigrants, 1880-1930. Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press, 1984.
Gabaccia, Donna R. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of
Americans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
‘Giada De Laurentiis’. Wikipedia. Viewed 10 July 2014.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giada_De_Laurentiis.
Grandi, Alessandra. ‘È la Cucina Italiana Vittima del Suo Stesso Successo?’ i-

Italy, 14 December 2009. Viewed 10 July 2014. http://www.i-italy.org/12168/la-
cucina-italiana-vittima-del-suo-stesso-successo.
Iannace, Biagio C. The Discovery of America: An Autobiography. West Lafayette,

IN: Bordighera Press, 2000.
‘Iron Chef America’. The Food Network. Viewed on 10 July 2014.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/iron-chef-america.html.
Levenstein, Harley. Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American

Diet. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Levit, Will. ‘From Family Meals to Four Stars: The Establishment of Italia-
American Cuisine in New York City’. BD Dissertation, Wesleyan University,
2012.
Mariani, John F. How Italians Conquered the World. New York, NY: Palgrave
Macmillian, 2011.
Masterchef. Produced by PBS, Arlington, Virginia (USA). Broadcasted in Italy on

Sky Uno, 2013.
Top Chef. Produced by Magical Elves Production, Los Angeles, California (USA).
Broadcast in Italy on Sky Uno. 2013.
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Giovanna Costantini is an English teacher of language and culture of English

speaking countries at Secondary public schools. While involved in the course of
__________________________________________________________________
Luxury Goods and Made in Italy at International University of Studies in Rome,

currently her research and writing is devoted to American and Italian-American
food and culture.
Irreverence and Recreation of ‘Bacalhau’,
the Portuguese Faithful Friend
Maria José Pires

Abstract
From early times food had in its preparation and consumption a breath of creation
and art, because food is not just raw matter, but processed material. Although
Portuguese cuisine is recognized by fresh fish and shellfish, its national dish
‘Bacalhau’ is dried and salted codfish. Such a passion goes back to 1497, when
Portuguese fishing boats reached Newfoundland and were responsible for
introducing it first in terms of diet. Being durable, affordable and having a flavour
more enjoyable than the other salted fish, cod immediately became part of the
Portuguese culture. As the world largest consumer, Portugal claims to know 1001
ways of preparing ‘bacalhau’. Accordingly, it was incorporated into people’s
cooking habits and consecrated as the ‘faithful friend’ (‘fiel amigo’). Moreover,
religion came to play a relevant part in the way ‘bacalhau’ went on to have a close
connection with the Portuguese culture and the Christian tradition. Cooking
methods are equally relevant and have been further developed in this century by
some of Lisbon Chefs’ irreverence. The case presented refers to the traditional
expression ‘à Brás’ from the original Portuguese specialty ‘Bacalhau à Brás’ –
shredded codfish fried in olive oil with onion, straw potato, eggs, chopped parsley
and decorated with black olives. Its unique taste depends on the ratio of the recipe
components, but the method now combines different ingredients. Therefore, if
production needs to secure a social reproductive sphere (with the implied notion
that we eat with our normative cultural DNA and acceptance is related to our
cultural heritage) dishes, and not solely raw products, should be at the centre of
reshaping our food systems and local food networks. We move beyond food
metaphors to explore the more subtle methods that professionals employ toward
refining and elevating the experience of creation, but are we not what we ate?
Key Words: ‘Bacalhau’, society, culture, identity, history, authenticity.
*****
In the old kitchen, the family groups around the table and the
glow of the fireplace. The old men and women, remote
sculptures blackened and decayed by time; the children who
were absent and managed to come and those still in dippers
growing. The faithful friend, with cabbages and potatoes, is the
tradition; the wealthier ones also fry their rabanadas. The wine
flows, pink, transparent, especially at the time of magus when the
chestnuts pop in the fire. 1
14 Irreverence and Recreation of ‘Bacalhau’, the Portuguese Faithful Friend
__________________________________________________________________
If rabanadas, the fried bread soaked in milk, sugar, and cinnamon – also
known as Douradas or Fidalgas due to their golden colour and their connotation
with gentry – have always been related to the celebration of Christmas in Portugal,
so has bacalhau, the ‘faithful friend’. This is a designation, current even today, that
clearly illustrates the association of bacalhau with the Portuguese culture and
consumption. Even if we have to bear in mind distinguished culinary patterns
around the country, bacalhau is guaranteed. 2 Still, its consumption in Portugal
does not limit itself to festivities, but to daily practices, likewise – though the major
consumption of fish has been in the areas of the principal seaports historically
involved in the fishing and commercialization of bacalhau (Porto, Viana, Aveiro,
and Lisbon). 3 Thus, it is clear the religious weight in this tradition, since Christmas
Eve was a period of abstinence when meat was forbidden and it was the perfect
food for Lent, as well. 4 Nevertheless, whereas in Porto, the second most important
city, the main meal was before the Christmas Eve Mass, with the most rigorous
demand for fish (bacalhau), in the capital city, Lisbon, it was Christmas lunch
when turkey ruled. 5 All the same, it was the northern choice of bacalhau that
‘ended up forming the main representation of the most important celebrating meal
[…] in Portugal’. 6
This reflection is just an example of how we question authenticity and the
power of heritage when it comes to seeing the interdisciplinary facets of food as
cultural aspects in the project on Literary and Cultural Tourism being developed by
the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies (ULICES/CEAUL), since it
brings together multidisciplinary fields including food-cultural studies. As Sobral
and Rodrigues recently reminded us when analysing cookbooks, 7 whereas the first
books addressed the elite (dominated by a cosmopolitan cuisine rooted in the
French hegemony since the eighteenth century) 8 in the following century, these
books were meant for a somewhat wider audience (with the middle class) who
could read, as they ‘reserve[d] an ever bigger space for a culinary that claim[ed]
the national qualifier and bacalhau brands in the nationalizing effort’. 9 However,
when one considers the case of cod in terms of the national-culinary canon of
Portugal, one comes to see it as part of the international tendency – as is the case of
Japan, Mexico or Russia – since it reflects a reaction against the dominant French
rooted cuisine, served specially in the most relevant social events. 10 In fact,
according to cod historian Mark Kurlansky, by the middle of the sixteenth century
‘60 percent of all fish eaten in Europe was cod’. 11 Even though the practices are
not exclusive from Portugal, what is defined as national has included for many
centuries the ‘Mediterranean triade of bread, olive oil and wine, sardine, the use of
garlic, and sweets’. 12 Because we are referring to the Portuguese cuisine as a
historical product, we are implicitly dealing with changes, with the ‘invention of
tradition’. 13
When one looks back a century ago, Portugal was primarily as an agricultural
country – 78.5% of the surface was productive, according to figures for 1912. 14 On
Maria José Pires 15
__________________________________________________________________
the other hand, in April 2014 a short article called the attention to Portugal as the
‘the jelly fish nation’, since Portugal would be considered 97 per cent water. 15
Such article questioned the proposed extension the continental shelf which reveals
the new territorial dimension of Portugal, which includes the seabed and subsoil
beyond the 200 nautical mile limit. This proposal was had been presented to the
UN in 2009 through the project ‘Portugal é Mar’ (Portugal is Sea) and in April
2014 over 44.000 of this new map of the country was symbolically hanged on the
wall of many schools. What this new map tries to stress is how Portugal is mostly
sea: whereas the land surface is 92.000 square kilometres, the territorial waters
reach almost four millions square kilometres.
From early times, food had in its preparation and consumption, a breath of
creation and art, since food is not just raw matter, but processed material. In terms
of consumption, each Portuguese consumes an average of 60kg of fish a year, from
which 7 kg is bacalhau. Although Portuguese cuisine is recognized by fresh fish
and shellfish, mainly because of its privileged geographical location, the national
dish ‘Bacalhau’ is dried and salted codfish. 16 More precisely, the large cod is a
member of the order Gadiformes and of the Gadidae family and it is a sub-brachian
malacopterygian – a fish with an elongated powerful body, bony skeleton, very
pronounced ventral fins beneath the pectoral fins, and a large head. Considering
that ‘cod is as prolific as it is greedy [and every] female lays just under ten million
eggs’ and until the nineteenth century it was more usually sold salted and dried,
cod can be described as a universal food with eighty percent protein. 17 Nowadays,
salted cod is most popular in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and in Latin American
and African countries that were under colonial influence. 18 Indeed, the presence of
salted and dried fish in the cuisines of several ex-colonies of the Portuguese empire
is proof of the continuity of the association between bacalhau and the Portuguese
culture 19 – even though there are cases, like the cod from the Massachusetts Bay
Colony, north of Newfoundland and Labrador: ‘the best grade was sent to Spain;
the worst fed the slaves in the west Indies’. 20 In the Iberian Peninsula the specialist
shops that offer a large choice of salted cod (bacalao in Spanish), sell it by the cut
usually labelled with the dish it might be used in and European cod is much
preferred to the Newfoundland one. 21 That was not the case when the Portuguese
fishing boats reached Newfoundland in 1497 and were then responsible for
introducing the bacalhau first in terms of diet.
In fact, history refers the Basques whalers as the first who noticed the
extraordinary abundance of cod making for the St. Lawrence Estuary around the
year 1000, turning themselves in the first to set eyes on the new world… but they
actually kept it a secret to protect their source of profit! The contemporaneous
authors who argue this supremacy, after a Viking establishment, 22 also mention the
Portuguese nation as ‘mainly fishing’ and a school for the ‘fearless sailors’ of its
discoveries and conquests. 23 No wonder Jules Michelet states that ‘The cod alone
has created colonies and founded trading stations and towns’. 24 Besides, the
__________________________________________________________________
historical relation between Portugal and bacalhau made the former a worldwide
reference in terms of its consumption and business.
Apart from the ever common policy of protection of the species, along the
diverse proposals to develop the fishing by the Portuguese, it was only during the
nineteenth century (particularly in the last decades) that private business owners
promoted fishing for cod. 25 Moreover, even if it has never been enough to supply
the demand and there was always a need for imports, the peak of fishing took place
under the Estado Novo (1933-1974), the dictatorship period. In fact, as Moutinho
states, because in the mid-1920s the national production of dried salted cod
represented only about ten percent of what was consumed 26 and it was considered
an important source of protein for the population, there was an investment at the
end of the decade that helped to create structures dedicated to the development of
their fisheries. 27 This was the policy that managed to reduce the weight of imported
fish, since it encouraged the fishing industry, although it did not manage to
substitute imports. 28 Still, from the mid twentieth century, Portugal was the first
world producer of dried salted cod (with 59,826 tn.) even though it was necessary
to import 25,370tn. 29 At this time, it became the second import value, after cereals
(the basis of the main food, bread), 30 During the Roman domination great areas of
wheat were cultivated in this section; but today there are vast stretches of waste
land, and grain must be imported and today what the Portuguese fleet captures does
not exceed 4% of national consumption – as a consequence of the exhaustion of the
Newfoundland Banks and the protective measures taken by countries with cod. 31 In
other words, since the 1990s the country went through a changing process and the
reduction of its fleet lead to the importation of most of the fish consumed. On the
other hand, the beginning of that decade also witnessed a growth in the industry of
transformation of bacalhau – as companies perfected methods like the ‘rented
drying places’ to increase their productive capacity. Yet, if modern tunnels to dry
the fish came to replace the image of the past when it was done naturally outdoors,
there is still an attempt to preserve this heritage.
Being durable, affordable and having a flavour more enjoyable than the other
salted fish, bacalhau immediately became part of the Portuguese culture and being
the world largest consumer, Portugal claims to know 1001 ways of preparing it, 32
for it was incorporated into people’s cooking habits and consecrated as the ‘faithful
friend’ (‘fiel amigo’). As also seen above, religion came to play a relevant part in
the way bacalhau went on to have a close connection with the Portuguese culture
and the Christian tradition. Actually, Sobral and Rodrigues highlight the way the
relation between the consumption of cod and the Christian precepts of penance and
purification is well documented in Portugal. On the other hand, the heritage in
terms of cookbooks show that for a long time there were only scant references to
bacalhau and these were intended for the elite. Following the research on these
references by Consiglieri and Abel, 33 and more recently by Sobral and Rodrigues,
it is easy to see how codfish is missing from, for example, the manuscript Livro de
__________________________________________________________________
Cozinha da Infanta D. Maria 34 and the first cooking book printed in Portuguese
Arte de Cozinha, by Domingos Rodrigues, the cook of the royal house (2010
[1680]). 35 There is finally a reference in the works of Francis Henriques Borges
(1715) Receitas de milhores doces e de alguns guizados to the preparation entitled
‘pans cod’, which apparently resembles the current ‘Bacalhau à Braz’, and a ‘sauce
cod’. 36 It was only another royal cook from the following century, Rigaud Lucas,
in Cozinheiro Moderno ou Nova Arte de Cozinha (1999 [1780]), who presented
three recipes for cod, ‘the Provençal, ‘the béchamel’ and ‘grilled in charcoal’. 37 By
the end of the next century one can find only a little more than a dozen dishes of
bacalhau in the Arte de Cosinha by João da Mata (1876). 38
Still, at the beginning of the twentieth century, whereas Cosinheiro Popular dos
Pobres e Ricos 39 already presented twenty-two recipes of bacalhau, Tratado
Completo de Cozinha e Copa 40 offered twenty-six recipes, and Cosinha
Portugueza ou Arte Culinária Nacional (the first book in which a cuisine is
explicitly linked to nationality, from 1902 by a group of ladies) found more than
three dozen recipes, most, if not all, of the fifteen recipes with bacalhau presented
by Paulo Plantier in the 1905 edition of the important cookbook Cozinheiro dos
Cozinheiros (first published in 1870) had a French source. Moreover, the
preferences of the author went for fresh cod, since he felt the salted one, which was
more affordable, difficult to digest. As Sobral and Rodrigues well point out this
author was meant to be, without a doubt, the authority that defined the dominant
canon in matters of culinary taste – due to the collaboration of influential writers
like Fialho de Almeida, João da Câmara, aristocrats and artists, like Rafael
Bordallo Pinheiro. Such emphasis of the superiority of French cuisine comes later
with the seventeen dishes of bacalhau in Arte de Bem Comer (1929). It was in the
already mentioned period of the Estado Novo, a period when nationalism was
promoted, that we witnessed the consecration of bacalhau in the literature of this
area, mainly with Culinária Portuguesa (1936) by António de Oliveira Maria Bello
– better known as Olleboma, a major industrial man connected to tourism, one of
the founders of the Society of Propaganda of Portugal in the early twentieth
century, and Chair of the Portuguese Society of Gastronomy. 41 Afterwards, with
greater intensity after the establishment of a democratic regime in 1974 an example
of success was Cozinha Tradicional Portuguesa (1999 [1981]) by Maria de
Lourdes Modesto, who emphasizes the relevance of bacalhau. After this we
reached more recently 500 ways of cooking bacalhau by Vítor Sobral (As Minhas
Receitas de Bacalhau: 500 Receitas) in 2012.
Cooking methods are equally relevant and have been further developed in this
century by some of Lisbon Chefs’ irreverence. The case presented refers to the
traditional expression ‘à Brás’ from the original Portuguese specialty ‘Bacalhau à
Brás’ – shredded bacalhau fried in olive oil with onion, thinly sliced garlic cloves,
bay leaf, fried straw potato, beaten eggs, chopped parsley and decorated with black
olives – from the sea-washed province in which Lisbon is located. It is a dish
__________________________________________________________________
widely consumed in Portugal and also in Macau and its unique taste depends on the
ratio of the components of the recipe, mainly the amount of onions in relation to
cod and olive oil used to make this dish. Besides the bacalhau and the black olives,
the combination of garlic, olive oil, and bay leaves is recognizably present in the
Portuguese cuisine. Let us not forget that the identification of these food products
has also passed through their incorporation by taste, by evoking memories of
smells and flavours. 42 Albeit the origin of the recipe of ‘Bacalhau à Brás’ is still
uncertain, it is believed to have been created by a landlord of the Bairro Alto
named Brás (or Braz, since it was written this way at the time). Bairro Alto is an
old and picturesque quarter in central Lisbon, built in an orthogonal plane from the
early sixteenth century, with narrow cobbled streets, centuries-old houses, small
traditional shopping places, restaurants and an intense nightlife. Nonetheless, the
growing popularity led that landlord to cross the border into Spain and it is often
possible to also find this dish in Spanish menus under headings such as ‘revuelto
de bacalao a la Portuguese’ or ‘bacalao dorado’. Historically, there had been strong
reasons for some of the products used in ‘Bacalhau à Brás’, as Tannahill explains
in his chapter ‘On the expanding world 1492-1789’, for example:
The foods of both Spain and Portugal were mirrors of trade and
conquest. The cooking medium, olive oil, had been introduced
from the eastern Mediterranean during the first millennium BC.
Production of salt and dried fish had been greatly expanded to
meet the demands of Rome. 43
In view of that, as mentioned above, it was with the assertion of national

identities in the nineteenth century that the construction of a Portuguese national
cuisine had its beginnings. Moreover, this creation and encoding of recipes
obtained a considerable strengthening with the Estado Novo, widening up now
under the democratic regime and such ideologies and political initiative found a
deep echo in the repeated consumption of food, which, according to Sobral and
Rodrigues, contributed to the making of the Portuguese, corporate and national
culinary habitus. But clearly the culinary status of cod changed and it became a
sophisticated dish, subjected to very elaborate preparations and cosmopolitan
inspiration. 44 To value the role of bacalhau in the Portuguese identity one has to
understand the way its consumption is part of what Mark Swislocki termed
culinary nostalgia: ‘the recollection or purposive evocation of another time and
place through food [taking many forms]’. 45 Accordingly, we would reformulate the
well-known axiom that we are what we eat 46 to ask whether we are not what we
ate. 47 Thus, when we try one of the many ‘à Brás’ dishes that share the cooking
method, are we just witnessing the irreverence of recreation by using unrelated
main ingredients – like chicken or vegetables – or are these recreations that
highlight the gargantuan power of food when it comes to confer symbolic power,
__________________________________________________________________
as a national metaphor. Food is indeed a powerful symbol of the collective self. 48
As such, do we have to understand the origin of the recipe to truly appreciate these
new ‘à Brás’ dishes? In other words, we have to take into account the way
bacalhau became a symbol of Portuguese national belonging: may it be essentially
due to its role in everyday life for centuries, because it guarantees what Skey
termed ‘ontological security’ in a constantly varying transnational framework, 49
and also due to being seen as something festive – the longed animal protein that
allowed a poor diet based on agricultural products to vary. Moreover, we should
also bear in mind the effects of all the discursive production already mentioned,
along with the ideological and figurative construction that has celebrated bacalhau
as a national symbol. 50
Bearing in mind that a language is an object of transmission, so are recipes and
practices which mirror that same language, despite the latter’s propensity for
recreation. Similarly, human behaviour has evolved partly as interplay between
eating behaviour and cultural institutions and ‘cultural traits, social institutions,
national histories and individual attitudes cannot be entirely understood without an
understanding also of how these have meshed our varied and peculiar modes of
eating’. 51 As producers and consumers we have become more knowledgeable,
experienced, and sophisticated in our tastes. Experiencing implies here tasting both
food and emotions and, consequently, food is considered a particular genre of
material culture, a vibrant matter. 52 But one can ask, as Melissa Caldwell, what is
the taste of a nation? 53 What does a nation taste like? Moreover, where does that
‘taste’ exist? In the soil, palate, gut, imagination, relationships; or could ‘taste’
exist in something else? It is a difficult task to answer these questions, since the
irreverence and recreation of food, like bacalhau, may be considered less about
eating enough to survive, and more about social meanings – Bourdieu’s reflection
on food as a means of expressing ‘distinction’, for instance, is a way of studying
the evolution of both the production and the consumption of bacalhau. 54 Therefore,
if production needs to secure a social reproductive sphere (with the implied notion
that we eat with our normative cultural DNA and acceptance is related to our
cultural heritage) dishes, and not solely raw products, should be at the centre of
reshaping our food systems and local food networks.
Notes
1
‘Nas velhas cozinhas, em redor da mesa e ao fulgor da lareira, agrupa-se a
família. Os velhos e as velhas, remotas esculturas enegrecidas e cariadas pelo
tempo; os filhos que estavam ausentes e que puderam vir e os que ainda andam
fraldiqueiros a crescer. O fiel amigo, com couves e batatas, é da tradição; quem
tem mais posses, frita, também, a sua rabanada. O vinho corre, rosado,
transparente, sobretudo à hora do magusto, quando as castanhas estalam no fogo’.
Ferreira de Castro, Os Fragmentos (Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 1985), 45-48.
__________________________________________________________________
2
Since at least the mid nineteenth century, bacalhau garnished with potatoes and
cabbages is described as a central ingredient at Christmas Eve dinner in the north,
the ‘family feast’. Ferraz Júnior, ‘Recordações do Minho – Festas Populares: O
Natal, as Janeiras, os Reis’, Archivo Pittoresco IX (1866): 315-316.
3
Álvaro Garrido, O Estado Novo e a Campanha do Bacalhau (Lisboa: Círculo de
Leitores, 2004), 310-311.
4
Linda Civitello, Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People (New Jersey:
John Wiley & Sons, 2011), 158.
5
Francisco Viterbo, Cem Artigos de Jornal (Lisboa: Typografia Universal, 1912),
163-164.
6
José Sobral and Patrícia Rodrigues, ‘O “fiel amigo”: o bacalhau e a identidade
portuguesa’, Etnográfica 17.3 (2013), viewed 22 February 2014,
http://etnografica.revues.org/3252; DOI: 10.4000/etnografica.3252.
7
Ibid.
8
Priscilla Fergunson, Accounting for Taste: The Triumph of French
Cuisine (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004).
9
Sobral and Rodrigues, ‘O “fiel amigo”’.
10
José Sobral, ‘Cozinha, nacionalismo e cosmopolitismo em Portugal (séculos
XIX-XX)’, Itinerários: A Investigação nos 25 Anos do ICS, ed. Villaverde Cabral,
K. Wall, S. Aboim and F. Carreira da Silva (Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais,
2008), 99-123; José Sobral, ‘The High and the Low in the Making of a Portuguese
National Cuisine (19th-20th Centuries)’, Food Consumption in Global
Perspective: Essays in the Anthropology of Food in Honour of Jack Goody, eds.
Jakob Klein and Ann Murcott (Houndsmills and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2014); Alison Smith, ‘National Cuisines’, The Oxford Handbook of Food History,
ed. Jeffrey Pilcher (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
11
Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World
(London: Vintage, 1999 [1997]), 51.
12
13
Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, The Invention of
Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), 1-14.
14
Annuaire International de Statistique Agricole. 1913 et 1914, Rome, pp. 13-15.
15
Frank Jacobs, ‘652 – Jellyfish Nation: Portugal Is 97% Water’, Big Think,
Viewed 28 February 2014,
http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/652-nil-jellyfish-nation-portugal-is-97-water.
16
Known in France as morue, it must not be confused with stockfish, which is
simply dried cod.
17
Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, A History of Food, trans. Anthea Bell, 2nd new
expanded edition (Massachusetts and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009 [1987]), 288.
__________________________________________________________________
18
Nicola Hill, executive ed., New Concise Larousse Gastronomique, Revised and
Updated English Edition (London: Hamlyn, 2007 [2000]), 1023.
19
Sometimes the recipes are similar, but in others there is a distinct development
from local culinary matrices, as stressed by Sobral and Rodrigues when they refer
several examples from Timor, Goa and mainly Brazil (‘O “fiel amigo”’). Still
going back to the importance of cod for the celebration of Christmas Eve,
inhabitants of Portuguese-speaking countries do use it, despite being an expensive
food.
20
Civitello, Cuisine and Culture, 81.
21
Hill, Larousse Gastronomique, 1023.
22
Kurlansky, Cod, 17-26.
23
24
Toussaint-Samat, A History of Food, 288.
25
Mário Moutinho, História da Pesca do Bacalhau: Por Uma Antropologia do
‘Fiel Amigo’ (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1985), 24-33; Sobral and Rodrigues, ‘O
“fiel amigo”’.
26
Moutinho, História da Pesca do Bacalhau, 69.
27
As Sobral and Rodrigues pin point, these fisheries ‘were active between 1934,
when a policy of protectionism on fishing was instituted’ and 1967 ‘when it ends,
with the liberalization of imports’ (‘O “fiel amigo”’).
28
Garrido, Campanha do Bacalhau, 297-306.
29
Ibid., 297, 299.
30
Ibid., 51.
31
Ibid., 29.
32
The New Concise Larousse Gastronomique mentions the many recipes that use
salt codfish and adds that ‘Portugal alone has hundreds’. Hill, Larousse
Gastronomique, 1023.
33
Carlos Consiglieri and Marília Abel, O Bacalhau na Vida e na Cultura dos
Portugueses (Lisbon: Academia do Bacalhau de Lisboa, 1998), 164-165.
34
Giacinto Manuppella, Livro de Cozinha da Infanta D. Maria (Lisbon: Imprensa
Nacional / Casa da Moeda, 1986).
35
Domingos Rodrigues, Arte de Cozinha: Dividdida em Tres Partes (Madrid:
Teran Libros, 2010 [1680]), as cited in Sobral and Rodrigues, ‘O “fiel amigo”’.
36
Francisco Borges Henriques, Receitas de milhores doces e de alguns guizado, as
cited in Sobral and Rodrigues, ‘O “fiel amigo”’. Borges Henriques’ manuscript is
originally from 1715 with no information on a publisher given.
37
Lucas Rigaud, Cozinheiro Moderno ou Nova Arte de Cozinha (Lisbon: L. da
Silva Godinho, 1785), as cited in Sobral and Rodrigues, ‘O “fiel amigo”’.
38
Sobral and Rodrigues, ‘O “fiel amigo”’ gives several examples from that century
– from the Cozinheiro Imperial (1843[1840]) which does not add any other
bacalhau recipes, to the half a dozen recipes in Arte do Cosinheiro e do Copeiro
__________________________________________________________________
(1841) by Visconde de Vilarinho de São Romão – this author defines the common
‘potatoes with bacalhau’ as ‘food for the poor’. Reference to Visconde de
Vilarinho de São Romão is found on Microfilm, with more information available at
World Cat, Lisboa: Sociedade Propagadora dos Conhecimentos Uteis. Viewed on
29 November 2015,
http://www.worldcat.org/title/arte-do-cosinheiro-e-do-
copeiro/oclc/78437886/editions?referer=di&editionsView=true.
39
Michaela Brites de Sá Carneiro, O Cosinheiro Popular dos Pobres e Ricos ou o
Moderno Thesouro do Cosinheiro (Porto: José Maria da Costa Livreiro editor,
1901).
40
Carlos Bento da Maia, Tratado Completo de Cozinha e Copa (Lisboa:
Guimarães e C., 1904).
41
The members of the Portuguese Society of Gastronomy were from the
aristocracy and the gentry, included university professors, lawyers and literati who
claimed the monopoly of taste and knowledge in the culinary field. Sobral and
Rodrigues, ‘O “fiel amigo”’.
42
Ibid.
43
Reay Tannahill, Food in History (New York: Crown Publishers, 1988 [1973]),
241.
44
Ibid.
45
Mark Swislocki, Culinary Nostalgia: Regional Food Culture and the Urban
Experience in Shanghai (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2009), 1.
46
The famous gastronome Anthelme Brillat-Savarin had written in Physiologie du
Gout, ou Meditations de Gastronomie Transcendante (1826): ‘Dis-moi ce que tu
manges, je te dirai ce que tu es’. – ‘Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what
you are’.
47
Warren Belasco, Food (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2008), 25.
48
Kenji Tierney, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, ‘Anthropology of Food’, The Oxford
Handbook of Food History, ed. Jeffrey M. Pilcher (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012), 121.
49
Michael Skey, National Belonging and Everyday Life: The Significance of
Nationhood in an Uncertain World (Houndsmills and Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011), 22-25.
50
51
Ronald Tobin, ‘Thought for Food: Literature and Gastronomy’, University of
California Television, 19 November 2008, viewed 12 January 2010,
http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=16255; Ronald Tobin, ‘Qu’est-ce
que la Gastrocritique?’ Dix-Septième Siècle 217 (2002/2004): 623. Viewed 12
January 2010,
http://www.cairn.info/revue-dix-septieme-siecle-2002-4-page-621.htm.
__________________________________________________________________
52
J. Bennett, ‘Edible Matter’, New Left Review 45 (May-June, 2007): 133-145.
David Evans also presented such a perspective as a key lecturer at Foodscapes:
Conference ‘Access to Food – Excess of Food’. David Evans, ‘Placing Surplus,
Materializing Waste: Thrift, Hygiene and the Disposal of Excess Food’ (paper
presented at Foodscapes: Conference ‘Access to Food – Excess of Food’,
University of Graz, Austria, 2013).
53
These questions were raised by Melissa Caldwell in her key presentation
‘Beyond Human Rights: Food, Nation, and Citizenship in Russia’ (Paper presented
at Foodscapes Conference ‘Access to Food – Excess of Food’, University of Graz,
Austria, 2013).
54
Bourdieu shows how eating habits convey class differences and how tastes in
food also depend on the idea that ‘each class has of the body and of the effects of
food on the body […] and on the categories it uses to evaluate these effects some
of which may be important for one class and ignored by another’. Pierre Bourdieu,
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice
(London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984 [1979]), 190.
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1901.
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John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
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Portugueses. Lisbon: Academia do Bacalhau de Lisboa, 1998.
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obscuridade à consagração (séculos XIX-XX)’. Ruris 1.2 (2007): 13-52.
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(2002/2004). Viewed 12 January 2010.
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———. ‘Thought for Food: Literature and Gastronomy’. University of California

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Maria José Pires currently teaches at Estoril Higher Institute for Hotel and
Tourism Studies, coordinating the MA in Innovation in Culinary Arts. She has
been a researcher at ULICES and she is involved in the MA in Tourism and
Communication (University of Lisbon). Her main interests are Literature, Culture
and Food Studies.
Colonial Food in Poetry: Hong Kong and Macau in
Leung Ping-kwan’s Food Poetry
Ames Siu, Yan-ho

Abstract
The Hong Kong writer Leung Ping-kwan (Ye Si, 1949-2013) loves to use
worldwide food as elements of his different stylistic works. There are many diet-
related elements in Leung’s poems; some of them use the dishes from different
places as the theme to describe the colonies in different aspects. It is worth to
research on the food elements used and the implication presented. This chapter
attempts to analyse the food poetry related to Hong Kong and Macau, in order to
explore how he finds the characteristic of the dishes in order to expound the phases
of the colonies. Poem ‘Tea-coffee’ themed with the unique drink tea-coffee,
explores the impact on Hong Kong as a British colony as well as the
conglomeration of the eastern and western cultures. Poem ‘At Hotel Bela Vista’
mentions the African Chicken, a famous main course in Portugal cuisine, which
highlights the import of Portugal culture to Macau as a colony. Leung narrates the
fading colonial characteristic of Portugal in Macau through the change of flavour
of this famous dish. Before Hong Kong and Macau return the sovereignty to China,
through food poetry, Leung objectively documents the change to the cultural
environment, and at the same time, expresses his worry about the future, his
feelings about the fading culture.
Key Words: Leung Ping-kwan (Ye Si), food poetry, colonization, Hong Kong,
Macau, tea-coffee, African chicken.
*****
1. Introduction
Colonization brings about complicated regional exchange in which food plays
an important part. Food culture spreads to foreign lands along with people’s
diaspora. Food traverses geographic borders and brings about the counter of
cultures. The reception and resistance of the recipient culture can reflect the merge
and the negotiation between different food cultures. Leung Ping-kwan (Ye Si,
1949-2013) was a Hong Kong writer who explored the cross-cultural quality of
different regions through creative work of different genres. Transnational
narratives, in which food plays a crucial role, can be found in Leung’s collection of
prose, The Moon of the Border, 1 his book of short stories, Postcolonial Affairs of
Food and the Heart, 2 and last but not least his volume of poems, The Politics of
Vegetables. 3 For Leung, food is not only the raw material for culinary art, but also
inspiration for his creative work in which he shows the many relationships between
28 Colonial Food in Poetry
__________________________________________________________________
food and people. Leung writes in his essay ‘Food, City, Culture: Epilogue of East
West Matters’:
Food is an essential component of daily life. Solid yet splendid,

food has its place in people’s relationships and social activities,
through which our sense of beauty and set of values are exposed
and linked to our bias and desire. 4
Food is associated with many cultural sectors. Food was a frequent subject
matter in Leung’s poems written around 1997. In collaboration with the artist Lee
Ka-sing, he staged the exhibition ‘Foodscape: Poetry and Photography’, in
Vancouver in the same year, and took the opportunity to bring together poetry,
photography, food, and culture.
Poetry is the form of expression that enables food to manifest its richness in
meanings and its relation to culture. Leung writes, ‘In food connect society and
culture, private memories and individual’s desire. It is rich in layers’. 5 His food
poetry not only tells about people’s linkages, but also shows the picture of the food
culture of different regions. Mapping people and food, one can easily discover that
both can be transnational. Leung continues, ‘The travel of food is the travel of
culture’. 6 People and food travel, so does culture.
Transnational people, food, and culture are interrelated and their relationships
are complicated. Through his food poetry, Leung expresses his concern about
cross-cultural phenomena. Particularly Leung explores the hybridity and
integration of cultures in his poems about the food of two (post-)colonial cities,
Hong Kong and Macau. Leung, as a Hong Kong writer, was much sympathetic
with Macau’s handover in 1999. He wrote most of his poems about the multi-
cultural food of Hong Kong and Macau in the eve and wake of the handover. 7 This
chapter analyses two of Leung’s poems, ‘Tea-coffee’ and ‘Hotel Bela Vista’,
written respectively on the subject of the handover of Hong Kong and Macau. It
discusses how Leung shows the cultural hybridity of these two cities through the
poems about food, and the influence of colonization on people and culture.
2. Hong Kong’s Tea-Coffee: Cultural Integration of the East and the West
People and regions have many layers of relationships. The colonist brings about
cultural impact on the colony, and changes the local people’s traditional culture,
food, taste, and moreover their mind-set. The culture of each (post-)colonial region
is unique, as their colonist and local cultures are different from each other. Leung
writes,
Hong Kong culture cannot be discussed without its colonial

background. Hong Kong, as a colonial city, is different from
India, Vietnam or Korea. The knowledge of history and culture
Ames Siu, Yan-ho 29
__________________________________________________________________
do not come from the book, but rather they are from life
experience. 8
Leung explored further into the cross-cultural colonial activity by way of

combining colonial experience and local food culture. In so doing Leung was able
to present the cultural visage of different regions. The colonist invasion expanded
the territory of the colony and imposed strict control over local people’s religion,
trade, culture and education, in order to strengthen its governance. Colonial rules
of different regions affected the local culture differently.
Confronting cultural crash, colonies reacted in different ways. Hong Kong was
handed over to China in 1997. The influence of colonial culture was also attributed
to the handover significance. Leung grew up in Hong Kong. His care for Hong
Kong and his sensitivity to the matters about the city were unmistakable. In the
time when Hong Kong was experiencing a turning point in history, Leung tried to
address austere political matters and expressed his concerns through his poetry
about the food in everyday life. ‘Tea-coffee’, a poem written in 1997, is about the
handover of Hong Kong. The poet used the beverage tea-coffee to describe the pre-
handover situation of Hong Kong. After the Opium War in the 19th century, Hong
Kong was ceded to the British Empire and became a colony of the British Empire.
Since then Hong Kong has been influenced by Western culture. After the
handover, Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of the People’s
Republic of China. Hong Kong’s relation to the Mainland China seemed to have
strengthened; Hong Kong started being exposed to traditional Chinese culture in a
larger scale, as the exchange between Hong Kong and the Mainland China
quickened.
The influx of Eastern and Western cultures in Hong Kong is like the making of
tea-coffee. Tea-coffee is a local beverage, a mixture of coffee and tea. Tea was
originated in China, while coffee was introduced to Hong Kong along with
Western culture. Leung thus tells about his own poem, ‘This poem starts from the
mixture of two different things. Hong Kong has always been considered the venue
where East meets West. But in what way?’ 9 Experiencing the mixture of cultures,
Leung tries to uncover the process of the encounter of the two cultures:
Pour the tea

into a cup of coffee, will the aroma of one
interfere with, wash out the other? 10
In the poem, tea symbolizes East; coffee West. Hong Kong, a city once
dominated by Western culture, started receiving the inflow of Eastern culture after
the handover. Hong Kong on the one hand inherits traditional Chinese culture; on
the other accommodates colonial culture left by Britain. How are the two cultures
related to each other? The poet asks. Will tea wash out the scent of coffee? Will
__________________________________________________________________
East wash out West? He worries, just like Hong Kong people once worried about
the post-handover situation. Although the future is undecided, Leung in the second
half of the poem points out that East and West can coexist. Tea-coffee, the mixture
of coffee and tea, takes on a new flavour. Coffee and tea are both crucial to the
beverage tea-coffee; one cannot do without the other, just like Hong Kong culture
that comprises East and West. It cannot be without either. It is such hybridity that
makes possible the ‘indescribable taste’ of Hong Kong, an ineffable taste that can
be reduced to neither East nor West. In the poem Leung also mentions Hong Kong
people’s temperament: ‘mixed with a dash of daily gossips and good sense, / hard-
working, a little sloppy…’, giving the reader room for interpretation.
3. African Chicken in Macau: The Diminishing Portuguese Culture

The influx and integration of East and West triggered by the handover nurtures
the uniqueness of Hong Kong culture. Its neighbouring city, Macau, also needed to
face the handover in 1999. In his poem ‘Hotel Bela Vista’, written in 1998, Leung
already started to explore the possible changes incurred by the handover. Hotel
Bela Vista was the oldest hotel in Macau. The change in use of this building
evoked a feeling of nostalgia in Leung’s poem, ‘this time next year, after the
handover / it’ll be the Portuguese Consul’s residence / no more drinks on the
porch’. After the handover, the building became the permanent residence of the
Portuguese Consul. Leung writes in the essay,
We heard about this last year [1998] not without regret. Over the
colonial dishes, we sat in the table on the porch and watch the
sea, as if tasting layers and layers of history. 11
History, culture, hotel, and dishes, mentioned in his poem and essay, are all in
close relation to colonial culture. After the handover, they took different paths.
Hotel Bela Vista became the residence of the Portuguese Consul. It was more
than a change in use. It symbolizes the disappearance of colonialism in Macau. In
the colonial period, the Portuguese were the ruling colonists. After the handover,
their political power shrunk to minimal, confined within the old building; even ‘the
flavour of African Chicken will too be lost’. The Portuguese brought this dish to
Macau. Later the local people adjusted its taste. What the dish lost was not the taste
itself, but rather its colonial significance. As the sovereignty of Macau was
transferred back to China, Chinese culture started to wash out the colonial legacy
of Portuguese culture. Hong Kong scholar Chan Chi-tak points out,
In the past, people’s idea and practice of merging East and West
was a unique ramification in the history of Macau. But now
people can only see the present and deny the past, attaching
Ames Siu, Yan-ho 31
__________________________________________________________________
importance to the return, wiping out the history of collaboration
between East and West’. 12
One can find the echo between the phenomenon that Chan describes and the
narrative in ‘Hotel Bela Vista’. People fixate on ‘today’s movie’ and enjoy
‘applause and kisses round a birthday cake’, in search of ‘their own vision’.
However, the colonial buildings, culture and history hidden behind the grandeur
are dimming into oblivion. Leung and ‘the elder sitting in the opposite side’ might
be those nostalgic for the past.
The handover brought change to every aspect of Macau, but the Macanese
cuisine is well preserved. Portugal used to be a colonial empire which had colonies
in Africa, Asia and South America. In the colonial period, though under the rule
and control of Portugal, it nonetheless connected Macau with other regions and
other cultures of the world. Macanese cuisine is thus mixed with the cuisine of
other cultures:
The Macanese cuisine has a history of four hundred years. As

colonization imported the cultures of other regions, the Macanese
cuisine became a rich and complex mixture of the culinary art of
South China and Portugal, as well as that of India and Malaysia,
even that of Africa and Brazil. Local people also adjusted it and
so it developed into a unique cuisine. 13
The culinary art of various cultures was assimilated into the Macanese cuisine
in the process of colonization. It was nurtured by colonization, but didn’t end along
with it. Instead it was hidden among the lanes and the local people who ushered it
through the handover:
only new dishes of hotchpotch stews made from old recipes

bean stew Brazilian style, squids Mozambique in coconut juice
in the end it is that remain. Keeping them company on the table
a simple drink made from sugar canes 14
Both Brazil and Mozambique used to be colonies of the Portuguese empire.

The maritime activities of the Portuguese brought the culinary art of Brazil and
Mozambique to the food culture of Macau. Adapted by the local people, the exotic
culinary art became part of Macanese cuisine, and tuned down the coloniality
therein. Therefore, in the shifting political situation, food culture is able to keep a
safe distance, as Leung says, ‘Food remains like those people deprived of political
power’. 15
__________________________________________________________________
4. Conclusion
Between 1997 and 1999 when Hong Kong and Macau were handed over to
China, Leung expressed his personal ideas and feelings in ‘Tea-coffee’ and ‘Hotel
Bela Vista’. But the approaches of these two poems are different. In ‘Tea-coffee’,
the tenors and vehicles of the metaphors are clear enough, representing the merge
of East and West in the Hong Kong culture. In ‘Hotel Bela Vista’, the diminishing
Portuguese culture is metaphorized as African Chicken. On the other hand, the
bean stew Brazilian style, squids Mozambique in coconut juice represent the
localization of the colonial culinary art of other regions. Facing the handover of
Hong Kong and Macau, Leung expresses in both poems his worries about the
undecided future. The poet has asked many questions in the poems. 16 However,
food culture survives the handover, because it is adaptable to local culture and
unaffected by politics and regional divides. Leung’s poems in a way record the
historical moments of Hong Kong and Macau, and discuss the serious topics such
as political cultural changes in relation to the quotidian entities such as food.
Leung’s poetics of food not only ease the weight of history and politics, but also
explicate the transformation of these two cities.
Notes
1
Leung Ping-kwan, The Moon of the Border (Hangzhou: Zhejiang Literary Press,
2000).
2
Leung Ping-kwan, Postcolonial Affairs of Food and the Heart (Hong Kong:
Oxford University Press, 2009).
3
Leung Ping-kwan, The Politics of Vegetables (Hong Kong: Oxford University
Press, 2006).
4
Leung Ping-kwan, ‘Food, City, Culture: Epilogue of East West Matters’, East
West Matters (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2000), 167.
5
Leung Ping-kwan and Lo Kwai-cheung, ‘Dialogue between Leung Ping-kwan
and Lo Kwai-cheung’, The Politics of Vegetables (Hong Kong: Oxford University
Press, 2006), 142.
6
Tang Siu-wa, ‘Individuals in History, Detour or Return: A Dialogue with Leung
Ping-kwan’, Today: Ten Years of Hong Kong, ed. Yip Fai (Hong Kong: Oxford
University Press, 2007), 26.
7
In the year 1997 when the sovereignty of Hong Kong was handed over to China,
Leung wrote the poem ‘Tea-coffee’. On the eve of the Macau handover, he wrote
the poem ‘Hotel Bela Vista’ with the setting in Macau in 1998.
8
Leung Ping-kwan, ‘Wontons and Molecular Gastronomy (Epilogue)’,
Postcolonial Affairs, 256.
9
Leung Ping-kwan, Ye Si’s Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2005), 157.
Ames Siu, Yan-ho 33
__________________________________________________________________
10
Leung Ping-kwan, ‘Tea-Coffee’, Travelling with a Bitter Melon, trans. Martha
P.Y. Cheung (Hong Kong: Asia 2000, 2002), 216-217. Full version in the appendix.
11
Leung, ‘Food, City, Culture’, 169.
12
Chan Chi-tak, ‘Diaspora, Migration and Exile: A Selective Reading of Leung
Ping-kwan’s East West’, The Coffee Was Not Finished: On Hong Kong Poetry
(Hong Kong: Association of Studies of Modern Poetry, 2006), 109.
13
14
Leung Ping-kwan, ‘Hotel Bela Vista’, Travelling with a Bitter Melon, trans.
Martha P.Y. Cheung (Hong Kong: Asia 2000, 2002), 260-265. Full version in the
appendix.
15
16
There are three interrogative sentences in the poem ‘Tea-Coffee’, six in ‘Hotel
Bela Vista’.
Bibliography
Chan, Chi-tak. ‘Diaspora, Migration and Exile: A Selective Reading of Leung
Ping-kwan’s East West’. The Coffee Was Not Finished: On Hong Kong Poetry,
edited by Chan, Chi-tak and Xiaoxi, 108-111. Hong Kong: Association of Studies
of Modern Poetry, 2006.
Leung, Ping-kwan (Ye Si). East West Matters. Hong Kong: Oxford University
Press, 2000.
———. Postcolonial Affairs of Food and the Heart. Hong Kong: Oxford
———. The Moon of the Border. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Literary Press, 2000.
———. The Politics of Vegetables. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2006.
———. Ye Si’s Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2005.
Leung, Ping-kwan. Travelling with a Bitter Melon, edited by Martha P.Y. Cheung.
Hong Kong: Asia 2000, 2002.
Leung, Ping-kwan and Lo Kwai-cheung. ‘Dialogue between Leung Ping-kwan and

Lo Kwai-cheung’. The Politics of Vegetables, by Ping-kwan Leung, 134-143.
Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2006.
__________________________________________________________________
Tang, Siu-wa. ‘Individuals in History, Detour or Return: A Dialogue with Leung

Ping-kwan’. Today: Ten Years of Hong Kong, edited by Fai Yip, 8-34. Hong
Kong: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Ames Siu, Yan-ho is a lecturer at Lingnan University. He was a chef and enjoys
food and wine. Currently his research and writing is devoted to food literature and
culture.
Appendix
Tea-coffee
Tea fragrant and strong, made from

five different blends, in cotton bags or legendary
stockings － tender, all-encompassing, gathering －
brewed in hot water and poured into a teapot, its taste
varying subtly with the time in water steeped.
Can that fine art be maintained? Pour the tea
into a cup of coffee, will the aroma of one

interfere with, wash out the other? Or will the other
keep its flavour: roadside foodstalls
streetwise and worldly from their daily stoves
mixed with a dash of daily gossip and good sense,
hard-working, a little sloppy… an indescribable taste.
1997
Translated by Matha Cheung
At Bela Vista
I look at the traffic on the bridge, a glass of wine in hand

next year today, after the hand-over
home of the Portuguese Consul this hotel will become
no more parties on the veranda for us
the flavour of African Chicken will too be last?
An elder friend across the table reminisces about the fifties

Ames Siu, Yan-ho 35
__________________________________________________________________
the days the bridge linking up the islands was not yet built
scenes of Taipa Island half-hid in morning mist
the days when hotel waiters in uniforms neatly starched
served languid guests from abroad
Someone remembers it used to be a refugee camp during the war

providing shelter from catastrophes. Like in a disaster film?
men and women splendidly dressed argue about this season’s box-office hit
I turn round to look at the elegant colonnades, renovated many times
Let’s not forget the ghost of history
Who plays the lead in this scene?

the imposing walls of the seventeenth century fortress had crumbled
at the deserted well in the courtyard servants had gathered to wash clothes
before me now people embrace and applaud in front of a birthday-cake
As always we play walk-ons in historic scenes
Sitting at this long table tonight, we sail

as if on a luxurious liner towards the twenty-first century
Will these stairs vanish? Will the restaurant,
forsaken, sink deep into the ocean of oblivion?
I sit here drinking in silence, listening to
but not hearing any dramatic explosions

Behind the bela vista one sees are the boa vistas
everyone imagines for himself. Candlelight dinners
never match one’s imagination. Beyond the music
one hears, another music plays on
This place had seen the nights of our youth, the time we first explored
tirelessly those narrow alleys, watching people make their humble living
along the streets, and at night we checked in － a mere grotty hotel then
And now I’ve brought my travel-wearied friends along, amidst flowers
and glorious props we chat, tossing up ideas
about how to write a transnational spa story. My melancholic friend

you have the melancholic look of a Portuguese poet watching the sea
My wine-loving friend, let’s have one more glass of champagne
In this little town south of China with south European ambience
we try Macanese and Cantonese food, which change with time
__________________________________________________________________
Local wisdom will not easily disappear

Buildings the British and the French had fought to purchase
Bear witness to the rise and fall of different masters, and now
on this stretch of land newly reclaimed, pagodas and towers
may rise to attract tourists. Who plays the lead in this scene?
There are no more waiters in uniforms neatly starched

only new dishes of hotchpotch stews made from old recipes
bean stew Brazilian style, squids Mozambique in coconut juice
In the end it is they that remain. Keeping them company on the table
a simple drink made from sugar cane
Macau. February 1998

Translated by Matha Cheung
Food Cultures and the Diaspora: Kerala Nurses in Brisbane
Preetha Thomas, Lisa Schubert, Andrea Whittaker and

Brigitte Sébastia
Abstract
Australia’s need for skilled workers has seen a prodigious increase in the numbers
of migrants from South India since the early 2000s, employed mainly in the
education, health and IT sectors. As a means of understanding change and
continuity, in this chapter we discuss the distinct food practices and cultural
identity of a group of nurses from Kerala and their families now living in Brisbane,
based upon interviews and ethnographic research. This group of nurses has a
number of very distinct characteristics. Their social networks are based, not around
the larger Kerala community in Brisbane, but with fellow sojourners – other nurses
and their families who choose to migrate together, whose migration journey is
unique and distinct from that of other voluntary migrants. Their mainly female-
driven migration has taken this group, from the places they have trained in India to
countries in the Middle East, then to the UK and onto Australia over a period of
10-15 years. While usually the primary income earner, these women continue to
retain traditional gender roles and relations, including being responsible for family
food provisioning. They negotiate everyday food practices that are consistent with
maintaining their Malayalee traditions and identity in this unique social network
context. The food practices of Kerala nurses’ families provide an illustration of the
transnational diasporic spaces that contemporary migrants inhabit. The food
practices of contemporary voluntary migrants are informed and shaped, not so
much by dietary acculturation, as by transnationalism and globalization and the
desire to maintain tradition while dealing with change. These processes enable
immigrants to maintain their cultural identity in terms of culinary tradition and
food practices while living in another cultural environment.
Key Words: Kerala nurses, dietary acculturation, transnationalism, globalisation,

food practices, identity, community.
*****
1. Introduction
Literature related to migrant food practices has emphasised the centrality of
food in migrant home-building practices, 1 its role in maintaining social and cultural
ties to pre-migrant lives, 2 as a marker of collective ethnic identity, 3 and an avenue
of nostalgia and connectedness with the past. 4 In health literature, where the
incidence of diet-related chronic disease among migrant groups was observed to be
significantly higher than in host populations, food practices have often been
studied through the lens of dietary acculturation, 5 an approach which assumes a
38 Food Cultures and the Diaspora
__________________________________________________________________
somewhat unidirectional assimilation to the food culture of the host population.
The concept of acculturation has long been used in a number of disciplines to
explain the process of socio-cultural change experienced by individuals, groups or
societies when there is contact between cultures. However, the emergence of a
globalised, transnational culture in recent years has led to a hitherto unexperienced
scale and pace of intensified economic and communication networks and flows of
people where transnational migrants live and work across cultures in a
cosmopolitan space, providing a far more dynamic model of cultural contact and
change than that suggested by acculturation alone. 6
This chapter on the food practices of Kerala nurse-migrants and their families is
a case study, part of focused ethnographic exploration of dietary practices of South
Indians living in Brisbane. In this study, the term ‘transnational’ refers to
immigrants whose ties to their country of origin remain stable and whose cultures
are composite and hybrid and a product of their travels to their country of origin
and their moorings.
This case study allows us to reflect upon the limitations of current approaches
which explore changing dietary practices among migrants with an implied
inevitable, even tacitly desirable shift to the dominant food culture. 7 This is a tale
of how this group of families, through their multiple migratory journeys, retains a
strong sense of identity and community through food; a story of how gender,
religion and social class all shape their food practices.
2. The Migration Trajectory of Kerala Nurses

The health care needs of an increasingly ageing population in Western
countries together with a shortage of local skilled professionals has led, in recent
years, to the active recruitment of nurses from countries in the Global South. 8 India
is a source country for the recruitment of English-speaking trained nurses, after the
Philippines, constituting the second largest community of nurses working in
international settings. Private hospitals in a number of Indian cities offer targeted
nurse training and (English) language proficiency courses to facilitate nurse
migration and serve as recruitment hubs for international nurses. 9
Over 90% of Indian nurses overseas are from Kerala. 10 Kerala’s Christian
community has traditionally dominated the nursing profession in India. 11 The
nursing profession in India as it exists today is due partly to British missionary
nurses who formalised nursing education in India 12 in colonial times, and partly to
the influence of nuns in Catholic institutions, one probable reason for the continued
large number of nurses from the Christian community. 13 Hindu caste restrictions
and cultural and religious taboos associated with touching people of other castes
and of the opposite sex, and polluting tasks such as dealing with body fluids often
precluded women from both Islam and Hinduism from taking up nursing as a
profession. The perception of nursing as involving ‘menial’ tasks and associations
Preetha Thomas, Lisa Schubert, Andrea Whittaker and Brigitte Sébastia 39
__________________________________________________________________
with immorality 14 conferred low status on the profession in India where it
continues to be relatively poorly paid and undervalued. 15
Some of the drivers for large scale nurse migration from India include low
wages and prevalent social conditions regarding the perception of nursing as a low
status job in India, and Indian government policy of ‘reservation quotas’ 16 which
favours education and job opportunities for specific socially disadvantaged castes,
resulting in the exclusion of Kerala Christians from long-term job progression. 17
Nurse migration from India, apart from being prompted by an economic
imperative, is also dictated by the need to be accepted as a professional and
respected caregiver.
This resultant migration is predominantly and uniquely 18 female-driven. 19 The
Kerala nurses in this study have followed a transnational work pattern with similar
trajectories – training and working in a number of cities in India, before working 1-
2 years in Middle Eastern countries, moving to the UK 20 for 2-3 years further and
finally moving to Australia. 21 Active recruitment drives post-2006 by Federal and
State government health and private health care sectors in Australia saw a
substantial increase in the number of Indian nurses in Australia. In 2011-2012,
approximately 35% of internationally recruited nurses were from India, up from
7% in 2005-2006. 22
3. Methods
Qualitative data was gathered through interviews, photo-elicitation and
observation. The semi structured interviews were open ended, and conducted
mainly in Malayalam. The findings in this chapter are based on data gathered from
six nurses who were interviewed over two visits. Each interview lasted 90 to 100
minutes. Respondents were followed up via telephone and social media with
follow-up questions and for clarification. Information was also obtained during
informal conversations and observations during encounters at other venues.
Thematic analysis has been used to order the data.
4. Brisbane’s Malayalee Nurse-Families

A. The Community
While there are Indian nurse-families from several Christian denominations as
well as Hindus in Brisbane, the group that is referred to in this case study is
Catholic. Appadurai’s concept of the term ‘ethnoscape’ expresses the global
cultural flows brought with immigrants:
The landscape of persons who constitute the shifting world in

which we live: tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles, guest
workers, and other moving groups and individuals constitute an
essential feature of the world… 23
__________________________________________________________________
In this case the nursing community has brought with it its own cultural
landscape through close networks and shared histories. Though the nurses
commenced their migratory journeys together as single women, they continued to
maintain their social networks after marriage, and chose to migrate together to
Brisbane, along with their husbands and young children, creating an instant
community. In Brisbane, these families live in close geographic proximity to each
other, enabling a shared reinforcement of cultural norms.
These families have no feelings of loneliness; they have each other, creating a
‘cultural migratory capital’ 24 forged by family and friendship bonds in the host
country. They support each other in a number of ways – sharing the child-minding,
vegetable gardening, 25 where self-sufficiency of produce from their own gardens
enables a steady supply of vegetables which is shared between the families; they
also have giant satellite dishes in their gardens via which they watch Malayalam
television - their lives in Brisbane being a microcosm of life in Kerala. There is a
uniformity in which domestic spaces 26 in their houses are arranged, further
facilitating and enhancing inter-personal and inter-familial comfort. Interestingly,
limited interaction with the larger Malayalee community in Brisbane further
enhanced their own closeness as a community. 27
The role of husbands as income earners is secondary to the woman nurses,
though this was not explicitly stated by any of the respondents. This situation
creates interesting power dynamics at home where the men contribute actively to
home and family responsibilities, while continuing to operate within a seemingly
patriarchal system outside the home. Scholarship indicates that these migrant
nurses, though financially empowered, remain constrained by patriarchal attitudes
that characterise their roles in their India. 28 Despite being the primary earner,
traditional gender roles dictate that the women’s economic employment fit in with
household duties, such as childcare, cleaning and cooking. For instance, the
women often worked on night-shifts, or arranged their work patterns around their
husbands’ work. The women bear prime responsibility for family food
provisioning; the men help with household chores, and gardening is their domain.
B. Their Food
The relative lack of engagement with Brisbane’s people, except for fellow
nurses at work or through their children at school, has resulted in a strong
reinforcement of cultural continuities resulting in the retention of inherited food
habits that have not been hybridized despite contact with new cultures. For the
adults, homeland identities remain strong and there appears little observable
evidence of being impacted by their stay in different countries around the world.
With food being a central element of cultural identity, the notion of a national
cuisine has come to represent the imagined community of a nation. 29 Dietary
acculturation, in its reference to migrants adopting host cultural eating patterns
relies on the existence of a national cuisine. Contemporary Australian cuisine is
__________________________________________________________________
eclectic and is shaped by the diversity of the Australian population. Early British
and Southern European food tradition and the more recent influences of Thai,
Vietnamese, Japanese and Indian styles of cooking and ingredients have all
combined to contribute to contemporary Australian food culture. Many culinary
traditions have been indigenized and are considered ‘Australian’, particularly
Italian food; multinational fast food companies are also a part of the Australian
foodscape. 30 For these Malayalee nurse-families, the occasional barbeque (based
on suitably spiced meat and fish), a trip to McDonalds for their children to eat
‘snack’ food, or providing a store bought ready-to-bake lasagne appear to be the
only concessions that have been made to ‘Western’ food.
While short-cuts during food preparation, facilitated by the availability of
conveniently packaged ingredients and condiments, appears to be common practice
in all these households, the food that is prepared in these homes on a daily basis is
traditional central-Kerala fare. Regular church attendance reinforces their Catholic
faith, and religious proscriptions with regards to food at special times such as Lent
were strictly upheld by the women, reinforcing a traditional past, though no such
strictures were imposed on the men or the children.
There is slight evidence of the adoption of some food practices from other
countries that these families have imbibed through their sojourning – the inclusion
of the Middle-Eastern ‘khubz’, available as ‘Lebanese bread’ as a substitute for
traditional Indian breads is one example, or the introduction of salad which they
learned while living in the UK. There appears to be little reason to be nostalgic for
‘imagined’ food – the combined culinary skills of the women of the community,
the availability of most ingredients through the local Indian grocers, their home-
grown vegetables and communication networks through the telephone and the
profusion of websites showcasing regional Kerala cuisine ensures that any craving
or longing for a particular food is quickly satisfied. These women had not learnt to
cook from their mothers, they had left home far too early for that; remembered
tastes and online recipes are their culinary aides. In addition, frequent travel to
India at different times of the year by different families within this community
enables a steady supply of snacks. 31
Food choice for this group of relatively young families is not particularly
driven by health concerns; preferences of the men-folk, taste and convenience are
among the primary considerations. Rice is one exception, with nearly all the
women associating its consumption to weight gain; nevertheless, the centrality of
rice at meal-times is stressed. ‘I can’t live without rice’ ‘I must eat rice at least
once a day’ ‘I don’t feel full till I’ve eaten rice’ 32 were common observations.
There is also agreement that the consumption of meat, described as ‘not healthy,
but we eat anyway’ is far greater after arriving in Brisbane; this is accompanied
with a somewhat reduced consumption of fish. This is a significant change for
these families for whom the consumption of fish is central to everyday eating in
Kerala. Despite being health professionals, there was little engagement with
__________________________________________________________________
Australian public health discourse about healthy eating, and almost all health
concerns were situated around weight gain. Their understanding and knowledge of
healthy eating was either remembered wisdom, or from popular media.
In contrast to previous findings which describe breakfast as being the ‘least
culture laden’ meal for migrants 33 and therefore the first to change, for this group
at least, breakfast is perhaps the most reluctantly relinquished meal – transition to
western-style breakfast is almost entirely for convenience and adults eat cereal 34
rarely and only ‘if there’s nothing else’. Similar to their native Kerala, subtropical
Brisbane for much of the year is hot, sunny and humid providing the right
conditions for effortless fermentation of batter required to make breakfast dishes
such as idlis, dosas, puttu and appam; 35 having the batter ready-to-go facilitates a
relatively quick breakfast.
For the adults, rice and its accompaniments are almost always the preferred
options for lunch as well as dinner. Left-overs are often taken to work, or rice 36 is
eaten when they returned home, regardless of the time. Almost all the adults regard
anything else eaten outside as a snack, including if they eat a meal outside, rice
being stated as the only food which provided satisfaction.
Food is usually cooked in substantial quantities and refrigerated, but rarely
frozen; any food that was frozen was described as ‘not tasty’. Bulk-cooking when
the women had spare time ensured the constant availability of preferred home-
cooked food irrespective of the women’s long working hours – their husbands
would warm up food, serve the children and clear up if the women were not at
home. In addition, the women found it particularly easy for themselves
If the food is there it’s easy, as soon as I come back from work, I
can heat it up and it’s ready; much better to spend some time
getting everything ready now. 37
The children in most of these families are under the age of ten; they liked the
food that was cooked in their homes; apart from sandwiches, they also took left-
over breakfast food like idlis or chapattis 38 for school-lunch. They had a rice meal
as soon as they got back from school. Older children however preferred to have
‘light’ food for both breakfast and lunch. The women acknowledged that the
children expressed a liking for foods like pasta and noodles; these were provided as
snacks when the children returned from school, either cooked at home, or
purchased ready-prepared from the supermarket. Traditional snacks, 39 whether
purchased from specialist grocery shops, homemade or brought from India by
family and friends or themselves were preferred to Western-style snack such as
crisps, chocolates or cakes, particularly by the adults.
These families share meals regularly, help in each other’s kitchen 40 and grow a
range of vegetables so they have a variety to share. The women take turns while
arranging care-taking leave during their children’s school holidays, so they can
__________________________________________________________________
share in the child-care. The sense of community and food practices that this group
displays offer a striking difference to that of other Malayalee participants in this
study who, unlike the nurse-families, appear to lead a more ‘nuclear’ existence,
and have a more eclectic cuisine, regularly cooking or eating food from other
cultures, regardless of length of time lived in Brisbane. An ingrained ‘class’
distinction is still evident in attitudes of other Malayalees in Brisbane, similar to
that observed in India; this reinforces the way in which the nurse-families remain
grounded in their own community and surroundings.
5. Conclusion
Despite living in number of different contexts, or perhaps because of it,
retaining traditional food practices as far as possible grounds and locates these
families in the new context. At the same time, frequent visits ‘home’ and exposure
to contemporary eating patterns in modern India locates them in that reality as
well. Theoretical constructs of dietary acculturation do not entirely capture the
reality of the ways in which food tradition is re-imagined in today’s globalised
transnational multiple migratory contexts. The food practices of these families
challenge these notions: they eat Kerala food almost exclusively and globalisation
enables migrants to access the food of their homeland though the global movement
of food and services, including recipes via the internet; the mobility offered by
transnationalism defies any potential loss of original cultural patterns. In the
context of migration and globalisation today, and the turn towards post-modern
ways of thinking, there is greater appreciation of the fact that food-based identities
are fluid, indeterminate and constantly changing and that it is necessary to consider
the complexities that contribute to the creation of food cultures.
Notes
1
Ghassan Hage, ‘At Home in the Entrails of the West: Multiculturalism, Ethnic
Food and Migrant Home-Building’, Home/World: Space, Community and
Marginality in Sydney’s West, ed. Helen Grace et al. (Sydney: Pluto Press, 1997).
2
Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food (New
York: Free Press, 2002).
3
Claude Fischler, ‘Food, Self and Identity’, Social Science Information 27.2
(1988): 275-292; Krishnendu Ray, The Migrants Table - Meals and Memories in
Bengali-American Households (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004).
4
Uma Narayan, ‘Eating Cultures: Incorporation, Identity and Indian Food’, Social
Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture 1.1 (1995): 63-86;
Parvathi Raman, ‘“Me in Place, and the Place in Me”’, Food, Culture and Society
14.2 (2011): 165-180.
__________________________________________________________________
5
Jessie Satia-Abouta, ‘Dietary Acculturation: Definition, Process, Assessment, and
Implications’, International Journal of Human Ecology 4.1 (2003): 71-86; Steven
Vertovec, Transnationalism (Florence, KY, USA: Routledge, 2009).
6
As a consequence of a globalized, highly mobile employment network and the
relative low cost and ease of travel in recent times, many immigrants live their
lives across borders and maintain close ties to ‘home’ irrespective of the distance
between their countries of domicile and their country of origin. Schiller et al
termed this immigrant experience ‘transnationalism’; transnational migrants
neither cut off ties to their countries of origin, nor do they fully assimilate to the
new culture of their host nation. Contemporary transnational networks enable
members of these communities to be both ‘here’ and ‘there’. Nina Glick Schiller,
Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton, ‘Towards a Definition of
Transnationalism’, in Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration, ed. Nina
Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton (New York: Annals of the
New York Academy of Sciences, 1992).
7
J. Lawton et al., ‘“We Should Change Ourselves, but We Can’t”: Accounts of
Food and Eating Practices amongst British Pakistanis and Indians with Type 2
Diabetes’, Ethnicity and Health 13 (2008): 305-319.
8
Álvaro Alonso-Garbayo and Jill Maben, ‘Internationally Recruited Nurses from
India and the Philippines in the United Kingdom: The Decision to Emigrate’,
Human Resources for Health 7.37 (2009), viewed on 6 March 2015,
http://www.human-resources-health.com/content/7/1/37.
9
Bhinod Khadria, ‘International Nurse Recruitment in India’, Health Services
Research 42.3 (2007): 1429-1436; John Aggergaard Larsen et al., ‘Overseas
Nurses’ Motivations for Working in the UK: Globalization and Life Politics’,
Work, Employment and Society 19.2 (2005): 349-368.
10
Margaret Walton-Roberts, ‘Contextualizing the Global Nursing Care Chain:
International Migration and the Status of Nursing in Kerala, India’, Global
Networks 12.2 (2012): 175-194.
11
Marie Percot and S. Irudaya Rajan, ‘Emigration from India: Case Study of
Nurses’, Economic and Political Weekly 42.4 (2007): 318-325.
12
Elizabeth B. Simon, ‘Christianity and Nursing in India’, Journal of Christian
Nursing 26.2 (2009): 88-94.
13
The Catholic Church continued to provide a safe avenue for young women to
migrate within the churches network.
14
Related to working at night or working with men.
15
Percot and Rajan, ‘Emigration from India: Case Study of Nurses’.
16
Kerala Christians are officially classified as belonging to the ‘Forward’
community; communities that are classified as ‘backward’ BC, OBC, or belonging
to ‘scheduled castes and tribes SC, ST have preferential treatment in the fields of
__________________________________________________________________
education and employment. Many Christians and Muslims are over-classified, and
have limited access to the reservation quotas).
17
P. Thomas, ‘The International Migration of Indian Nurses’, International
Nursing Review 53 (2006): 277-283.
18
Migration of qualified nurses is highly regulated, unlike the poorly regulated
migration of low paid domestic workers, also mostly women.
19
Marija Ivković, ‘International Nurse Migrations – Global Trends’, Journal of the
Geographical Institute ‘Jovan Cvijić’ 61.2 (2011): 53-67.
20
Nurses usually work on contract in the Middle East for 1-2 years; visa
restrictions that preclude inclusion of other family members, and social and
religious restrictions prompt their move to other countries once they have gained
the experience.
21
Praveena Kodoth and Tina Kuriakose Jacob, International Mobility of Nurses
from Kerala (India) to the EU: Prospects and Challenges with Special Reference
to the Netherlands and Denmark, ed. CARIM-India (San Domenico di Fiesole
(FI): European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies,
2013).
22
Health Workforce Australia, Australia’s Health Workforce Series – Nurses in
Focus (Adelaide, 2013).
23
Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large; Cultural Dimensions of Globalization,
vol. 1, ‘Public Worlds’ (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 33.
24
R. R. Reynolds, ‘An African Brain Drain: Igbo Decisions to Immigrate to the
US’, Review of African Political Economy 92 (2002): 279; 273-284.
25
A number of familiar Indian vegetables is grown by these families – bitter gourd,
snake gourd, snake beans, varieties of spinach, tapioca, brinjal, chillies and herbs
like curry leaves.
26
The arrangement of kitchen furniture and dining tables in the respondents houses
were of a similar style; during the interviews, the other women and children who
were present all showed a familiarity with the use of these spaces.
27
Partly as old biases expressed by class snobbishness continued to be reiterated
among the larger Malayalee community in Brisbane.
28
Sheba Mariam George, When Women Come First (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2005).
29
Arjun Appadurai, ‘How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in
Contemporary India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 30.1 (1988): 3-
24.
30
Felicity Newman and Mark Gibson, ‘Monoculture Versus Multiculinarism’, in
Ordinary Lifestyles - Popular Media, Consumption and Taste, ed. David Bell and
Joanne Hollows (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2007).
__________________________________________________________________
31
Snacks could be homemade or purchased and included both sweet and savoury;
Australia’s strict quarantine laws prohibit the import of a number of food items,
which limits the type of food that can be brought into the country.
32
Participants 10, 11 and 14.
33
Tahire Koktürk, ‘Structure and Change in Food Habits’, Scandinavian Journal of
Nursing 39 (1995): 2-4.
34
Cereals were always referred to as ‘cornflakes’ by respondents – referring to pre-
trade liberalisation period in India, when locally made cornflakes was the only
breakfast cereal available
35
All these rice-based dishes are made from batter which is fermented and is
dependent on warm room temperature. Idlis are savoury steamed rice and lentil
cakes; the same batter, thinned down is cooked like a crêpe to make dosas; both are
popular breakfast dishes in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Appam and puttu are eaten
more commonly in Kerala. All homes have electric grinders brought from India.
36
A reference to rice in this instance is synonymous with an entire meal.
37
Participant 11.
38
Indian wheat flat-bread.
39
Traditional snacks include savoury deep fried banana chips, murukku, jackfruit
crisps, milk sweets, halvas, battered plantains.
40
Even on casual visits to each other’s homes, if there is any food-work being
done, the visitor will also join in the activity.
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Preetha Thomas is a PhD candidate and Associate Lecturer at the School of

Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of
Queensland, Australia.
Lisa Schubert is a Lecturer in Public Health Nutrition at the School of Public

Health, Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Queensland,
Australia.
Andrea Whittaker is a Medical anthropologist, an ARC Future Fellow

Anthropology in the School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts at Monash
University, Melbourne, Australia.
Brigitte Sébastia is an anthropologist researcher affiliated to the programme

‘Medicines and Societies in South-Asia’ in the Social Sciences Department of the
French Institute of Pondicherry in India.
Part II
Constructing Tastes:
Food, Representations and Control
A Making Sense of New Food Technologies and Trust in Food
(1960-1995)
Filip Degreef
Abstract
Whilst academic research on trust in food proliferated after the food scares of the
1990s limited attention has been given to the evolution of perception of food safety
and quality preceding these scandals. This chapter will focus on how
representations and ideas of food safety and quality changed during the post-war
era with respect to new food technologies. Building on the theory of risk society
put forward by Ulrich Beck this study looks at how larger evolutions in society,
technology, media, sub-politics and food interacted. In doing so, the research
contributes to the understanding of the effects these changes had on the
representation of expertise, products and technologies. In order to understand how
new food technologies were represented and fit within a cultural framework, a
Belgian newspaper and the publications of two consumer organisations are studied
during 35 years, using the methodology of framing. The focus lies on two highly
contested technologies: food radiation and food additives. This research shows that
both the newspaper and the consumer organisations used specific emotionally
guided framed to inform readers. The findings of this study offer a starting point
for further studies on food quality and safety whilst providing a framework in
which these issues can be viewed, understood and compared to. It also contributes
to grasping the historical foundations of frameworks in which food and technology
are interpreted.
Key Words: Food technology, risk society, framing, representation, modern

media, consumer organisations, food security, expert advice, industrialisation,
mediation.
*****
1. Making Sense of Technology and Food in a Changing World

The post-war Western world is seen as being obsessed with hazards and food
scandals despite increased regulation and control. 1 This is attributed to a lack of
trust in an industrialised and rationalised production system. 2 The acceptability of
novel food technologies and its usage in these evolutions is interwoven with the
public perception and representation of both specific technological developments
and the changing nature of the food chain itself. 3 Existing research on novel food
technologies tends to focus on contested issues that have already been subjected to
a large degree of rejection by the public. 4 Examining other novel applications
could however nuance this view of a public resisting most types of new
application. 5 To understand how new technologies were represented in a changing
54 Making Sense of New Food Technologies and Trust in Food (1960-1995)
__________________________________________________________________
world, this chapter will focus on how new applications were framed by media and
consumer organisations.
Researchers have shown that acceptability of new food technologies depends
on perceived risks, perceived benefits and perceived naturalness, showing that
individual interpretations guide social approval of technology. 6 Since knowledge
about technology remains a credence attribute for most, the public is dependent on
others for information and guidance on how to judge innovations. JoAnn Jaffe and
Michael Gertler interpret this as the result of a process of consumer’s deskilling.
Due to a lack of direct contact with the food chain and an increasingly complex
system of production, the majority of the population lost control over the meaning
of food. 7
The concept of relative deskilling focuses attention on changes in the
appropriation of knowledge. Information concerning which foodstuffs are suited
for consumption, both culturally and on a biological level, increasingly became a
public affair. Two main forces are seen as having a profound effect on the
evolution of deskilling. Firstly, there is the rationalised, globalised and marketed
food chain. Secondly, many scholars point to the diminishing of traditional family
structures, which negatively affected traditional methods of passing down
knowledge of food. 8 Hence, food choice became increasingly individualised. This
process has been documented in many studies, but was defined differently by
researchers (examples are: menu pluralism, customised diets or narratives of risk).
These show that consumers developed new ways of dealing with insecurities. They
use perceived risks in their choice process. 9 These selections are often founded on
very simplified ideas of what can be trusted. 10 Although family remains the main
source for knowledge, the public increasingly relies on systems of experts and
external sources to aid personalised decisions processes. 11
2. New Food Technologies in the Risk Society

A second essential notion within this research will be the concept of risk
society. Ulrich Beck’s risk society theory is often mentioned in studies focusing on
the relationship between food and technology. 12 Beck witnesses a significant
change in the nature of modern society in the post-war era from an industrial
society to the late modernity. It creates an accumulation of risks and hazards that
are not restricted in time, space or class and which are created by human actions
inside the systems of scientific progress and industrialised production. These risks,
as he sees it, have succeeded in escaping our control; hence the progress of society
will inevitably lead to self-destruction. This increase in risks becomes
characteristic for the society as a whole in which risks become a systematic
element of life, which are often debated. This fight for symbolic hazards creates a
discontinuation in the belief of progress, science and politics.
Also crucial to Beck’s theory is the idea of individualisation. He observes a
distancing from historically grown social forms, which means people lose
Filip Degreef 55
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traditional securities in ideas, culture and norms. This required re-embedding,
which entails new forms of social appropriation and commitment. Freedom and de-
standardisation entail a force of choice, which results in shopping around for
expertise throughout different media. 13 The similarities with the mentioned
evolutions are apparent. The theories and research specific to the field of food
studies show how perception of food and technological properties used in the food
chain are affected by the development of the risk society.
3. Source Material
This research uses a newspaper and two consumer organisations from Belgium
as source material. Both sources have proven important in the study of consumers’
sources of information. Consumers have indicated the importance of newspapers
for information on consumer products and consumer organisations are found to be
highly trusted sources for information on food quality and safety. 14
The selected newspaper is the regional newspaper Het Belang van Limburg 15
from the province of Limburg in the northeast of Belgium. This region is
characterised by a strong presence of agricultural production. Up to the 1960s there
was rapid industrialisation due to the construction of coalmines but in the 1980s
industrial production shifted to new branches, like transportation and the
manufacture of automobiles. The population density of the region remains low
compared to other Belgian regions. 16
The choice for this newspaper is a pragmatic one, since it is the only digitised
Belgian newspaper for the period 1960–1995. The newspaper is generally
moderate in stance and populist, yet it must be emphasised that the difference
between elitist and popular newspapers is less profound in Belgium. HBVL had a
continuous growth, and almost doubled in editions. Readers are evenly distributed
with regards to age and income, although with a small overrepresentation of the
lower social class. 17 Relevant articles are found through the usage of search terms,
which would have been impossible for any other Belgian newspaper.
Two Belgian consumer organisations were selected for this research: Test-
Aankoop/Test-Achats and VIVEC/UFIDEC. 18 Both institutions were bilingual and
thus published the same content in both French and Dutch. TA started small in
1957 but grew to 100,000 members in 1969 to circa 300,000 members during the
late 1970s, stabilizing thereafter. It was, and still is, the largest consumer
organisation in Belgium. VIVEC was founded in 1959 with support from the
socialist women’s organisation and the cooperative organisations, yet it remained
independent and neutral. Its membership also grew during the 1960s (from 7,000 in
1962 to 85,000 in 1969) but expansion lessened afterwards (reaching a maximum
of 120,000 in 1978). VIVEC did not remain financially viable and the organisation
ceased to exist in 1984. The organisations’ income came from the sale of their
magazine, books and membership fees.
__________________________________________________________________
Both organisations saw consumer information, education and protection as their
core business. Direct political action remained limited, although the organisations
did try to act as a consumer’s spokesperson. They are mostly known for their
comparative testing and dissemination of reports on products in their magazines
which are the main source used for this chapter. 19 TA published eleven editions per
year from 1963 onwards, whilst VIVEC changed its circulating from 6 to 10 yearly
issues in 1970. A survey executed by TA in 1970 shows that its members were
mostly white-collar middle class. 20
4. Methodology: Framing Research

Framing research has shown its usefulness in understanding which factors
influence coverage on a specific issue. A frame is seen as a broader idea that is
culturally defined and easily recognised in society. Both the readers and writers of
the text use it to grasp the meaning of the issue at stake. Facts alone are considered
to have no intrinsic meaning, but once they have been embedded in specific stories
or interpretations, a frame arises in which the text needs to be interpreted. The
frame works through principles, structures and symbols that can be visible in the
text. The actual frame itself is however an abstract concept. 21 Through framing
research it is possible to find patterns of dominant interpretations in texts and
thereby ‘discover’ meaning. A quantitative framing approach can thus have the
advantage of finding internal coherences within these series of publications, which
would otherwise have possibly gone unnoticed. 22
This method has been used for studying new food technologies, but only for
contemporary issues. 23 The focus in this lied mostly on the study of
biotechnology. 24 This research uses an inductive approach to find which variables
are relevant within inductively developed framework. Some theoretically relevant
questions were added, yet current results show that these were of limited
importance. Frames were located through principle factor analysis with Varimax
rotation. Relevant frames were selected using both Kaiser Normalization and
Cronbach’s alfa to measure the internal consistencies of the variables within
frames.
5. Results: Food Irradiation and Food Additives

Food irradiation was developed as part of the ‘atoms for peace’ project. This
technology uses ionizing radiation to kill bacteria in order to reduce risks of
harmful infections and lengthen food preservation. The technology was extensively
tested from the 1950s onwards, but usage remains limited. Belgium approved
ionisation during the 1980s, yet limited its application. 25 Food irradiation is often
seen as a strongly contested technology. Fear of poisoning, unnatural food and a
generalised disapproval of all applications of nuclear technologies are mentioned
as reasons why the public rejects ionisation. 26 Analysis of the three sources
however tells a different story. VIVEC never gave any attention to the issue and
Filip Degreef 57
__________________________________________________________________
TA published only three small articles (1967, 1983 and 1986). The latter regarded
the technology as having many advantages. TA mentioned its improvement
compared to other preservation techniques and the fact that irradiation makes the
usage of food additives unnecessary. Despite some fears over possible deception of
consumers, TA considered food ionisation to be a harmless technology. Graph 1
shows that the newspaper also published only a few articles on the issue (N=31).
The content of the articles also show a tendency towards being in favour of food
irradiation. Approval from different institutions (scientific research institutions,
consumer organisations, state) was mentioned much more often than disapproval.
The technology was seen as an improvement without leaving any residues of
radiation. 27 These results are striking, when compared to the perception of a
hesitant public. Despite its potential to be seen as a technology with high risk and
unnaturalness, food ionisation received only limited, and mostly positive, attention.
The lack of coverage of a contested technology demonstrates that it was considered
to be of only low importance and this is seen to have a positive effect on the
acceptability of a new technology. 28
10
4 HBVL
2
Graph 1: Presence of Articles on Food Irradiation (N=31) in Het Belang van

Limburg © 2014. Courtesy of Filip Degreef.
Additives in food are not specific to the second half of the twentieth century.
However, in this period, new applications became widespread due to scientific
progress and the industrialisation of the food chain. 29 Graph 2 shows the
frequencies of articles in which food additives are mentioned. This shows that
additives remained an important issue, especially compared to food ionisation. 30
__________________________________________________________________
Table 1: Principal Axis Factoring of Food Additives (Consumer Organisation)
(N=334)
Item Rotated % of Cronbach’s

Factor Variance alfa
Frame 1: Human Interest 19,242 0,819
Disapproval from consumer organisation 0,462
Not suited for consumption 0,506
Properties product are worse 0,736
Advice against usage 0,670
Additives are chemicals/poison 0,421
Health dangers 0,408
No additives is better 0,607
Additives are unnecessary 0,547
Producers are bad 0,423
Frame 2: Scientific Disapproval 8,855 0,782

Disapproval from scientific community 0,823
Disapproval from scientific institution 0,755
Needs further testing 0,558
Negative effects scientifically proven 0,602
Frame 3: Risk Protection 6,526 0,717

Lack of control 0,591
Needs stronger laws/Demand legal action 0,675
Consumers need to be informed/protected 0,513
Frame 4: Seal of Approval 5,618 0,670

Approval from consumer organisation 0,628
Suited for consumption 0,621
Additives solve problems 0,607
Harmlessness scientifically proven 0,625
Frame 5: Pat on the Back 3,829 0,733

Good producers 0,703
No additives found in test 0,785
Descriptive analyses of the results show that both consumer organisations

clearly opposed the usage of food additives. In more than half of the articles a clear
advice against the usage of food additives could be found. Table 1 shows the
results of the principle factor analysis for the consumer organisations. 31 Factors
loading higher than 0.40 are considered to be a relevant part of the frame. 32 When
factors load higher than 0.60 they are seen as being highly relevant to the frame.
The first frame is identified as ‘Human Interest’. It shows that within this frame the
consumer organisations strongly advised against the usage or eating of additives
since they mean a loss of quality for the food. Additives were considered to be
unhealthy chemicals. Producers were shamed when they use additives. The results
Filip Degreef 59
__________________________________________________________________
of the descriptive analysis show that this framework was strongly present
throughout the period under research.
The second frame shows the usage of scientifically supported disapproval.
Negative side effects of additives are considered to be scientifically proven or need
to be tested further. The third frame is considered to describe the idea of ‘Risk
Protection’. Appeals for more stringent laws, consumer protection and information
and general disapproval are combined with a fear of lack of control over the
presence of additives. Frame 4 shows that the organisations also gave their ‘Seal of
Approval’ for some additives in which these products were considered to be suited
for consumption and a benefit for the food. This approval also seems to be
intertwined with a need for scientific proof of harmlessness (especially since we
see that all factor load higher than 0.60). This shows that the consumer
organisations were inclined to uphold their neutral and scientific stance when
giving consent for an additive. However, the first frame shows that disapproval did
not require specific scientific proof.
90
80
70
60
50
HBVL
40
30 TA
20 VIVEC
10
0
Graph 2: Presence of Articles Containing Information on Food Additives in Het

Belang van Limburg, Test-Aankoop/Test-Achats: Magazine and VIVEC © 2014.
Courtesy of Filip Degreef.
The last frame demonstrates that the consumer organisations gave producers
that did not use any additives a ‘Pat on the Back’. Remaining within legal limits for
additives in products (which was coded separately) did not suffice. Producers were
__________________________________________________________________
complimented only when additives were untraceable. Descriptive analyses show
that the frames ‘Human Interest’, ‘Risk Protection’ and ‘Pat on the Back’ (in
descending order) were clearly much more present than ‘Scientific Disapproval’
and ‘Seal of Approval’. This shows that the consumer organisations used a
generalised and emotionally charged disapproval of food additives.
Table 2: Principal Axis Factoring of Food Additives (Het Belang van Limburg)
(N=354)
Item Rotated % of Variance Cronbach’s

Factor Alfa
Frame 1: Risk Protection 12,542 0,665
Additives are unnecessary 0,498
Lack of control 0,676
Needs stronger laws/Demand legal action 0,645
Consumers need to be informed/protected 0,471
Frame 2: Disapproval 9,147 0,723

Not suited for consumption 0,473
Additives are chemicals/poison 0,631
Health dangers 0,689
Negative effects scientifically proven 0,547
Scientific disapproval of additives 0,542
Frame 3: Approval 7,261 0,662

Suited for consumption 0,499
Harmlessness scientifically proven 0,727
Scientific approval of additives 0,595
Frame 4: Consumer Deception 2,189 0,666

Deception of consumers 0,629
Properties product are worse 0,499
Producers are bad 0,474
Frame 5: Promotion naturalness 1,923 0,700

No additives is natural 0,595
No additives is better 0,676
Disapproval from (small) organisations 0,456
The newspaper HBVL shows a more balanced picture, yet it is clear that this
source also disapproves of the usage of additives. Table 2 presents the results from
the principle factor analysis. The first frame was also identified as the ‘Risk
Protection’ frame showing clear similarities with the consumer organisations. The
only difference is that the newspaper demonstrates a general feeling of additives
being unnecessary (which can be considered to be interchangeable with the
disapproval from the consumer organisation). The second frame is defined as
‘disapproval’. This frame clearly mixes elements from the ‘Human interest’ and
Filip Degreef 61
__________________________________________________________________
‘Scientific Disapproval’ frames from the consumer organisations. There is a
general disposition in this frame against additives but it appears that the newspaper
requires scientific support for the reasons behind the criticism. 33 The same is the
case for when additives were approved (frame 3). The fourth frame is characterised
by ‘Consumer Deception’. This frame is used when producers are seen to be
deceiving consumers and delivering products of poorer quality. Strikingly, this
frame is linked with the variable ‘disapproval from consumer organisation’. Media
coverage of consumer organisations is linked here with scandals in which the
organisations are able to show that consumers are being cheated.
The last frame shows the link between small organisations (which was
interpreted in the coding as small producers and other small NGOs) and a
perception of the lack of additives being better and more natural. This could be
found in articles where, for example, artisanal manufacturers stated that their
products were better because of a lack of additives. It is clear that the newspaper
required some form of ‘frame sponsoring’ to assess the usage of food additives.
Descriptive analysis of the presence of these frames in the articles shows that the
only frame in favour of these types of products is less present.
6. Conclusions
This research shows that there is a strong link, both theoretically and in
practice, between the acceptability or usage of new food technologies and framing
in media and by sub-political groups. Despite the positioning of both consumer
organisations to be neutral and scientific, the results of the framing analysis of food
additives show that emotional triggers were used in critiquing their application.
The newspaper bases its framing on specific frame sponsors, but the nature of news
coverage in favour of scandals pushes many more negative frames forward than
positive.
The two examples both confirm and disprove Beck’s risk society theory.
Firstly, the issue of food irradiation; despite its potential for being a much-debated
risk, received limited attention, which was fairly positive in nature. The frames for
food additives, however, clearly fit within a feeling of a lack of control, risks and a
need for consumer protection. Further research on more new technologies and on
evolutions within the time frame is required to understand more clearly how new
technologies were represented and how they fit within the theory of risk society.
Notes
1
Karin Zachmann and Per Østby, ‘Food, Technology, and Trust: An Introduction’,
History and Technology 27.1 (2011): 1-10; Robert Rochefort, La Société des
Consommateurs (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1995), 1-267.
2
Claude Fischler, ‘La “Macdonaldisation” des Moeurs’, Histoire de
l’Alimentation, eds. Jean-Louis Flandrin, and Massimo Montarani (Paris: Fayard,
__________________________________________________________________
1996), 859-879; Michiel De Korm and Annemarie Mol, ‘Food Risks and
Consumer Trust’, Appetite 55 (2010): 671-678.
3
Harvey Levenstein, ‘Diététique contre Gastronomie: Traditions Culinaires,
Sainteté et Santé dans les Modèles de Vie Américains’, Histoire de l’Alimentation,
eds. Jean-Louis Flandrin, and Massimo Montarani (Paris: Fayard, 1996), 843-878;
Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late
Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), 1-256; Daniel Block, ‘Food
Systems’, A Cultural History of Food in the Modern Age, ed. Amy Bentley
(London, New Delhi, New York, Sydney: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012), 47-68.
4
George Gaskell and Martin W. Bauer, eds., Biotechnology 1996 – 2000: The
Years of Controversy (London: London Science Museum, 2001), 1-339; Martin W.
Bauer and George Gaskell, eds., Biotechnology: The Making of a Global
Controversy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1-277; Frances
Elizabeth DeRuiter and Johanna Dwyer, ‘Consumer Acceptance of Irradiated
Foods: Dawn of a New Era?’, Food Service Technology 2.2 (2002): 47-58.
5
Alexandra Lobb, ‘Consumer Trust, Risk and Food Safety: A Review’, Acta
Agriculturae Scand Section C 2 (2005): 3-12; Lynn J. Frewer et al., ‘Consumer
Response to Novel Agri-Food Technologies: Implications for Predicting Consumer
Acceptance of Emerging Food Technologies’, Trends in Food Science and
Technology 22 (2011): 442-456; Zachmann and Østby, ‘Food, Technology, and
Trust’, 1-10.
6
Michael Siegrist, ‘Factors Influencing Public Acceptance of Innovative Food
Technologies and Products’, Trends in Food Science and Technology 19 (2008):
603-608.
7
Fischler, ‘La “Macdonaldisation” des Moeurs’, 859-879; JoAnn Jaffe and
Michael Gertler, ‘Victual Vicissitudes: Consumer Deskilling and the (Gendered)
Transformation of Food Systems’, Agriculture and Human Values 23 (2006): 143-
162.
8
Fischler, ‘La “Macdonaldisation” des Moeurs’, 859-879.
9
Alizon Draper and Judith Green, ‘Food Safety and Consumers: Constructions of
Choice and Risk’, Social Policy and Administration 36.6 (2002): 610-625; Wendy
van Rijswijk and Lynn J. Frewer, ‘Consumer Perceptions of Food Quality and
Safety and Their Reaction to Traceability’, British Food Journal 110.10 (2008):
1034-1046.
10
Alan Beardsworth and Teresa Keil, Sociology on the Menu. An Invitation to the
Study of Food and Society (London: Routledge, 1997), 1-277; Svein Ottar Olson,
‘Extending the Prevalent Consumer Loyalty Modelling: The Role of Habit
Strength’, European Journal of Marketing 47.1/2 (2013): 303-323.
11
Unni Kjaernes, Mark Harvey and Alan Warde, Trust in Food. A Comparative
and Institutional Analysis (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave
Filip Degreef 63
__________________________________________________________________
Macmillan, 2007), 1-228; Daniel Powels and William Leis, Mad Cows and
Mother’s Milk (Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press, 1997), 1-452.
12
Armando Salvatore and Roberta Sassatelli, ‘Trust in Food. A Theoretical
Discussion’, Consumer Trust in Food – A European Study of the Social and
Institutional Conditions for the Production of Trust (Working Paper, Bologna:
University of Bologna, 2004), 4-36.
13
Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage, 1992), 1-
260; Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Individualization:
Institutionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences (London:
Sage, 2002), 1-222; Anthony Elliot, ‘Beck’s Sociology of Risk: A Critical
Assessment’, Sociology 36.2 (2002): 293-315.
14
Unni Kjaernes, Trust in Food, 1-228; Alexandra Lobb, ‘Consumer Trust, Risk
and Food Safety’, 3-12; Commission of the European Communities,
Eurobarometer. European Consumers. Their Interests, Aspirations and Knowledge
on Consumer Affairs (Brussels: Commission of the European Communities, 1976),
1-197.
15
Referenced in text as HBVL.
16
V. Neesen, ‘Demografie’, Limburg 1950 – 1975, ed. Anon. (Hasselt: Bestendige
Deputatie van de Provincie Limburg, 1975), 13-42; V. Neesen, ‘De Economische
Ontwikkeling’, Limburg 1950 – 1975, ed. Anon. (Hasselt: Bestendige Deputatie
van de Provincie Limburg, 1975), 71-136; R. Van Ballaer and L. Van Hilst,
‘Omschakeling en Diversifiëring van de Economie’, Limburg 1975 – 1995, eds. J.
Ackaert and L. Albrechts (Hasselt: Bestendige Deputatie van de Provincie
Limburg, 1995), 46-117.
17
Els De Bens and Karin Raeymaeckers, De Pers in België. Het Verhaal van de
Belgische Dagbladpers Gisteren, Vandaag en Morgen (Leuven: Lannoo Campus,
2010), 283-496.
18
Test-Aankoop/Test-Achats (referenced in text as TA); VIVEC/UFIDEC
(referenced in text as VIVEC).
19
Hans B. Thorelli and Sarah V. Thorelli, Consumer Information Handbook:
Europe and North America (London: Praeger, 1974), 1-525; Jacqueline Poelmans,
L’Europe et les Consommateurs (Brussels, Paris: Fernand Nathan, Editions Labor,
1978), 1-172; Matthew Hilton, Prosperity for All, Consumer Activism in an Era of
Globalization (New York: Cornell University Press, 2009), 1-285.
20
Anon., ‘Wie Zijn Wij?’, Test-Aankoop: Magazine 102 (1970): 324-328.
21
Maxwell E. McCombs and Salma I. Ghanem, ‘The Convergence of Agenda
Setting and Framing’, Framing Public Life. Perspectives on Media and Our
Understanding of the Social World, eds. Stephen D. Reese et al. (New York:
Routledge, 2001), 67-82; Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the
Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press, 1978), 1-244; William A. Gamson,
__________________________________________________________________
Talking Politics (New York, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 1-

272.
22
Stephen D. Reese, ‘Framing Public Life: A Bridging Model for Media
Research’, Framing Public Life. Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of
the Social World, eds. Stephen D. Reese et al. (New York: Routledge, 2001), 7-32;
Karen S. Johson-Cartee, News Narratives and News Framing. Constructing
Political Reality (Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Oxford: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2005), 1-359.
23
Catherine E. Crawley, ‘Localized Debates of Agricultural Biotechnology in
Community Newspapers: A Quantitative Content Analysis of Media Frames and
Sources’, Science Communication 28 (2007): 314-346; Pieter Maeseele, ‘On Neo-
luddites Led by Ayatollahs: The Frame Matrix of the GM Food Debate in Northern
Belgium’, Environmental Communication 4.3 (2010): 277-300; Pieter Maeseele,
‘On News Media and Democratic Debate: Framing Agricultural Biotechnology in
Northern Belgium’, The International Communication Gazette 73.1/2 (2011): 83-
105.
24
Gaskell and Bauer, eds., Biotechnology 1996 – 2000, 1-339; Bauer and Gaskell,
eds., Biotechnology, 1-277; Mathew C. Nisbet and Bruce V. Lewenstein,
‘Biotechnology and the American Media: The Policy Process and the Elite Press,
1970 to 1999’, Science Communication 23.4 (2002): 359-391.
25
Food ionisation is allowed for potatoes, strawberries, unions, shrimps, frog legs,
poultry and a specific list of spices.
26
DeRuiter and Dwyer, ‘Consumer Acceptance of Irradiated Foods’, 47-58; Toby
A. Ten Eyck, ‘Shaping a Food Safety Debate: Control Efforts of Newspaper
Reporters and Sources in the Food Irradiation Controversy’, Science
Communication 20 (1999): 426-447; Toby Ten Eyck, ‘The More Things
Change…: Milk Pasteurization, Food Irradiation, and Biotechnology in the New
York Times’, The Social Science Journal 41 (2004): 29-41; Karin Zachmann,
‘Atoms for Peace and Radiation for Safety – How to Build Trust in Irradiated
Foods in Cold War Europe and Beyond’, History and Technology 27.1 (2011): 65-
90.
27
Further research on the issue through factor analysis or framing analysis shows
no results due the low number of cases.
28
Nick Pidgeon, Roger E. Kasperson and Paul Slovic, The Social Amplification of
Risk (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1-448.
29
The concept of ‘food additives’ is used for all products that could be used to alter
properties of food products through preparation or in processing, whether legally or
illegally. For example, the usage of sulphite (sulphur dioxide) by butchers to colour
prepared meats red is included, but the application of (synthetic) hormones in cattle
breeding is not included since this takes place in the production (and not
preparation or processing) of the meat itself.
Filip Degreef 65
__________________________________________________________________
30
Relevant articles were selected when more than 2 elements from the coding
scheme were present within the text.
31
The data for VIVEC and TA was combined for the factor analysis since the
number of cases was too low to allow for a separate analysis.
32
Crawley, ‘Localized Debates of Agricultural Biotechnology’, 314-346; Gamson,
Talking Politics, 1-272.
33
The variables for approval and disapproval from the scientific community and
scientific institutions were recoded into a single variable for the database of the
newspaper.
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603-608.
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Reporters and Sources in the Food Irradiation Controversy’. Science
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Irradiation, and Biotechnology in the New York Times’. The Social Science
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Filip Degreef 69
__________________________________________________________________
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Filip Degreef is a PhD candidate at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. As a member of

the research group of Social and Cultural Food Studies (FOST) his research
focuses on the changing nature of representations of food quality and safety in the
post-war period.
Designed Pleasure: How Advertising Is Selling Food as Drugs
Oliver Vodeb
Abstract
This chapter will focus on advertising representations of heavily engineered
addictive food. I will argue that there is a direct link between illegal drug culture
and addictive food culture, on the level of representations of ways of consumption
as well as rhetoric, created and maintained through advertising of the legitimate,
commercial ‘high impact’ food industry. Advertising is by purpose designed in a
way that is unreflected upon by consumers and the wider public, as it renders the
culture of addiction invisible through its communicative integration into discourses
of pleasure. At the same time, such advertising directly promotes food in particular
ways, which directly enhance the drug like aspects of food. Such advertising is
designed to precondition the consumer and create a relationship between the
consumer and promoted food, which in turn, should maximise profits of the
advertiser and strengthen the consumer’s relation to the most potent substances of
food that create states of pleasure. Fast foods, food high in sugar, with a high
glycaemic index, high in salt and fat and as well as a combination of these are
perfect for creating addiction. This chemical engineering is also supported by a
marketing discourse that, heavily designed through advertising, creates a
superficial culture of pleasure. This pleasure driven advertising culture is a
legitimate, commercially enforced and legal drug culture.
Key Words: Food, addiction, representation, advertising, design, culture, society,

pleasure.
*****
1. Food and Drugs: (Un) Obvious Relation

In the summer of 2014 food enthusiasts, cooks, and young people of Maribor
(the second biggest city of Slovenia), started to organise regular Culinary Festivals
on the city’s old food market (Image 1 and 2). The working class city is
experiencing hard times, as Slovenia is in crisis. Widespread corruption and the
country’s big debt have put people in the position where the future looks grim –
especially for the younger population. Alcohol consumption is on the rise, and we
can speculate with some certainty, so is the consumption of illicit drugs.
Food, besides serving as the source for generating income of small-scale
business, is the perfect medium for social interaction and plays here an
emancipatory role. Good vibrations and positive moods are communicated, and
positive examples of engagement are put on display in an otherwise rather
depressive social climate. Good food for low prices is bringing people together.
72 Designed Pleasure
__________________________________________________________________
Friends meet and talk, food is being discussed and above all as the organisers
advertise, food ‘pampers people’s senses’.
Image 1: Scenes from Culinary Festival, Maribor, Slovenia © June 2014. Courtesy
of Oliver Vodeb.
Image 2: Scenes from Culinary Festival, Maribor, Slovenia © June 2014. Courtesy
of Oliver Vodeb.
Oliver Vodeb 73
__________________________________________________________________
When looking at the image I have to smile, not only do I know some of the
people in the image, but there was something else that grabbed my attention.
‘Breaking Good. We don’t cook Meth, we cook food’ is written on the blackboard,
which is advertising pork roast on the grill with cherry chutney and a salad – all for
5 EUR. This ironic and humorous approach to communication is a social
commentary on the city’s illicit drug culture and calls for more meaningful and
smart activities – such as cooking. But there is something else at play as the
connection between food and drugs is much deeper.
Historically there was no sharp distinction between food and drugs. Before the
introduction of potato, beer was the second most important source of nourishment
in big parts of central and north Europe. 1 Beer is, in Germany, still considered food
and so is wine in France and Italy.
Drugs and food address our senses. Both are used to produce pleasure. Both are
used in relation to un/happiness. Food rituals as family meals or meals at particular
occasions, like Christmas for example serve this very purpose. Drugs too, are used
to create feelings of happiness – like for example Ecstasy (MDMA) and they
change moods. The striving for happiness is directly related to pleasure and this
seems to be at the core of human lives. Freud wrote in his Civilisation and its
Discontents the following about this relation:
We will therefore turn to the less ambitious question of what men

themselves show by their behaviour to be the purpose and
intention of their lives. What do they demand of life and wish to
achieve in it? The answer to this can hardly be in doubt. They
strive after happiness; they want to become happy and to remain
so. This endeavour has two sides, a positive and a negative aim.
It aims, on the one hand, at an absence of pain and unpleasure,
and, on the other, at the experiencing of strong feelings of
pleasure. In its narrower sense the word ‘happiness’ only relates
to the last. In conformity with this dichotomy in his aims, man’s
activity develops in two directions, according as it seeks to
realize - in the main, or even exclusively -the one or the other of
these aims. As we see, what decides the purpose of life is simply
the programme of the pleasure principle. This principle
dominates the operation of the mental apparatus from the start.
There can be no doubt about its efficacy, and yet its programme
is at loggerheads with the whole world, with the macrocosm as
much as with the microcosm. There is no possibility at all of its
being carried through; all the regulations of the universe run
counter to it. One feels inclined to say that the intention that man
should be ‘happy’ is not included in the plan of ‘Creation’. What
we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the
__________________________________________________________________
(preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs, which have been
dammed up to a high degree, and it is from its nature only
possible as an episodic phenomenon. When any situation that is
desired by the pleasure principle is prolonged, it only produces a
feeling of mild contentment. We are so made that we can derive
intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a
state of things. Thus our possibilities of happiness are already
restricted by our constitution. Unhappiness is much less difficult
to experience… 2
Our culinary pleasures are also about the satisfaction of our longing for
happiness and the social aspect of food, its binding intimate nature, protects us
from unhappiness not only as it is giving us direct physical pleasure but also as it is
the medium for close and warm social interaction with other people. Unhappiness
and suffering comes also from relations to other people, and this kind of suffering
is, for Freud, the most severe.
The nature of pleasure forces us to constantly seek for more, as pleasure never
stays for long. This works in favour of the food industry, as more food needs to be
constantly consumed to achieve more pleasure. Food as drugs works on the level of
substances, textures, and aromas that provide pleasure. Salt, sugar and fat are the
main substances that we seek when we want to satisfy our pleasure. 3 The food
industry is engineering and designing food accordingly in order to provide
maximum effects of pleasure, which in turn develops cravings for particular
substances. More and more research shows that the effect of certain foods is very
similar to the effects of drugs. Brian scans show that foods – for example fast food
or sweets, are engineered to have an optimum level of sugar, or fat, or salt, but
most of all a combination of the three, to trigger the same brain areas and produce
cravings in the same way as for example cocaine. 4
The most obvious example of engineered addictive food are potato chips, that
besides a combination of fat, salt and sugar also provide a specific crisp, a feeling
in our mouth and a sound that all together provides immense pleasure. 5 As Pulizer
winning investigative journalist Michael Moss has shown, chips, as pleasure
delivering devices, are engineered and designed with great effort:
… a company owned by Pepsi- Frito-Lay has a research complex

near Dallas, where nearly 500 chemists, psychologists and
technicians conduct research that costs up to $30 million a year,
and the science corps focused intense amounts of resources on
questions of crunch, mouth feel and aroma for each of their chips
items. Their tools include a $40,000 device that simulated a
chewing mouth to test and perfect the chips, discovering things
Oliver Vodeb 75
__________________________________________________________________
like the perfect break point: people like a chip that snaps with
about four pounds of pressure per square inch. 6
The food industry does not only design food as drugs, its commercial
representations also resemble those that we can observe in the illicit drug culture.
In the paper ‘Depiction of Food as Having Drug-like Properties in Televised
Food Advertisements Directed at Children: Portrayals as Pleasure Enhancing and
Addictive’, 7 Page and Brewster analysed 147 food commercials from the year
2005 televised during children’s TV programming on U.S. broadcast networks.
Their research, which examined the influence of commercials for inducing
problematic behaviours in children, such as substance use behaviour and physical
violence, showed that commercials contained depictions of exaggerated pleasure
sensation and dependency and/or addiction. Other illicit drug culture like
behaviour found present in the advertisements included portrayals of physical
violence, trickery, stealing, and fighting as well as taking extreme measures to
obtain food. 8 Advertisements that contained such depictions were directly
promoting products, mostly high in sugar. 8.2% of the commercials were coded for
an exaggerated pleasure sensation and 12.9% showed depictions of dependency or
addiction. 16.3% portrayed conflict, fighting, or taking extreme measures, 10.2%
depicted thievery or stealing, 6.1% showed trickery, and 9.5% contained portrayals
of physical violence. 9 This research focused on advertisements aimed at children
on American television and through content analysis it shows the relationship
between advertisements and illicit drug cultures on the level of content and
representation. Illicit drug culture like behaviour was, in this research, mostly
found in products containing high amounts of sugar, less salt and fat, but the
authors conclude that this is due the fact that fast food chains like McDonald’s
advertised more the experience of visiting the restaurant than actual products.
Representations of food that resemble illicit drug cultures can however also be
found in advertisements aimed at adults. The connections between food and drugs
vary in their explicitness and level of directness. In the following I will show
examples of advertising, which connects food with drugs and promotes ways of
engaging with food that promises states of pleasure directly through the
engagement with the potent substance.
2. Pushing the Substance

The advertising industry strategically focuses on highlighting certain attributes
of food – of which the food industry is aware of creating effects of pleasure. For
example, pizza companies introduce more cheese (salt and fat) to increase pleasure
and when Pizza Hut introduced the Cheese Stuffed Crust in 1995, it boosted sales
by 300 million dollars. 10 The extra cheese uses the crust- which people usually
don’t eat- as an additional delivery mechanism for salt, sugar and fat, which are the
key substances for creating pleasure. 11 Its current popular pizzas include the ‘crazy
__________________________________________________________________
cheesy crust’ 12 and the ‘cheesy bites’ 13 pizzas. The crazy cheesy crust pizza took
more than a year to engineer and design in order to create the mixture of five
cheeses that create the ‘wow’ effect and ‘ooey-gooey’ stretch. 14 The pizza is
designed to deliver maximum pleasure and their advertisements focus on the
substance delivery devices – the cheese filled pockets.
Pizza Hut speaks in one of their commercials about ‘sixteen pockets of bliss’
when it presents its new invention. These pockets can be seen in food as the
equivalent to drug delivery devices. The form of a drug influences the relationship
we develop with it. The easier it is for us to take a drug physically, the more the
form of a drug is culturally accepted, the less inhibited we are going to be in
relation to the consumption of the drug. The bite size portions, which are easy to
hold and eat with our hands are fulfilling this function. The ‘pockets of bliss’ are
here to provide pleasure. They are portioned to be eaten one after the other-
pleasure, as identified previously, which is an episodic phenomenon and needs to
be constantly reinforced. The pockets are fat and salt delivery devices and
according to research published last year, such foods: ‘are stimulating the brains in
the same way as drugs of abuse and can be considered as a potentially addictive
substance’. 15
The most sold cookie in the word, Oreo received unwanted major media
presence last year when it was reported that Oreo cookies are potentially more
addictive than cocaine. Through measurements researchers found out that: ‘greater
number of neurons that were activated in the brain’s pleasure centre in animals that
were conditioned to Oreos compared to animals that were conditioned to cocaine
[or morphine]’. 16
Analysing Oreo TV advertisements in several countries shows one parallel.
Most of the advertisements teach our children and us how to consume Oreos in the
way that will give us the biggest pleasure. It teaches us to go straight to the source-
one needs to first open the cookie and lick the filling, then we put the halves of the
cookie back together and dip it in milk and eat. 17 This example similarly
demonstrates behaviour that Page and Brewster found in relation to children,
whereby they are showing skills and performing tricks in order to fulfil this
particular, taught and prescribed way of consuming the cookie as they overcome
various obstacles.
To lick the essence of the cookie, the isolated high sugar filling first, is related
to the way food is being produced at large today. As biomedical imaging
researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory Dr. Gene-Jack Wang noted in an
October 2013 interview for the Atlantic: ‘We make our food very similar to
cocaine now’ … ‘[Now] we purify our food […] Our ancestors ate whole grains,
but we're eating white bread. American Indians ate corn; we eat corn syrup’. 18
Oreo Advertisements don’t talk only to children, adults are also being
preconditioned to eat the cookies and indulge in pleasure in the same way. The
Oreo ‘Kid Inside’ advertisement made for Oreo’s 100th Birthday showed the inside
Oliver Vodeb 77
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of a bus full of adults with a grey, boring adult atmosphere. 19 When children walk
in with plates full of Oreo cookies, the scene becomes bright and the adults – who
already know how to eat Oreos – are reminded about the child inside them with the
slogan ‘celebrate the kid inside’ and a child holding a sign with ‘next stop
childhood’ written on it.
The highly engineered Oreo cookies and the suggestive advertisements, which
incorporate behavioural patterns representing pleasure at the very act of
consumption naturalise the food-as drug on the level of substance, acts of
consumption and representation. Food and drugs become one although for the
majority of the audience the relation is not made explicit.
The quick sugar/ chocolate fix is sometimes referred to literally, as in the case
of Australian food and cooking magazine ‘Delicious’ which April 2014 cover
advertised the ‘chocolate FIX, 7 recipes you NEED to have, which makes sense as
research suggests that cocoa influences our mood. 20
The language here again refers to the purity of the drug and it seems that there
is a fundamental shift happening where drugs and foods become more and more
one again. They used to be one for the biggest part of human history - German
word Genussmittel, for example, even signifies certain foods (like coffee, tea
chocolate…) as food for pleasure 21 but food and drugs were more and more
separated when:
The march of science brought both more refined knowledge of

drugs and the ability to make them in intensified forms. Various
distilled spirits had been around for some time, but their mass
production and trade made them more widely available, which
led many drinkers away from beer and wine and helped fuel the
“gin craze” in eighteenth-century England. Similarly, after the
alkaloid cocaine was synthesized in 1877, the older practices of
coca leaf chewing and drinking coca tea and wine gave way to
cocaine inhalation and injection. Opium smoking was supplanted
by morphine and, eventually, heroin injection. More generally,
plant-based remedies gave rise to early pharmaceutical
chemistry. 22
Taxonomies and representation of food are always connected to politics and

ideologies. Advertising food as drugs seems the perfect match. Marshal McLuhan
already warned us of the narcotic effects of media. 23 There has always been an
interesting paradox with visual language – while it makes certain things visible it
renders certain things at the same time invisible.
The fact that food – our closest and most intimate relation to nature – is
represented through advertising in ways that are meant to precondition us to
engage in addictive behaviour engaging with substances that are designed to create
__________________________________________________________________
states of pleasure and are at the same time food and addictive substances, in my
opinion suggests that we should seriously reconsider our societies’ relation to
drugs, food and advertising.
Notes
1
Craig Reinarman, ‘Policing Pleasure: Food Drugs and the Politics of Ingestion’,
Gastronomica: Journal of Food and Culture 7.3 (2007): 53-61.
2
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 2010). 68.
3
Michael Moss, Salt Sugar Fat (New York: Random House, 2013).
4
Joseph Schroeder, J. C. Honohan, R. H. Markson, L. Cameron, K. S. Bantis and
G. C. Lopez, ‘Nucleus Accumbens C-Fos Expression Is Correlated with
Conditioned Place Preference to Cocaine, Morphine and High Fat/Sugar Food
Consumption’ (Presented at the Society for Neuroscience Conference 2013).
5
Moss, Salt Sugar Fat.
6
Ibid., 132.
7
Randy Page and Aaron Brewster, ‘Depiction of Food as Having Drug-Like
Properties in Televised Food Advertisements Directed at Children: Portrayals as
Pleasure Enhancing and Addictive’, Journal of Paediatric Health Care 23.3
(2009): 150-157.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.
10
See Vanessa Wong, ‘Can “Crazy Cheesy Crust” Top Pizza Hut’s Stuffed Crust?’
Business Week, April 3, 2013, viewed 2 July 2014,
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-03/can-crazy-cheesy-crust-top-
pizza-hut-s-stuffed-crust.
11
Moss, Salt Sugar Fat.
12
‘Crazy Cheesy Crust’, Pizza Hut Pizza Advertisement, Huffington Post, viewed
23 August 2014, http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1066492/original.jpg.
13
‘Cheesy Bites Pizza’, Promotional Image, Pizza Hut, viewed 22 August 2014,
http://www.pizzahut.se/upl/images/280732.jpg.
14
See Sofie Egan, ‘Stunt Food’, Wired, 2013, viewed July 10 2014,
http://www.wired.com/2013/09/stuntfoods/.
15
Schroeder et al., ‘Nucleus Accumbens C-Fos Expression’.
16
Ibid.
17
‘Oreo Sippy Cup’, Advertisement, YouTube, viewed 28 August 2014,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxLYWGlaQ-E.
18
Dr. Gene-Jack Wang, in James Hamblin, ‘How Oreos Work like Cocaine’, The
Atlantic, 2013, viewed 20 August 2014,
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/how-oreos-work-like-
cocaine/280578/.
Oliver Vodeb 79
__________________________________________________________________
19
‘Kid Inside’, Oreo Advertisement, YouTube, viewed 20 August 2014,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrWIQxBVSpY.
20
Matthew P. Pase et al., ‘Cocoa Polyphenols Enhance Positive Mood States but
Not Cognitive Performance: A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial’, Journal of
Psychopharmacology 27.5 (2013): 451-458.
21
Reinarman, ‘Policing Pleasure’, 53-61.
22
Ibid.
23
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (London: Routledge, 2001).
Bibliography
‘Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza Commercial’. Pizza Hut Pizza Advertisement.
YouTube. Viewed 20 June 2014.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0TryXhwz3U.
Dube, Laurette, and I. Cantin. ‘Promoting Health or Promoting Pleasure? A

Contingency Approach to the Effect of Informational and Emotional Appeals on
Food Liking and Consumption’. Appetite 35 (2000): 251-262.
Egan, Sofie. ‘Stunt Food’. Wired. 2013. Viewed 10 July 2014.

http://www.wired.com/2013/09/stuntfoods/.
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 2010.
Hamblin, James. ‘How Oreos Work like Cocaine’. The Atlantic. 2013. Viewed 5
July 2014. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/how-oreos-work-
like-cocaine/280578/.
‘Kid Inside’. Oreo Advertisement. YouTube. Viewed 20 August 2014.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrWIQxBVSpY
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. London: Routledge, 2001.
Page, Randy and Aaron Brewster. ‘Depiction of Food as Having Drug-Like

Properties in Televised Food Advertisements Directed at Children: Portrayals as
Pleasure Enhancing and Addictive’. Journal of Paediatric Health Care 23.3
(2009): 150-157.
__________________________________________________________________
Pase, Matthew P., Andrew B. Scholey, Andrew Pipingas, Marni Kras, Karen
Nolidin, Amy Gibbs, Keith Wesnes and Con Stough. ‘Cocoa Polyphenols Enhance
Positive Mood States but Not Cognitive Performance: A Randomized, Placebo-
Controlled Trial’. Journal of Psychopharmacology 27.5 (2013): 451-458.
Reinarman, Craig. ‘Policing Pleasure: Food Drugs and the Politics of Ingestion’.
Gastronomica: Journal of Food and Culture 7.3 (2007): 53- 61.
Schroeder, Joseph, J. C. Honohan, R. H. Markson, L. Cameron, K. S. Bantis and

G.C. Lopez. ‘Nucleus Accumbens C-Fos Expression Is Correlated with
Conditioned Place Preference to Cocaine, Morphine and High Fat/Sugar Food
Consumption’. Paper Presented at the Society for Neuroscience Conference,
2013.
‘Sippy Cup, Oreo TV Advertisement’. YouTube. Viewed 20 August 2014.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWHuowqHzlI.
Wong, Vanessa. ‘Can “Crazy Cheesy Crust” Top Pizza Hut's Stuffed Crust?’
Business Week, April 3, 2013. Viewed 2 July 2014.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-03/can-crazy-cheesy-crust-top-
pizza-hut-s-stuffed-crust.
Oliver Vodeb teaches and researches at Swinburne University of Technology. He

is director, editor and curator of Memefest Festival of Socially Responsive
Communication and Art and facilitator of the Memefest Network. His last book is
titled InDEBTed TO INTERVENE, Critical Lessons in Debt, Communication, Art
and Theoretical Practice. He is about to start working on a book on Food
Democracy published by Intellect books UK.
Living under Control: Social Representation of Dieting for
Brazilian and Spanish Women
Maria Clara de Moraes Prata Gaspar and Lis Furlani Blanco

Abstract
In this chapter we aim to discuss and comprehend the gender relations through the
analysis of the young women relations with food and food control. Through the
discourse analysis of 60 semi-direct interviews, we observed that the idea of
control is in both countries based on the relation between women and their food
habits. This concept of control, built on self-responsibility is considered by these
women as ‘normality’, even though it is completely related with food habits
reflexibility and causes a rupture in the previous habits. Further than the
problematic of aesthetic and health that motivates this idea of control, it represents
a life style and a life hygiene, a life conquer, self control, that is built altogether
with the idea of femininity.
Key Words: Eating control, diet, food habits reflexibility, self-responsibility,

aesthetic norm, health, young women, comparative study.
*****
1. Introduction
The body is a support of values of each social group. These values establish
different uses of the body that contribute to its shape. 1 Women's bodies, more than
men’s bodies, have been submitted to the norms of beauty, which have been
varying according to each period, social and cultural context. 2 In the last decades,
women’s bodies appeared to be free from the physical and moral taboos. However,
this liberation did not diminish the domination that pre-existed. 3 At the same time
that beauty became completely inseparable from thinness, mainly regarding
women, the medical domain began to condemn the overweight more and more.
The beautiful, desirable and healthy body should be thin. Furthermore, more than
thin, this body should be under control. 4
In this way, whether for health or aesthetic reasons, individuals, mainly women,
are encouraged to control their body and / or weight and are responsible for being
deviant or not in relation to the norms. According to the principle of incorporation,
‘we are what we eat’. The act of eating creates the eater and his/her body - and
then, eating is one of the principal ways where this control of the body can be
achieved. 5 So, the norm of thinness and the health concerns directly influence the
eating habits of women, and ‘dieting’ for the control of the body and weight has
become a widespread practice. 6
The main goal of this chapter over Brazilian and Spanish young women is to
comprehend their relation to food, especially concerning control of eating
82 Living under Control
__________________________________________________________________
behaviours and diet. This study is focused on female college students, between 18
and 28 years old and it is inscribed in a comparative approach, based on sixty
individual interviews developed in São Paulo (Brazil) and Barcelona (Spain).
We will use ‘control’ as an analytic category in order to articulate the chapter
premise.
2. Control of Eating Behaviour and Body: Discourses and Practices

The relationship to food of the Brazilian and Spanish interviewed young
women seems to be associated with their relationship to their bodies, being both of
these relationships characterized by self-control. According to Apfeldorfer and
Zemati when an individual begins a weight-loss diet or a balance food program,
one starts to execute a cognitive control and one’s food behaviour becomes
reflective and no more intuitive. 7 Most of the interviewed women present a
reflective relationship to their eating practices, that is, there is a problematization
of the eating activity concerning what they will eat, how, where and why. 8
Almost all the interviewed women had already controlled their food ingestion
by themselves, although it is said that friends and family, especially those from the
female gender, are relevant sources of advice. Another source of advice is the
media, mainly Internet. In certain cases, mostly in Brazil, before any eating control
experiences interviewed women search for support groups and health
professionals, especially dieticians. All health professionals and the responsible for
the support groups are women, which reinforce de idea of a feminine universe
surrounding eating control.
Even though we observe different food control experiences, certain aspects and
strategies are repeated and trespass the countries boundaries. Usually, these
methods are the reflex of the nutritional discourses broadcasted globally by
specialists, by public health policy and by the media, all of this permeated by
popular knowledge. Food control can modify different stages of the act of eating.
Women try to control what they eat and the amount of certain food ingested
according to the perception they have about the food nutritional composition. In
certain cases this categorization is directly connected to the food nutritional
classification. They also change their buying habits, the method of cooking, the
time they eat and what they eat in each time. In addition to change their food
ingestion, young women, mainly the Brazilians, combine the food control
altogether with other methods, such as, medicines, teas, ‘shakes’ or food
supplement. The physical activity is also another strategy adopted. In Brazil,
physical activity is commonly present in the day-to-day activities of all the
interviewed women, who frequently attend gymnasiums in the country.
Even if we can find similarities between the women interviewed such food
control can be nominated in different ways, for example: ‘being on a diet’, ‘to
control’, ‘to balance’, ‘to re-educate’, ‘take care of’, ‘to police’, and ‘to carry out
Maria Clara de Moraes Prata Gaspar and Lis Furlani Blanco 83
__________________________________________________________________
surveillance’. To comprehend the issues regarding this kind of control, it seems to
be relevant to analyse what are the motivations implied in this kind of control.
3. Between Health and Aesthetic: The Motivation Regarding Food Control

It is not possible to highlight just one and only motivation to the origin of food
control, but different factors that blend with each other. To the interviewed women
there is a straight connection between what they eat, their health, their physical
appearance, their weight and finally their wellbeing. Furthermore, for the majority
of women the current eating habits are not proper and might even contain toxic
elements, representing a risk for health and appearance. It is not rare that these
women associate what they eat with a singular physical shape: someone who eats
fat will be fat, as so, the person who eats in a balanced way will be ‘light’ and
healthy.
According to their discourse, the body and the appearance are the aspects that
play an important part in the relation with the other and the world. The physical
shape is a constant concern and it is considered as a significant element in the
professional, social, and affective opportunities. Several studies demonstrate that
women considered as deviants to body norms are more stigmatized and
discriminated than men in the same conditions. 9 It is important to emphasize that
the interviewed women are in a phase of pursuing an autonomous life and also to
consolidate an identity. In addition, in agreement with the dominant thought it is
during this period that women are fertile and should find their love mate. If the
body is comprehended as a capital, a body capital, 10 food and its effects on their
body might become a threat to what they are in society. These risks should be
minimized through food control.
Food control is, in most cases, due to the aesthetic slimming norms and the
ideal of thinness currently present in the Western societies. This ideal, which is
associated with a social efficiency model, expresses itself with the desire of
weighting less and are supported by some moral values already internalized and by
the perception of a social obligation. 11 Food control becomes more rigid as the
women think there is a deviance in relation to the aesthetic norm. Even more, they
intensify or start to control food as they begin to gain weight.
It is important to emphasize that food control it is not associated with a weight
problem in terms of health norms, but it is a concern with aesthetics. Women that
have their corpulence closer to the superior limit of normality or those who are
overweight according to the World Health Organization, 12 have a more significant
tendency to deal in a conflictive way with their food and body, situations where
food control is more present. However, having a lower corpulence index it is not
associated with a smaller concern. Most women interviewed, who declare having
control over food, wish to lose weight, even though almost none of them should be
concerned with their weight according to the health norms.
__________________________________________________________________
Some women control their eating behaviours in order to gain weight ‘just a
little bit’ or in order to gain muscles to have an ideal body. In effect, more than
thin, the perfect body is a built and shaped body. Women are never completely
satisfied with their bodies and the pursuit of an ideal body is an endless combat,
where food control is essential.
To control food because one is ill happens less often with the women
interviewed. The pursuit of health by prevention is another motivation. Although
more than saying that they aim to prevent disease, they declare that their main
objective is to become healthy. We observe that the representation of being healthy
is associated with an ideal body representation. The thin ideal concerns also health
representations or the idea of well-being.
Therefore, food control is a means of regulating health and physic shape.
Nonetheless, it seems that this phenomenon is more complex and carries other
significations.
4. Social Representations of Food Control: From Food Control to Life

Control
The food control is not experimented in the same way by all the young women.
The fact of controlling or not food can define the relation these young women have
with their eating habits. Also, some young women justify the importance they give
to food with the fact of controlling it, because this care consumes time, energy and
money.
To control food can produce a sensation of emotional and physical well-being,
result of the capacity of self control, which provides women with a sensation of
strength and power. In a society with food abundance, controlling the will to eat is
considered a demonstration of capacity and discipline. Sometimes, independently
of achieving a real change in their weight or appearance, the fact of being able to
control their food might affect their relation with their own body. When there is no
control, the relation with their bodies becomes more negative. In fact, the result
obtained does not completely matter, but most important is the ability of self-
control: a work over the body, a work of control, discipline and regulation. This
control is more interiorized, as it is perceived as a personal wish, a life goal, a life
conquest. To these young women, food control trespasses the food problematic and
implicates in a more appropriated life rhythm and a control over life in general.
Besides a rational and conscious motivation, like an aesthetic concern, food
control brings a moral questioning, regarding individual responsibility, not only as
an individual but also as women in society. In effect, the feeling of conquest and
well being, coming from controlling food ingestion and the body, are located in a
self control perspective and in an accomplishment of feminine role, and also in the
idea of integrating certain practices implicated in the construction of femininity in
the Western world. More than a factor of individualization, body is a belonging
marker. 13 This food control is a way of incorporating the norms and practices
__________________________________________________________________
aiming self-realization, or to become some specific kind of person, to be a woman
in society. Not achieving it may signify a symbolic death. 14
5. Control and Loss of Control: Pleasure and Guilt

According to the interviewed women’s discourse, they never feel they are
eating correctly, or that their control is enough. They mention some reasons such
as lack of time, or money limitations as constraints. Even though, in most cases,
they associate these factors to the lack of efforts and discipline, as they are still
responsible for the failure on the food control. The lack of control signifies not
being strong enough and being lazy or unable. The relationship to food is built
between the tension of discipline/control moments and lack of control. This
relation, which they describe as a relation of love and hate, a struggle, is marked by
a feeling of anguish.
Any desire beyond the ‘normal’ is seen as a factor that will lead to loss of
control. The hunger, the will of eating, pleasure or simply the idea of pleasure
become enemies. Thus food control goes through the regulation of pleasure. To be
accepted, pleasure must be justified and rationalized, or culpability will be
inevitable.
This feeling of guilt reveals a moral discourse over food and dietetic.
According to Gracia, the contemporaneous individual must be responsible and eat
properly. 15 For the author, during the last century the theory of victim blaming,
reducing risk behaviours by attacking them on a moral basis, stigmatizing and
transforming the victims into guilty ones, has been an important step in the process
of medicalization of eating. The individuals, mainly women, are judged by society
over their imprudence and lack of discipline.
6. Life over Control: Food Control, Diet and Food Re-Education

Usually, young women do not consider this food control as a diet, but simply as
a kind of control. In their representation, diets have a negative connotation. The
idea of diet is associated to a heavily used method, to a failure and to a strictly
aesthetic care. The diets implicate a ‘name’, massive changes and are conceived as
a list of rules, a really rigid restriction with a specific time duration, which will
take place in their normal food habits.
After having done restrictive diets or after failures, women interviewed search
for an alternative form of control, ‘sweeter’ or some kind of food re-education,
expression used in Brazil overall, which is not considered by them as a diet. This
re-education, usually guided by a dietician, aims to a definite and global change in
food representations and behaviours, establishing a new food model according to
the dietetic norms. Opposite to diets, the re-education should be less restrictive,
allowing consumption of all kind of food and allowing even pleasure, if it is
correctly rationalized. Furthermore, diets will be associated with a lack of maturity,
an ‘adolescent’ phase. Hence food re-education will represent a more mature
__________________________________________________________________
phase, an achievement of awareness of their own food, of a correct way of eating, a
more serene relation with food and body.
Women do not consider food re-education as a diet as health professionals and
the media opposes these two different practices. 16 In addition, while diet is
perceived as a popular method, a massified one, they describe food re-education or
food control as a more personalized and individualized method, ‘a philosophy’,
‘my way of eating’, ‘my personal decision’, ideas that are conveyed by certain
professionals and by the media. Nevertheless, these personalized strategies, are
bases on the same moral principles implicating self-control. 17
As the word diet and its practice are seen as negative, the idea of food re-
education or the idea of control are considered as acceptable practices, as ways of
being ‘healthy’ or feeling good with yourself. To some women the food control
‘coming from themselves’, thought that reveals the internalization level on the
importance of having an individual responsibility over food.
Food control or food re-education becomes a life style, a life hygiene. 18
However, if one should become accustomed to and face the desires and instincts in
order to eat healthy and to control, is it not a diet?
There is a contradiction between the discourse about diet and the discourse
about control or food re-education, because at the same time that this control is not
perceived as a diet, it implicates a rupture with the daily food habits, and a new
logic, in which the individual discipline, usually under the form of ‘I have to’, ‘I
should’, seem fundamental. It is important to question the idea of control as a
practice opposite to diet as in weekends or special occasions women declare they
allow themselves to loosen their control. If control is not comprehended as an
extraordinary measure, why is it necessary to get out of its constraints from time to
time? Even women who say that they had already incorporated this control in their
habits, going through a process of ‘routinization’, 19 and consider it as ‘food
normality’, contradict themselves.
Being on a diet consists in a systematic rupture with the previous habits, 20
adapting them over the influence of dietetic norms. It rationally sets a new
normative logic on daily food practices. 21 According to Apfeldorfer, the new
tendency is the ‘balanced diet’, in which one can eat everything, but in the right
amount and manners, 22 without being on a diet. The young women who
participated in this study seem to be influenced by this discourse. This process
seems to be softer and make people believe that it is not a diet, but it is still
difficult to follow, with rigidity and blaming.
To control food has become a ‘normal’, generalized and permanent practice,
especially for women. Germov and Williams characterize this situation as the
‘epidemic of dieting women’. 23 It should be interesting then to comprehend the
idea of norm and normality over food. As we observed, for the interviewed
women, to control food is a norm even though it will implicate change in eating
habits and a personal effort. Due to the increasing number of people, mainly
__________________________________________________________________
women, who are on a diet, Polivy and Herman questioned the notion of normality
and concluded: ‘our understanding of normal eating depends on whether we refer
to biological norms or societal norms’. 24
Discipline and shaping of the body are well diffused throughout society, which
everywhere generates norms and constant systematic vigilance. 25 The social
constructions of the feminine body as an object to be watched is interiorized early
by women, who learn to self observe and regulate their bodies. 26 According to
Bentham’s Panopticon, there is a phenomenon in which pressure is interiorized,
implicating in a constant self-discipline. The imminence of ‘watching’ and its
disciplinary efficiency makes each individual, in this case the young woman, to
become their own surveillance, aiming to self-discipline. 27 Coming back to the idea
of Polivy and Herman about biological and societal norms, we observe that dieting
may be a field in which cultural pressures collide with biological realities, being
‘an example of how the expected degree of personal control and responsibility
exceeds biological realities’. 28
In the light of this research, it was observed differences concerning food control
practices and their meanings, between women from different nationalities but also
between women from the same country, in which the notion of self-control is
common to the majority of women. In effect, the idea of Bordo, that independent
from race, ethnicity, age, gender orientation, if a woman wants to be accepted in
the dominant culture, she ought to control her body, 29 and this discipline can be
considered as a norm between the majority of young women interviewed, in Brazil
and in Spain.
Notes
1
Thibault de Saint Pol, Le corps désirable: hommes et femmes face à leur poids
(Paria: PUF, 2010), 25.
2
Claude Fischler, L’Homnivore (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1990), 357-373.
3
Nita McKinley, ‘Ideal Weight/Ideal Women: Society Constructs the Female’,
Weighty Issues: Fatness and Thinness as Social Problems, ed. Jeffery Sobal and
Donna Maurer (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1999), 102-103.
4
Saint Pol, Le corps desirable, 109-119.
5
Fischler, L’Homnivore, 66-70.
6
McKinley, ‘Ideal Weight/Ideal Women’, 97-115.
7
Gérard Apfeldorfer, Jean-Philippe Zemati, ‘Les régimes maigrissant sont des
troubles du comportement alimentaire’, Réalités en Nutrition 6 (2007): 6-11.
8
Matthieu De Labarre, ‘L’expérience du régime au feminine’, Corps de femmes
sous influence: Questionner les norms, ed. Annie Hubert (Paris: OCHA, 2004), 80-
82.
9
Saint Pol, Le corps desirable, 120-146.
__________________________________________________________________
10
Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Remarques provisoires sur la perception des corps’, Actes de la
recherche en sociologie 14 (1977): 51-54.
11
Estelle Masson, ‘Le mincir, le grossir, le rester mince’, Corps de femmes sous
influence: Questionner les norms, ed. Annie Hubert (Paris: OCHA, 2004), 28.
12
World Health Organization, ‘Global Database on Body Mass Index’, 2006,
Accessed 12 January 2015, http://apps.who.int/bmi/index.jsp.
13
Saint Pol, Le corps desirable, 25.
14
Aureci F.C. Souza, ‘O percurso dos sentidos sobre a beleza através dos séculos-
uma análise discursive’ (Master diss. Faculdade de Educação Física da
Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2004).
15
Mabel Gracia, ‘Maneras de comer hoy: comprender la modernidad alimentaria
desde y más allá de las normas’, Revista Internacional de Sociología 40 (2005):
159-182.
16
Lygia A. Santos, ‘Da dieta à reeducação alimentar: algumas notas sobre o comer
contemporâneo a partir dos programas de emagrecimento na internet’, Psysis
Revista de Saúde Coletiva 20.2 (2010): 461-463.
17
Mabel Gracia, ‘Fat Bodies and Thin Bodies. Cultural, Biomedical and Market
Discourses on Obesity’, Appetite 55 (2010): 219-225.
18
Faustine Régnier, Ana Masullo, ‘Le régime entre santé et esthétique?
Signification, parcours et mise en ouevre du régime alimentaire’, Revue d’Études
en Agriculture et Environment 91.2 (2010): 191.
19
De labarre, ‘L’expérience du régime au feminine’, 81.
20
Ibid., 75-95.
21
Fischler, L’Homnivore, 240.
22
Gérard Apfeldorfer, Maigrir, c’est fou! (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2006).
23
John Germov, Lauren Williams, ‘The Epidemic of Dieting Women: The Need
for a Sociological Approach to Food and Nutrition’, Appetite 27 (1996): 97-108.
24
Janet Polivy, Peter Herman, ‘Diagnosis and Treatment of Normal Eating’,
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 55.5 (1987): 636.
25
Michael Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, 1, la volonté de savoir (Paris:
Gallimard, 1976).
26
Sandra L. Bartky, ‘Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal
Power’, Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, ed. Irene Diamond and
Lee Quinby (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988), 80.
27
Michael Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, 1, la volonté de savoir.
28
Kelly Brownell, ‘Personal Responsibility and Control over Our Bodies: When
Expectation Exceeds Reality’, Health Psychology 15.5 (1991): 308.
29
Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
__________________________________________________________________
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uma análise discursive’. Master diss. Faculdade de Educação Física da
Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2004.
Saint-Pol, Thibault. Le corps désirable: hommes et femmes face à leur poids. Paris:
PUF, 2010.
World Health Organization. ‘Global Database on Body Mass Index’, 2006. Viewed
12 January 2015. http://apps.who.int/bmi/index.jsp.
Maria Clara de Moraes Prata Gaspar is a dietician currently doing her PhD
studies in Sociology and Anthropology of Food in the University of Toulouse and
University of Barcelona. She is interested in medicalization of food and body, and
the relationship between social and medical norms.
Lis Furlani Blanco is an anthropologist finishing her Master Degree on Social

Anthropology at the University of Campinas with a special interest in food
anthropology and studies in the interface between the biological and socio-cultural
spheres.
Being Faceless in the Fear of Food
Anne-Marie Gloster and Amber Leigh Thompson

Abstract
Registered dieticians hear many reasons why people don’t cook anymore.
Common excuses include that cooking is time consuming, it is costly and too much
trouble. But underneath these pretexts lies a reality that no one talks about… fear.
Fear is often what sequesters people from their kitchens. Human nature is such that
we gravitate to spaces that summon feelings of comfort and competence. The
kitchen has lost the status of being such a place. People have migrated away from
the kitchen as packaged food and restaurant fare is consumed in greater amounts.
As the home kitchen was abandoned so was the teaching and practice of culinary
arts. Home economics also quietly left the school curriculum, thereby creating an
even larger deficit in kitchen knowledge. As people moved out of the kitchen, the
fear of the unknown has crept in. Cooking confidence is at a new low. Enter the
Registered Dietician, the professional at the forefront of food and nutrition.
Ironically, most dieticians do not practice the art of cooking as a regular part of
their work. Food science, while a core element in the dietetics curriculum, is one of
the most underappreciated skills in the understanding of the link between nutrition
and human health. Dietetic students come wholly unprepared for their culinary
nutrition training because of the current culture of kitchen desertion. A primary
goal in the teaching of food science and culinary arts is to increase student’s self-
efficacy in the kitchen. Culinary and food science instructors must not only teach
skills, but they must overcome the student’s fear of the unknown. They must teach
in a manner that allows students to lose their egos, become faceless, and explore
their creative side, embrace their fears and cook anyway.
Key Words: Cooking, culinary arts, food science, self-efficacy, confidence,

kitchen, fear, kitchen literacy, home economics, education.
*****
1. Who Is in the Kitchen?

There are many reasons as to why individuals do not cook anymore. The
excuses most often cited include that cooking is too time consuming, it is costly
and too much trouble. Underneath these pretexts lies a reality that is largely
unaddressed… fear. Fear is ultimately what sequesters people from their kitchens.
There are fears of failure, fears of ingredients, fears of waste, fears of
embarrassment, and a fear for personal safety. Human nature is such that people
gravitate to spaces that summon feelings of comfort and competence. The kitchen
has lost the status of being such a place.
92 Being Faceless in the Fear of Food
__________________________________________________________________
Society has migrated away from the kitchen as consumption of packaged food
and food from restaurants has continued a steady increase. 1 As the home kitchen
has been abandoned, the teaching and practice of culinary arts has been deserted. 2
Home economics quietly left the school curriculum, thereby creating an even larger
deficit in kitchen knowledge. 3 This abandonment has created an opportunity for
fear to creep in; studies show that cooking confidence is at a new low. 4
One of the main behaviors encountered is hesitancy; it is not difficult to get
people excited about cooking. The interest is there and people are watching food
television in droves, and the celebrity chef has gained significant popularity. But
underneath the interest is uncertainty: ‘Will I get burned?’ ‘Will I chop my finger
off?’ ‘How was I supposed to hold this knife?’ This insecurity extends beyond the
apprentice levels and affects even professionals. When working chefs are asked
about their fears in the kitchen they can all speak to a deep-seated doubt. In the
restaurant environment, a chef is only as good as their last effort produced.
When the cooking school novice is either a young child or an older adult they
will admit to their fears and ignorance. Confessions as to why some techniques
work and others fail come easily to these groups. But the cohort with the most
impediments is the college age student, and in particular the student majoring in
human nutrition or dietetics, the proposed future food professional.
2. Teaching Culinary Nutrition at the Collegiate Level

In general, college students are in the phase of life where every action is judged
and life is a performance. Students of this age group are the ‘great pretenders’ who
feign knowing what they are doing. The nutrition student is especially anxious
about feeling pressure to know how to cook. Dietetics is supposed to be their major
after all and subsequently part of their life’s work. The reality is that this group has
a general lack of food science knowledge and basic hands-on kitchen skills. 5
Nutrition students produce ruined dishes with frequency in an effort to make
classic dishes healthier, without understanding basic culinary techniques or food
science. Their inability to functionally translate a recipe is termed as a lack of
kitchen literacy. It is these bad experiences that lead to shame and a desire to be
done with culinary class, and possibly leave the kitchen permanently.
Dietetic students are required to take a hands-on cooking class in their
undergraduate curriculum. This class is usually an introductory foods class or a
basic food science class. Typically the class includes a cooking lab as a part of the
course. It is during the lab section that dietetic students reveal their cooking
insecurities. The majority of these students are driven to be in the field of nutrition
for a variety of reasons; they have a family member with a nutrition-related health
crisis, or they have weight concerns, or they feel a strong desire to be in a health
profession. Most of these students do not possess a working knowledge of the
kitchen. In their minds, nutritional science and the culinary arts do not have
interdependence with one another. Yet, recent studies have shown that teaching
Anne-Marie Gloster and Amber Leigh Thompson 93
__________________________________________________________________
cooking skills and improving kitchen literacy is a legitimate strategy for improving
a person’s nutritional status and is vital to a dietetics curriculum. 6
As stated earlier, many nutrition students do not have a background in home
economics or experiences as children cooking at home with their parents. 7 Some
basic culinary tasks are executed without incident, but other tasks are not. As an
example, students instructed to ‘grease the bottom of the pan’ have been observed
greasing the outside bottom of the pan instead of the inside of the pan, causing the
pan to smoke in the oven and the product to stick to the inside. Another student
read a recipe that used ‘two tablespoons of cold butter’; instead of measuring the
cold butter, she melted the whole stick to meter out the two tablespoons and then
refrigerated these to return them to a solid state. ‘Mix by hand’ was demonstrated
by a student who inserted the whole hand, sans spoon, into a mixture in an attempt
to combine wet and dry ingredients. As these examples indicate, kitchen literacy is
not at the critical level required of a future food professional. 8
It is the opinion of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) that
‘dietitians are the most qualified professionals for the delivery of food and nutrition
related services’. 9 Yet, the lack of culinary skills in this profession is somewhat
understandable as there are many dietetic positions that don’t include the actual
processing of raw food products. Many dietitians hold clinical positions and
therefore never come in contact with actual food. In fact, some students view the
foods class as a necessary evil, in order to advance through the nutrition
curriculum. But, to be an expert in nutrition, you must know about food. Core
competencies essential for dietitians, as defined by the AND, include basic cooking
skills, cooking techniques, recipe development and recipe modification. 10 People
do not consume isolated nutrients, but rather consume whole foods. How can a
dietitian claim to be a nutrition expert, and not understand the science behind food
preparation? How can you tell someone what to eat but not how to cook it? 11 This
is tantamount to a nursing student that refuses to come in contact with bodily
fluids, or the car mechanic that refuses to get his hands dirty. Neither can do an
effective job with these barriers in place.
3. Educational Strategies
The nutrition student who lacks basic food science knowledge has a low level
of kitchen literacy, and feels insecure is the student with the most fear to overcome.
Often, this is the student who feels a need to posture in front of their peers. This is
the student who excels at washing the dishes and claims that other students should
have the experience of performing the hands-on tasks. An educational strategy
employed by culinary teachers to identify this student is to place a whole raw
chicken in their hands and ask for it to be fabricated into eight pieces as the
instructor just demonstrated. Often students will have consumed cooked chicken
their whole lives and yet have never touched a raw piece of chicken. The student
approaches this slippery and intimidating bird with pokes and prods. If they are
__________________________________________________________________
able to express their insecurity and lack of process knowledge the instructor will
step in and the task is brought back on track and eventually the student produces
the eight elementary pieces required by the assignment. As these chicken parts
emerge on the cutting board a sudden empowering moment happens to the student.
It might not be mastery, but it is a huge accomplishment and applauded as a
success. Any slight setback can cause a student to give up on the whole process,
before they even arrive at the actual cooking part. A mental surrender in the
kitchen is equal to a white flag being attached to your cutting board. Hence, one of
the primary goals of the instructor is to assist the student to overcome his/her fears.
Learning outcomes in a culinary nutrition program would benefit from the
inclusion of the following: the student will be able to 1) demonstrate self-efficacy
in the kitchen and 2) express him or herself at a critical level of kitchen literacy. To
that end there are several strategies that have been employed by educators in an
effort to address these learning goals. One such method requires students to set
weekly kitchen SMART goals for themselves at home. This acronym is designed
to encourage students to practice new culinary Skills or to have a new Sensory
food experience. The effort must be Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and
Timely. In effect, the student is asked to try something new and then analyze
his/her efforts. Analysis of both successes and failures is a key part to becoming
more fluent in the kitchen. This process leads to a deeper understanding of food
chemistry, which ultimately governs what is and what is not possible in food
preparation. Once an individual has learned the basic science of food, more success
will naturally follow.
A constant building of skill level is required even for the food professional, and
especially for the food novice. It is imperative that the student starts small when it
comes to food preparation. Starting with a complex dish such as Beef Wellington is
not recommended, as a failure would be expensive and very discouraging. Students
are instructed to begin with simple food preparation procedures, and ensure they
adequately execute the said procedure before moving on to something more
complex. Along this same idea of building skill levels, numerous culinary
instructors encourage students to master ten favorite recipes, in order to feed
themselves and others with pride. This builds confidence in the student, and it is
also the beginning of a decent gastronomic repertoire. Further, when a student
understands and can accomplish each recipe and three variations of it, then he/she
is well on their way to culinary fluidity.
Having the proper equipment is also a necessary element for success. Essential
equipment needs not be expensive, and students are instructed to make this small
investment. A sharp chef’s knife, a cutting board, and at least one quality sauté pan
are the first recommended items. As skill levels increase there is a subsequent
desire to obtain higher quality equipment and expand one’s collection of culinary
gadgets. In almost every field of study or trade, using superior equipment can
elevate a novice experience into one that feels professional.
__________________________________________________________________
Success inspires a desire for improvement and the willingness to attempt
culinary greatness again and again. Developing a resource network is also
encouraged. This can include befriending people with culinary knowledge such as
a neighbor, friend, co-worker or family member. Watching, and practicing what is
observed, on cooking shows and in online video tutorials is also an excellent
method for improving kitchen proficiency. Encouraging students to seek out
culinary information in places other than formal instruction can greatly assist in
acquiring additional knowledge.
As knowledge and skills increase the students gain self-efficacy in the kitchen
and overcome the fears they brought with them to the class. But there is one last
notable strategy that can be used by culinary educators to overcome fear in the
kitchen; it is to incorporate an attitude of fun and create a space where failure is
just another opportunity to learn. In order to fail successfully one must strip away
their ego and become ‘faceless in the fear of food’. At some point all culinarians,
whether they be pupils or professionals, must lose their egos and explore their
creative side; embrace fear and cook anyway.
Notes
1
Margaret D. Condrasky and Marle Hegler, ‘How Culinary Nutrition Can Save the
Health of a Nation’, Journal of Extension 48 (2010), viewed 13 January 2015,
http://www.joe.org; Rachel Engler-Stringer, ‘Food, Cooking Skills, and Health: A
Literature Review’, Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research 71
(2010): 141-145.
2
Levy J. Auld, ‘Cooking Classes Outperform Cooking Demonstrations for College
Sophomores’, Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 36 (2004): 197-203.
3
Andrea Begley and Danielle Gallegos, ‘Should Cooking Be a Dietetic
Competency’, Nutrition and Dietetics 67 (2010): 41-46.
4
Elisabeth Winkler and Gavin Turrell, ‘Confidence to Cook Vegetables and the
Buying Habits of Australian Households’, Journal of the American Dietetic
Association 109 (2009): 1759-1768; Enger-Stringer, ‘Food, Cooking Skills, and
Health: A Literature Review’, 71.
5
Leann Schaeffer et al., ‘Assessment of Food Preparation and Culinary Skills of
Coordinated Dietetic Program Interns’, Nutrition and Dietetic Educator
Practitioners Line 9 (2013): 9-14.
6
Begley and Gallegos, ‘Should Cooking Be a Dietetic Competency’, 67; Schaeffer
et al., ‘Assessment of Food Preparation and Culinary Skills of Coordinated Dietetic
Program Interns’, 9; Michael Cheng et al., ‘The Development of Culinary Arts and
Food Science into a New Academic Discipline – Culinology’, Journal of Culinary
Science and Technology 9 (2010): 17-26.
7
Engler-Stringer, ‘Food, Cooking Skills, and Health: A Literature Review’, 71.
__________________________________________________________________
8
Don Nutbeam, ‘Defining and Measuring Health Literacy: What Can We Learn
From Literacy Studies?’ International Journal of Public Health 54 (2009): 303-
309.
9
Begley and Gallegos, ‘Should Cooking Be a Dietetic Competency’, 67; M. B.
Gregoire et al., ‘Are Registered Dietitians Adequately Prepared to Be Food Service
Directors?’ Journal of the American Dietetic Association 105 (2005): 1215-1225.
10
Begley and Gallegos, ‘Should Cooking Be a Dietetic Competency’, 67.
11
Sheri Cooper and Andrea Begley, ‘Washington Health Practitioners and
Cooking: How Well Do They Mix’, Nutrition and Dietetics 68 (2011): 65-69.
Bibliography
Auld, Levy J. ‘Cooking Classes Outperform Cooking Demonstrations for College
Sophomores’. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 36 (2004): 197-203.
Begley, Andrea, and Danielle Gallegos. ‘Should Cooking Be a Dietetic

Competency’. Nutrition and Dietetics 67 (2010): 41-46.
Cheng, Michael, Godwin-Charles A. Ogbeide, and Fayrene L. Hamouz. ‘The

Development of Culinary Arts and Food Science into a New Academic Discipline
– Culinology’. Journal of Culinary Science and Technology 9 (2011): 17-26.
Condrasky, Margaret D., and Marle Hegler. ‘How Culinary Nutrition Can Save the
Health of a Nation’. Journal of Extension 48 (2010). Viewed 13 January 2015.
http://www.joe.org.
Cooper, Sheri, and Andrea Begley. ‘Washington Health Practitioners and Cooking:
How Well Do They Mix’. Nutrition and Dietetics 68 (2011): 65-69.
Engler-Stringer, Rachel. ‘Food, Cooking Skills, and Health: A Literature Review’.

Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research 71 (2010): 141-145.
Gregoire, M. B., K. Sames, R. A. Dowling, and L. J. Rafferty. ‘Are Registered

Dietitians Adequately Prepared to Be Food Service Directors’. Journal of
American Dietetic Association 105 (2005): 1215-1225.
Nutbeam, Don. ‘Defining and Measuring Health Literacy: What Can We Learn
from Literacy Studies?’ International Journal of Public Health 54 (2009): 303-
309.
__________________________________________________________________
Schaeffer, Leann, Sandra Hudak, Anne Weiner, and Brian Miller. ‘Assessment of
Food Preparation and Culinary Skills of Coordinated Dietetic Program Interns’.
Nutrition and Dietetic Educator Practitioners Line 9 (2013): 9-14.
Winkler, Elisabeth, and Gavin Turrell. ‘Confidence to Cook Vegetables and the
Buying Habits of Australian Households’. Journal of the American Dietetic
Association 109 (2009): 1759-1768.
Anne-Marie Gloster is a dietitian who has specialized in food system

management and food science. Currently she is teaching in North Carolina and
exploring the concept of kitchen literacy and finding best practices for teaching
food science and culinary arts.
Amber Leigh Thompson is a culinary school graduate and is currently pursuing a

second degree in nutrition in North Carolina. She has worked in the food service
industry for thirteen years.
The Common Oat as Food and Medicament in Greek Medical
Treatises of Antiquity and Byzantium, II-VII c. AD.
Maciej Kokoszko
Abstract
The chapter refers to the scale of cultivation, dietetic characterization, culinary
application and therapeutic uses of the common oat. As for the first point, the study
presents evidence showing that both in Antiquity as well as over the early
Byzantine period oats belonged to the crops which did not enjoy much appreciation
nor special attention on the part of both mass consumers as well as medical
specialists. Generally the cereal was thought to be worse than other crops and
therefore lending itself to being, first and foremost, animal fodder. It was made use
of almost exclusively as emergency food in case of shortages of other cereals. As
far as the second issue is concerned, the study shows how the crop was
characterized from the point of view of medicine (as a foodstuff and as a
medicament). The author refers to descriptions of the cereal given by physicians
which underline its unappealing flavour (revealing unbalanced humours, i.e.
kakochymia), limited wholesomeness, its slight astringency, poor digestibility,
desiccating and heating action. Subsequently, the researcher demonstrates ways of
its usage as a foodstuff in culinary procedures shown in medical writings. As a
result, the chapter tries to explain the meaning of medical and culinary terms used
in the context. Ultimately, the study enumerates main ailments cured by means of
oat itself and oat medicaments as specified in sources.
Key Words: Cereals in Antiquity and Byzantium, the common oat, history of
food, history of medicine, ancient and Byzantine dietetics, ancient and Byzantine
pharmacology.
*****
In Greek oats 1 were known as bromos 2 or bormos. 3 Against a backdrop of the

history of the majority of other cereals, the history of the cultivation of oat
occupies a special and untypical place. When more than 10 thousand years ago the
inhabitants of the Middle East started to successfully apply wheat and barley in
their diet, it was unavoidable that numerous varieties of undesirable weeds also
crept in. Competing resolutely with the plants favoured by farmers, they decreased
their yield and for this reason were fought – mainly unsuccessfully. These
aggressive intruders included the seeds of wild-growing varieties of oat. 4
Data confirming this initial role of the said cereal crop are present in numerous
literary sources originating from antiquity, while information referring to the same
topic is also present in Byzantine treatises, which allows us to guess that
throughout the period constituting the subject of our deliberations oat invariably
100 The Common Oat as Food and Medicament in Greek Medical Treatises
__________________________________________________________________
played a dual role – that of a cultivated plant and a weed. 5 This phenomenon may
be illustrated by citing just some of the information available in sources. In the 1st
century AD, Pliny maintained that barley is frequently grown over with oat (and
other similarly looking plants), and that diseases of barley are brought about by the
proximity of this unwanted crop. 6 Furthermore, Hesychius wrote in the 6th century
AD that although in his time oat was deliberately sown at various locations in the
Mediterranean Basin, it grew in many others as a wild plant. 7
Oats were not highly valued as a crop. It was fairly common in the region,
which fact is attested to by – for example – Cato for Italia in the 2nd century BC, 8
or by Galen 9 for Asia Minor towards the end of 1st and in the beginning of the 2nd
century AD, but we may surmise that it was always treated in the main as an
undesirable admix to the dominant cultivars. 10 It could not therefore compete with
wheat and barley. 11 This was mainly due to the fact that the same products
obtained from the processing of oats (namely flour and groats) were considered as
being of inferior quality and taste, and therefore a good less desired by local
consumers. 12
On the other hand, not infrequently the inhabitants of the region were forced to
satisfy their hunger with oats. This was the case when the elements destroyed
wheat and barley harvests, and the nutritional demands of local communities had to
be satisfied otherwise. 13 Shortages were supplemented with various substitute
edibles, and those obtained from oats were readily available and therefore well
suited for this role. 14 This phenomenon finds reflection in Galen's comments, 15
which outlined the situation of the eastern part of the Mediterranean, and which
were later repeated – in the 4th century AD – by Oribasius. 16 Galen maintained that
oats, although growing in large quantities in Mysia, were not treated as a raw
material for baking bread, unless in situations of extreme hunger. But this does not
mean, as he wrote, that oats were not consumed at all outside of periods of
privation. On the contrary, they were used to make a sort of thick soup. However,
when the supply of cereals was plentiful, Galen suggested, oats were used normally
and primarily as animal feed, which fact is confirmed also by Oribasius. 17
Over successive centuries, the culinary predilections of Greeks, Romans and
other peoples living in the Mediterranean zone did not change to a degree
sufficient for the cereal crop to become a common ingredient of daily meals.
Nevertheless, peasants continued to sow it on some of their land, treating it as a
fodder crop and a substitute foodstuff in times of hunger. 18 This situation remained
more or less unaltered until the end of the researched period. 19 What is more, there
is no evidence that the so-called Arab agricultural revolution initiated under
Muslim rule brought about any modification in the approach to oats or an increase
in its consumption by those inhabiting the researched areas, which came under the
control of the invaders.
Although it would be difficult to call oats a popular and valued foodstuff,
ancient and Byzantine science elaborated an altogether cohesive set of views that
Maciej Kokoszko 101
__________________________________________________________________
may be termed as a dietetic and pharmacological characteristic of this cereal crop.
Galen in his treatise De victu attenuante stated that following the removal of husks
and cleaning, oat grains have a stronger action 20 than wheat, barley or spelt. 21 In
De alimentorum facultatibus, in turn, we learn that it shares this property with
einkorn wheat; however, does not warm the body to the same extent. 22 Moreover,
he maintained that bread from oat is neither tasty nor nutritious, and in contrast to
oat itself it does not affect the alimentary tract, remaining a foodstuff which neither
slows down nor stimulates the work of the bowels. 23 Finally, in the De simplicium
alimentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus he makes a direct reference to yet
another feature attributed to oats, namely its astringent/styptic action. 24
The doctrines found in the works of Oribasius are dependent on the findings of
Galen and Dieuches, the other a doctor who was active in the 3rd century BC.
Oribasius' works contain a systematised description of oats and the products
obtained therefrom. This became an integral part of the 3rd book of Collectiones
medicae and was subsequently repeated in Synopsis ad Eustathium filium and Libri
ad Eunapium. A close reading of these works informs us that oats were considered
products belonging to the kakochyma (of disturbed humoral balance) group, 25
dyspepta (hard to digest in the stomach), 26 while the cereal itself was assessed as
not nourishing 27 as well as having a drying (without damaging tissue), 28 and
warming effect. 29
Aetius of Amida, who wrote in the 6th century AD, included a relatively brief
description of oats in book I of his work entitled Iatricorum libri. We read that oats
are by their nature cooler than other cereal simple substances 30 and have a
somewhat styptic action. The latter property makes it possible to utilise oats as a
medicine for diarrhoea. 31 Other properties of this crop were discussed in chapters
of book II, which group products with specific dietetic properties, and they are
analogous to the ones enumerated by Oribasius. 32
In the 7th century AD, Paul of Aegina stated in book VII of his Epitome that
oats have properties similar to barley. They dry moderately and bring about the
excretion of metabolic wastes without damaging tissues. The cereal also has a
styptic astringent/action and for this reason is used in the treatment of diarrhoea. 33
Both in antiquity and the Byzantine era, oats were only uncommonly used in
gastronomy. Such a conclusion may be drawn not only from comments directly
made by contemporary authors, 34 but also from the lack of detailed culinary recipes
mentioning this product. 35 For this reason, in order to comprehend how oats were
used to make food, we must often make use of analogies with the preparation of
other cereal products.
General data indicates that oats were used to make thin liquid food, gruels/paps
(poltos), and to bake bread. Dishes of the first type were known under a multitude
of terms. The sources analysed in the present study indicate that among others the
following names were used: apozema, 36 chylos, 37 hepsema 38 and rofema. 39
__________________________________________________________________
The term apozema appears in the context of the processing of oats, when
Alexander of Tralles, a 6th century physician, writes about various types of stocks
(or perhaps decoctions) 40 that were based on a whole gamut of raw materials in
order to obtain products which – while retaining their nutritional value – could also
be used in therapeutics. The author maintained that in his time there was already a
long-standing tradition of using various decoctions in medicine. Since a thin
ptisane 41 stock had already been utilized in treatment by Hippocrates himself,
others – perhaps following in his footsteps – made broad use of products from the
apozemata category, primarily to facilitate the excretion of phlegm infesting the
bronchi. He also added that if anyone reacted badly to a drug such as chylos tes
ptisanes, one could use an analogous product, namely – as Alexander of Tralles
informed – the apozema known as a chylos (made from oats). Alexander did not
give a precise description of the recipes for these medicinal foods. He only
mentioned that the consistency of such a product depended on the efficacy of its
action, 42 i.e. its ability to remove secretions from the chest and lungs. 43
As regards the term chylos, 44 an analysis of Alexander of Tralles' leads us to the
conclusion that semantically it could be a substitute for the word apozema
discussed above. The product itself, apart from being used as a sui generis syrup,
could also be applied as a basic element of food, since it constituted a diet
appropriate, for example, for those with a fever 45 or liver problems. 46
The term hepsema in turn referred to the entirety of products and dishes
obtained as the result of boiling. 47 If we read specific statements made by Dieuches
and Oribasius concerning hepsemata, we learn that these extracts could be obtained
as the result of boiling groats from various cereal crops, for example alfita
produced from oats. These were added to either a stock, for example chicken or
mutton broth, or cooked in milk with poppy seeds and pounded figs. To obtain
such alfita, oats were roasted in hulls, cleaned and subsequently ground. 48
As for the term rofema, some information concerning the nature of the soup
from oats was provided by Oribasius (in his excerpts from Dieuches). 49 According
to the author, this dish is prepared in the same way as ptisane, by mixing one kotyle
of oats with ten kotylai of water. 50 Taking into consideration the proportion of
liquid to oat groats, we are able to risk the opinion that the dish thus obtained was a
sort of thin oat stock, which in all probability could be drunk.
Amongst cereal dishes which were said to be thick, experts on ancient
gastronomy include poltos. 51 This dish is particularly important in the context of
the topic of the present deliberations, for Pliny in his Historia Naturalis stressed
that the Germans ate this type of dish, which was made from oat grains. 52
However, while for the Germans this meal constituted a daily staple, the
inhabitants of the Mediterranean only prepared it when other, more highly valued
cereals, were unavailable. 53 When attempting to reconstruct the recipe for poltos,
we can, for instance, use an analogy to the recipe in which the ingredient are groats
from a different cereal – spelt, i.e. alix. 54 Such a dish could have been prepared
Maciej Kokoszko 103
__________________________________________________________________
from ground cereal simmered in water or milk. 55 Information provided by Aetius
of Amida indicates that it was prepared by cooking groats in water spiced with salt,
olive oil and dill. Sometimes, the olive oil was replaced with fresh fat, obtained
from chickens or geese. 56
Finally, oats were also used to bake bread. As was already mentioned that was
not a standard procedure. It was applied only when no better-suited cereals were
available, and in particular when there was a poor harvest of wheat or barley. Oat
bread was not valued, and Galen wrote of its taste with aversion. Nevertheless, it
was occasionally consumed, as is attested to by the above mentioned dietetic
assessments of this food.
As for therapeutic applications of oats, Galen stated that the cereal used
externally, as a component of cataplasms, dries and moderately facilitates the
excretion of products of metabolism without harming the body. In addition, the
physician touched upon the internal application of oats, for he stressed that thanks
to their natural tartness, which has a styptic action, 57 the cereal may be
administered to people suffering from diarrhoea. 58 However, he did not give any
detail about the way it was administered.
Oribasius, following the advice of his predecessor, also noted that oats are good
for cataplasms, which clearly have diaphoretic properties. 59 However, this action is
delicate enough to ensure that no bodily tissues are damaged. 60 Since in his
writings he emphasised the styptic properties of oats, 61 one should surmise that he
also recommended the cereal for situations requiring medicines and foods
facilitating the treatment of dysentery. In any case, this hypothesis is confirmed by
excerpts which Oribasius made from Dieuches' work. In his deliberations, which
fundamentally concerned groats such as oat alfita, he wrote that the cereal was
added into a meat broth, stating that the dish thus obtained is good for those
suffering from dysentery. 62 In turn, alfita boiled in milk and consumed with
additives such as poppy seeds and figs had a calming effect 63 and limited the
generation of urine. 64
Aetius of Amida continued to support similar doctrines. In his Iatricorum libri
we read about the astringent/styptic properties of oats and their application as a
medicine for diarrhoea, 65 which had already been written about by Galen. What is
more, similarly to Oribasius, Aetius mentioned the drying action of the cereal,
which was delicate for tissues. 66 Thus, we should surmise that the physician was
touching upon the application of oats in diaphoretic compresses, which have
already been mentioned in the analysis of the doctrines of his predecessors.
A relatively copious body of information on medical procedures which utilised
the properties of oats was passed on by Alexander of Tralles. The author
maintained that this cereal is useful as a foodstuff in the treatment of sicknesses
accompanied by high temperatures. In this condition patients were treated with
regular (i.e. barley) or oat ptisane. 67 As a result, oat soup is included amongst the
most valuable therapeutic foodstuffs medicine had at their disposal to treat patients
__________________________________________________________________
afflicted with all disorders accompanied with fever. The conclusion is corroborated
by a statement from De febribus, which indicates that a thin oat stock, chylos, was
given to persons suffering from another ailment of the sort, namely from three-day
fever. 68 Secondly, Alexander anticipated the application of oat decoctions in the
treatment of ailments of the alimentary tract. Their diluted - and therefore thin -
version 69 was administered as an important foodstuff to persons complaining of
abdominal pains caused by an inflammation of the alimentary tract. 70 In addition,
chylos made from oats 71 was also recommended as a food in cases of liver fundus
inflammation, 72 since, as he explained, it purified and had a purgative action
without irritating or heating up this organ. Finally, a similar medicament was used
to facilitate the expectoration of phlegm. 73 Though Alexander spares us details, this
doctrine, too, has its substantiation in the already presented findings of earlier
medics.
Paul of Aegina did not include a great deal of information directly concerning
the therapeutic applications of oats in his work. However, in book VII of his
Epitome, 74 he mentioned the moderately drying properties of oats, as well as the
fact that the cereal influences the excretion of products of metabolism without
damaging bodily tissues. 75 We may therefore opine that he recommended using
oats in cataplasms, which have been mentioned above. Additionally, in the very
same fragment – and in line with the doctrines of his predecessors - he states that
oats were used as a medicine in the treatment of diarrhoea due to their
astringent/styptic action. 76 Furthermore, Paul wrote down an important piece of
information concerning the preparation of a medicinal oat soup, which, as we have
already established, was the equivalent of ptisane. 77 Though he does not touch on
the reasons for its administering, it is probable that he thereby, and following the
tradition of ancient medicine, recommended its usage in instances where the body
required purification, cooling and watering, i.e. in situations where this soup was
usually served to patients. In accordance with previously cited information, the
food could be administered - for example - in the event of a fever. Finally, the very
same physician suggested that oats be used in the treatment of persons coming out
of lethargy. Patient should eat ptisane or chylos made from oats (this was, most
probably, a reference to a thin soup), or chylos made from alix and spiced with
oksymeli or salt, or even field mint. 78
To sum up, the above-presented data shows that oat, even if it did not enjoy
much appreciation nor special attention on the part of both mass consumers and
dieticians, was a point of interest of both culinary art as well as medicine. As a
foodstuff it was treated mostly as emergency food. Nor did it acquire a prominent
role as a medicine, being treated first and foremost as a substitute for other more
appreciated therapeutic substances. As far as the latter application is concerned,
however, the presented information appears to demonstrate that oat was evaluated
as one of the most effective plant substances in treatment of gastric ailments
resulting in diarrhoea, and especially in dysentery.
Maciej Kokoszko 105
__________________________________________________________________
Notes
1
The study has been prepared in connection with the grant DEC-
2011/01/BHS3/01020. The present analysis is a substantially augmented version of
the results of research set forward in Maciej Kokoszko, ‘Smaki Konstantynopola’,
Konstantynopol nowy Rzym. Miasto i ludzie w okresie wczesnobizantńskim, eds.
Mirosław J. Leszka and Teresa Wolińska (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe
PWN, 2011), 480-482; Maciej Kokoszko and Krzysztof Jagusiak, ‘Zboża
Bizancjum. Kilka uwag na temat roli produktów zbożowych na podstawie źródeł
greckich’, Zeszyty Wiejskie 17 (2012): 31-33. It also includes amended data
contained in Maciej Kokoszko, Krzysztof Jagusiak and Zofia Rzeźnicka, ‘Owies w
greckich traktatach medycznych starożytności i Bizancjum (V w. przed Chr.-XI w.
po Chr.)’, Vox Patrum 33.59 (2013): 421-447.
2
‘Alexandri Tralliani de febribus’, I, 371, 9-10, Alexander von Tralles, ed.
Theodorus Puschmann, vol. I (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1963) (hereinafter: Alexander
of Tralles, De febribus); ‘Alexandri Tralliani therapeutica’, II, 221, 15, Alexander
von Tralles, ed. Theodorus Puschmann, vol. I-II (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1963)
(hereinafter: Alexander of Tralles, Therapeutica).
3
Ioannes Raeder, ed., Oribasii collectionum medicarum reliquiae, IV, 7, 20, 1, vol.
I-IV (Lipsiae/Berolini: Teubner, 1928-1933) (hereinafter: Oribasius, Collectiones
medicae); Mauricius Schmidt, ed., Hesychii Alexandrini lexicon, β, βóρμος, 826, 1,
vol. I-V (Ienae: Dufft, 1859-1868) (hereinafter: Hesychios, Lexicon).
4
The history of the domestication of oat and its role in antiquity is usually poorly
covered in literature, for instance cf. Giuseppe Sassatelli, ‘L’alimentation des
Étrusques’, Histoire de l’alimentation, eds. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo
Montanari (Paris: Fayard, 1996), 187; Andrew Dalby, Food in the Ancient World
from A to Z (London/New York: Routledge, 2003), 236; Joan P. Alcock, Food in
the Ancient World (Westport, Connecticut/London: Greenwood Press, 2006), 22,
34.
5
Ann Hyland, Equus: The Horse in the Roman World (New Haven/London: Yale
6
Pliny, Natural History with an English Translation in Ten Volumes, XVIII, 44,
149-150, trans. Harris Rackham (London: Heinemann/Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1938-1963) (hereinafter: Pliny, Historia naturalis).
7
Hesychios, Lexicon, β, βóρμος, 826, 1-2.
8
M. Porci Catonis de agri cultura, C, 37, 5, ed. Henricus Keil (Lipsiae: Teubner,
1895). Archaeological finds attest the presence of oats in ancient Tuscany,
although Giuseppe Sassatelli is somewhat imprecise about the dating as well as
pinpointing to what extent the data confirms cultivation of the cereal – Sassatelli,
‘L’alimentation’, 187.
__________________________________________________________________
9
‘Galeni de alimentorum facultatibus libri III’, 1, Claudii Galeni opera omnia, ed.
Carolus G. Kühn, vol. VI (Lipsiae: Cnobloch, 1823), 522, 15-523 (hereinafter:
Galen, De alimentorum facultatibus).
10
James F. Hancock, Plant Evolution and the Origin of Crop Species
(Wallingford/Cambridge, MA: CABI Pub., 2004), 185.
11
On staple cereals cf. Paul Halstead, ‘Food Production’, A Cultural History of
Food in Antiquity, ed. Paul Erdkamp (London/New York: BERG, 2012), 24-27.
The author writes about the role of oats in the diet somewhat elusively. However,
one can guess that his research has proved that the cereal was indubitably grown
(cf. pages 25, 37), although it was of secondary importance and often used as feed
for livestock (cf. pages 31-35). Neither do Wim Broekaert and Arjan Zuiderhoek
assess the crop as very important, though at the same time they note its presence on
the ancient market – Wim Broekaert and Arjan Zuiderhoek, ‘Food Systems in
Classical Antiquity’, A Cultural History of Food in Antiquity, ed. Paul Erdkamp
(London/New York: BERG, 2012), 45.
12
Cf. Galen's information concerning the taste of bread baked from oats. I interpret
it as traces of a sui generis culturally established reluctance – Galen, De
alimentorum facultatibus, 523, 7. Cf. Andrew Dalby, Siren Feasts. A History of
Food and Gastronomy in Greece (London/New York: Routledge, 1996), 90;
Alcock, Food, 34. Naturally, it is impossible to analyse the individual culinary
avocations of the people of the period, amongst whom there must have been a
number of enthusiasts products obtained from oats. When having a choice,
however, the absolutely majority preferred other cereals.
13
Such instance was not infrequent. Cf Paul Erdkamp, The Grain Market in the
Roman Empire. A Social, Political and Economic Study (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), 51-54. On strategies adopted in such hardship cf. Paul
Erdkamp, ‘Food Security, Safety and Crises’, A Cultural History of Food in
Antiquity, ed. Paul Erdkamp (London/New York: BERG, 2012), 61-64; Paul
Goutkowsky, ‘L’alimentation en Grèce et à Rome en temps de crise’, Colloque.
Pratiques et discours alimenatires en Méditerranée de l’antiquité à la renaissance.
Actes, ed. Jean Leclant, André Vauchez and Maurice Sartre (Paris: Diffusion de
Boccard, 2008), 123-146.
14
Main modes of alimentary application of oats have been explained by Joan P.
Alcock, Food, 34 and John M. Wilkins and Shaun Hill, Food in the Ancient World
(Malden, MA/Oxford/Carlton, Victoria: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 118-119.
15
Galen, De alimentorum facultatibus, 522, 15-523, 4.
16
Oribasius, Collectiones medicae, I, 14, 1, 3-2, 1.
17
Ibid., I, 14, 1, 1.
18
On oats in the Byzantine period, for instance cf. Andrew Dalby, Flavours of
Byzantium (Blackawton/Totnes, Devon: Prospect Books, 2003), 77-78; Marcus L.
Maciej Kokoszko 107
__________________________________________________________________
Rautman, The Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire (Westport, Connecticut:

Greenwood Press, 2006), 173, 177. For ampler bibliography cf. Kokoszko,
Jagusiak and Rzeźnicka, ‘Owies’, 421-447.
19
I hold the opinion that Chrisi Bourbou’s statement that oats belonged to the
crops which were traditionally grown in Byzantium is somewhat misleading, since
it inadvertently suggests a prominent role of the crop in agriculture and diet –
Chrisi Bourbou, Health and Disease in Byzantine Crete (7th-12th Centuries AD)
(Farnham, Surrey/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 128. On the whole, the cereal
has been mentioned in her research only once on the aforesaid page.
20
This most probably refers to its impact on digestive processes.
21
Carolus Kalbfleisch, ed., Galeni de victu attenuante, 43, 2-3 (Lipsiae/Berolini:
Teubner, 1923).
22
Galen, De alimentorum facultatibus, 523, 3-6.
23
Ibid., 523, 6-8. It is possible that this unfavourable evaluation stems also from
the fact that oats are devoid of gluten and consequently unable to produce a bread
resembling that baked from wheat. The same quality was also characteristic of
barley bread – Galen, De alimentorum facultatibus, 504, 9-10; Oribasius,
Collectiones medicae I, 10, 2, 3.
24
‘Galeni de simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus libri XI’,
855, 6, in Claudii Galeni opera omnia, ed. Carolus G. Kühn, vol. XI-XII (Lipsiae:
Cnobloch, 1826-1827) (hereinafter: Galen, De simplicium).
25
Oribasius, Collectiones medicae, III, 16, 1, 1-18, 3 (oats - III, 16, 8, 1-2);
‘Oribasii synopsis ad Eustathium filium’, IV, 15, 1, 1-18, 4, in Oribasii synopsis ad
Eustathium filium et libri ad Eunapium, ed. Ioannes Raeder, vol. VI, 3 (Lipsiae:
Teubner, 1964) (hereinafter: Oribasius, Synopsis ad Eustathium filium) (oats – IV,
15, 8, 1); ‘Oribasii libri ad Eunapium’, I, 33, 1, 1-16, 4, in Oribasii synopsis ad
Eustathium filium et libri ad Eunapium, ed. Ioannes Raeder, vol. VI, 3 (Lipsiae:
Teubner, 1964), (hereinafter: Oribasius, Libri ad Eunapium) (oats – I, 33, 5, 2).
26
Oribasius, Collectiones medicae, III, 18, 1, 1-13, 1 (oats – III, 18, 11, 1);
Oribasius, Synopsis ad Eustathium filium, IV, 17, 1, 1-12, 1 (oats – IV, 17, 9, 1);
Oribasius, Libri ad Eunapium, I, 35, 1, 1-8, 2 (oats – I, 35, 7, 5).
27
Oribasius, Collectiones medicae, III, 18, 1, 1-13, 1 (oats – III, 18, 11, 1);
Oribasius, Synopsis ad Eustathium filium, IV, 13, 1, 1-12, 4 (oats – IV, 13, 6, 3);
Oribasius, Libri ad Eunapium, I, 30, 1, 1-8, 2 (oats – I, 30, 6, 3).
28
Oribasius, Collectiones medicae, XIV, 24, 1, 1-5, 4 (oats – XIV, 24, 1, 2-3);
Oribasius, Synopsis ad Eustathium filium, II, 12, 1, 1-16 (oats – II, 12, 1, 2;
Oribasius, Libri ad Eunapium, II, 6, 1, 1-22 (oats – II, 6, 1, 2-3).
29
Oribasius, Collectiones medicae, III, 31, 1, 1-8, 4 (oats – III, 31, 1, 1); Oribasius,
Synopsis ad Eustathium filium, IV, 31, 1, 1-8, 4 (oats – IV, 31, 1, 1); Oribasius,
Libri ad Eunapium, I, 47, 1, 1-9 (oats – I, 47, 1, 1).
__________________________________________________________________
30
Namely, this property is more pronounced in oats than in the previously
mentioned product, i.e. Cochlearia anglica (English Scurvy-grass). Concerning
this herb, cf. Alexander Olivieri, ed., Aetii Amideni libri medicinales I-VIII, I, 72,
1-5 (Lipsiae/Berolini: Teubner, 1935-1950) (hereinafter: Aetius of Amida,
Iatricorum libri).
31
Aetius of Amida, Iatricorum libri, I, 73, 1-2.
32
Hard to digest – Aetius of Amida, Iatricorum libri, II, 255, 1-25 (oats – II, 255,
18); of disturbed humoral balance – Aetius of Amida, Iatricorum libri, II, 253, 1-
37 (oats – II, 253, 13); not nourishing adequately – Aetius of Amida, Iatricorum
libri, II, 251, 1-25 (oats – II, 251, 8); slightly desiccating – Aetius of Amida,
Iatricorum libri, II, 208, 1-15 (oats – II, 208, 2).
33
Ioannes L. Heiberg, ed., Paulus Aegineta, VII, 3, 2, 77-79, vol. I-II
(Lipsiae/Berolini: Teubner, 1921-1924) (hereinafter: Paul of Aegina, Epitome).
34
A good example are the comments of Galen and Oribasius (cited here above),
which concern the low esteem in which this food was held by the peoples
inhabiting the Mediterranean Basin.
35
Oats are not mentioned in the only ancient cook book extant to this day, namely
De re coquinaria ascribed to Apicius. On the work cf. Maciej Kokoszko and Zofia
Rzeźnicka, ‘Dietetyka w De re coquinaria’, Przegląd Nauk Historycznych 10.2
(2011): 10-11; Maciej Kokoszko, Zofia Rzeźnicka and Krzysztof Jagusiak, ‘Health
and Culinary Art in Antiquity and Early Byzantium in the Light of De re
coquinaria’, Studia Ceranea 2 (2012): 149.
36
Cf. e.g. Alexander of Tralles, Therapeutica, II, 241, 13-243, 5.
37
Cf. e.g. Alexander of Tralles, De febribus, I, 371, 9-10.
38
Cf. e.g. Oribasius, Collectiones medicae, IV, 6, 1, 1.
39
Cf. e.g. Oribasius, Synopsis ad Eustathium filium, IV, 35, 19, 1.
40
Cf. Henry G. Liddel and Robert Scott, eds., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1996), 198, s.v. ἀπόζεμα.
41
A soup or extract obtained from barley groats. Concerning this term, cf.
hereunder. On this medicinal dish cf. Ernst Darmstaedter, ‘Ptisana: ein Beitrag zur
Kenntnis der antiken Diaetetik’, Archeion 15 (1933): 181-201; Maciej Kokoszko,
Krzysztof Jagusiak and Zofia Rzeźnicka, ‘Kilka słów o zupie zwanej ptisane
(πτισάνη)’, Zeszyty Wiejskie 18 (2013): 282-292; Maciej Kokoszko and Anna
Maciejewska, ‘De ptisana vel tisana’, Vox Latina 49. 192 (2013): 152-156.
42
Alexander of Tralles, Therapeutica, II, 241, 21-23.
43
Ibid., II, 241, 13-21.
44
Liddel and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 2013, s.v. χυλός.
45
For more detailed information regarding this topic, cf. hereunder.
46
For more detailed information regarding this topic, cf. hereunder.
47
Liddel and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 751 s.v. ἕψημα.
Maciej Kokoszko 109
__________________________________________________________________
48
Oribasius, Collectiones medicae IV, 6, 1, 1-4, 5.
49
Ibid., IV, 7, 1, 1-38, 4.
50
Ibid., IV, 7, 20, 1-21, 1.
51
Cf. description of the term puls – Dalby, Food, 271. On puls and poltos cf. Zofia
Rzeźnicka and Maciej Kokoszko, ‘Proso w gastronomii antyku i wczesnego
Biznacjum’, Vox Patrum 33.59 (2013): 409-412.
52
Pliny, Historia naturalis, XVIII, 44, 119; André, L’alimentation, 56; Alcock,
Food, 34.
53
Wilkins and Hill, Food, 119.
54
Spelt groats, but also emmer groats. Cf. Dalby, Food, 127.
55
Hesychios, Lexicon, γ, Γαλάξια, 80, 2.
56
Aetius of Amida, Iatricorum libri, IX, 42, 62-66.
57
Thus, it has a styptic action.
58
Galen, De simplicium, 855, 1-6.
59
Oribasius, Collectiones medicae, XIV, 24, 1, 2-3.
60
Ibid., XV, 01:02 (β), 25, 1-2.
61
Ibid., XV, 01:02 (β), 25, 2-26, 1.
62
Ibid., IV, 6, 1, 1-2, 1.
63
Ibid., IV, 6, 2, 5-3, 1.
64
Ibid., IV, 6, 3, 2-4, 1.
65
Aetius of Amida, Iatricorum libri, I, 73, 1-2.
66
Ibid., II, 208, 2.
67
Alexander of Tralles, Therapeutica, II, 221, 13-20 (oats – II, 221, 15).
68
Alexander of Tralles, De febribus, I, 371, 9-10.
69
Alexander of Tralles, Therapeutica, II, 373, 13-14.
70
Ibid., II, 371, 26-373, 31.
71
Ibid., II, 383, 1-3.
72
Ibid., II, 381, 4-385, 2.
73
The fragment devoted to extracts which contains this information was included
by Alexander of Tralles in his work, Therapeutica, II, 241, 13-243, 5.
74
Paul of Aegina, Epitome, VII, 3, 2, 77-79.
75
Ibid., VII, 3, 2, 77.
76
Ibid., VII, 3, 2, 78-79.
77
Ibid., I, 78, 24-25.
78
Ibid., III, 9, 3, 31-32.
__________________________________________________________________
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Sassatelli, Giuseppe. ‘L’alimentation des Étrusques’. Histoire de l’alimentation,

edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari, 183-195. Paris: Fayard
1996.
Wilkins, John M. and Shaun Hill. Food in the Ancient World. Malden,
MA/Oxford/Carlton, Victoria: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
Maciej Kokoszko is an academic teacher and works at the Department of

Byzantine History, Institute of History, University of Łódź, Poland. He is
interested in the history of gastronomy, dietetics and drug-lore.
Ham in Ancient and Byzantine Dietetics, Medicine and
Gastronomy
Zofia Rzeźnicka
Abstract
The chapter presents the importance of ham as a food and a medicine according to
Greek, Roman and Byzantine sources. Greek and Byzantine medical authorities:
Galen of Pergamon, Oribasius, Anthimus, Aëtius of Amida, Alexander of Tralles
and Paul of Aegina claimed that pork, especially young, was the most nourishing
of all foods. It was said that, if properly digested, it produced good juices in a
human body. The mentioned physicians also knew how to use salted pork as a
medicine for arthritis. This type of meat was the most popular in ancient and
medieval Europe. It was particularly appreciated because it was easy to process
and therefore ham curing was a common way of preserving pork. The mentioned
cured meat was well known and popular all over Europe (e.g. Gaul, Spain) and
Asia Minor (environs of Kibyra). It was probably procured in a specific way in
different places, in the times of Marcus Terentius Varro it was believed that the best
and the largest hams came from Gaul. The most detailed data on making this kind
of food was given by agriculture writers (Marcus Porcius Cato – 3rd/2nd c. BC,
Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella – 1st c. AD and the anonymous author of
Geoponica from 10th c. AD). Another important source is the only one remaining
ancient cookery book entitled De re coquinaria libri decem. Though in most
sources we find information that ham was usually eaten raw, this opusculum
contains four unique recipes for this delicacy, which recommended cooking the
meat. The contents of the above-mentioned sources show that ham production
technology remained almost unchanged until today.
Key Words: Cured meat in Antiquity and Byzantium, pork in ancient and
Byzantine diet, ancient and Byzantine culinary art, ancient and Byzantine
medicine, meat consumption in Antiquity and Byzantium, ham in ancient and
Byzantine diet.
*****
In Antiquity and early Middle Ages fresh meat was a rarity, which was
available only to the wealthiest. 1 Slaughtering animals which provided large
amounts of meat entailed the problem of its preservation. It was especially
important in the warm Mediterranean climate – and salting turned out to be the best
solution. This process was mentioned both in ancient and Byzantine agronomic and
medical sources, and salt-cured meat was known and valued in the whole ancient
and Medieval world.
116 Ham in Ancient and Byzantine Dietetics, Medicine and Gastronomy
__________________________________________________________________
One of the first enthusiastic opinions about hams can be found in Strabo's
notes. He wrote that delicious cured meats came from Cantabria 2 and western
Pyrenees inhabited by Carretanians. 3 Gourmets also treasured hams that came from
Lusitania in Hispania Ulterior 4 and the town of Pomelon, near Aquitaine. 5 But it
does not mean that Spain monopolized ancient market of cold meat. This treat was
well-known both all over ancient and early Medieval Europe and in Asia Minor.
Varro claimed that the best and largest hams were imported to Rome from Gaul 6
and according to Strabo, the territories between the Rhine and the Saône 7 were
considered to be the places where the best cured meats were produced. Other
regions mentioned in sources were the North Sea area (around the Scheldt, the
Maas and the Rhine), populated by the tribe of Menapians, 8 the South Gaul areas,
inhabited by the tribes of Comacine and Cavarine, 9 the centre of Italy inhabited by
the tribe of Mars 10 and in Asia Minor – city of Kibyra in Lycia. 11
In antiquity several terms for ham were used, which perfectly illustrates the
connections between Greek and Latin language. In ancient Greece ham was called
κωλήν 12 (kolén), or the Latin word perna 13 was used to refer to it. In addition, a
Greek loan-word petaso (Greek πετασών) was used in Imperium Romanum. Even
though both: perna and petaso mean ham, they refer to different parts of pork. The
first one means hind legs, the second – was used to name front legs i.e. pig’s
shoulder. 14
The Romans carefully worked out methods of slaughtering pigs, which
nowadays can be explained scientifically. As a result of those methods, meat was
tasty and easy to cure. Animals were usually killed during late autumn 15 or
winter, 16 when they had more fat tissue. To facilitate bleeding, pigs were not fed
for twenty-four hours before being slaughtered. 17 During this time, to make sure
the meat was not too moist, swines were prevented from drinking. 18 It was also
important not to stress or excite the animals, otherwise their meat could become
dark and sticky, and could have an unpleasant texture as well as taste. 19 Today we
know that these emotional states reduce the level of glycogen, ipso facto rising the
level of pH. Maintaining high level of glycogen is important, because after the
animal's death, thanks to enzymes, it transforms into lactic acid, which reduces the
pH level in meat, stopping the process of rotting and killing harmful bacteria. 20
So that meat could be preserved for long periods, it was cured. One of the first
references to salting hams can be found in De agricultura by Cato the Elder (3rd/2nd
c. BC). According to him, raw meat should be put with skin turned down into a pot
covered with salt, then the meat should be salted again. Another layer of meat was
placed on top of it and covered with a layer of salt, 21 until the vessel was full. It
was important that the layers of meat did not touch each other. In the end salt was
spread on top of the hams. After five days the meat was taken out, and put back
into the vessel, however in the opposite order. After twelve days hams were taken
out once again to remove the salty sediment. They were hung in a draughty place
Zofia Rzeźnicka 117
__________________________________________________________________
for two days. On the third day, the meat was cleaned, greased with oil and smoked.
Next, it was greased once more, this time with a mixture of olive oil and vinegar. 22
A similar procedure was described by Columella (1st c. AD). In De re rustica he
also mentioned that hams should be tightly packed in a vessel sprinkled with dry
salt. Additionally, the author suggested pressing the pot down with weights, until
the brim was almost reached. In his opinion, meat prepared in this way could be
taken out when needed, and the meat left in the pot was prevented from decay by
brine. 23 Another method of preservation was pressing down the meat, which was
boned and salted, with the weights. Next, the cured meat was properly rubbed with
salt until it was completely ready. 24 When weather conditions were favourable, the
layer of salt was kept on the pork only for nine days, during which the meat was
still rubbed. But when it was cloudy and rainy, hams were scrubbed from salt, and
put into a pot filled with fresh water in order to remove the rest of residue, but no
sooner than after eleven or twelve days. In the end, dried meat was hung up in a
larder, where a moderate amount of smoke could reach it. This way of curing was
popular especially in midwinter, until the first half of February. 25
The above mentioned methods of preparing animals for butchering and for
curing hams were also known in the Byzantine Empire. The above mentioned
methods of preparing animals for butchering and curing hams were also known in
the Byzantine Empire. Information about boning meat before salting can also be
found in Geoponica, an agricultural encyclopaedia from the 10th century. However,
the author of the passage 26 describing this process gave us two new important
pieces of information. In his opinion, it was better to use roasted salt for curing,
while meat should be put in a pot that was previously filled with oil or vinegar. 27
There were many ways to restore the original flavour to the salted meat. For
example, it could be cooked twice, first in milk, next in water. 28 Pliny the Elder
wrote about reducing the salty flavour with the help of finely ground flour called
pollen and linden bark (philyra). 29 Unfortunately, he did not explain how it should
be done. It is possible that the excess of salt was absorbed by the flour that was
sprinkled over the meat, and, additionally, by the linden bark that the meat was
covered with. We also know about soaking salted fish in water 30 and this method
was certainly also used when other kinds of meat were prepared.
Salted meat in Greek was called τάριχος (tárikhos). 31 This term was also used
for other products preserved in brine like fish 32 or vegetables. 33 Galen (2nd c. AD)
and Oribasius (4th c. AD) wrote that meat that came from mature, fattened pigs was
best for salting. The physicians mentioned above, as well as Aëtius of Amida (6th c.
AD), 34 claimed that one of the most important features of meat was moisture,
because when an animal was old, its flesh became tough 35 and indigestible. 36 On
the other hand, large amounts of moisture in tender meat of young pigs were
reduced, owing to the drying properties of salt, so the product decreased its
volume. 37 According to medical sources, well-selected salted meat, was of the
same quality as the fresh one and, in many respects, it was even more valuable. For
__________________________________________________________________
example it was believed that this sort of tárikhos, regardless of the species of the
animal, diluted thick and sticky humors. 38 Although salted meat was believed to
trigger fevers, especially after big physical effort such as long journeys 39 and cause
production of black bile, 40 it was considered to be a healthy element of a diet. 41
Moreover, pork was prized for its dietetic properties. It was regarded to be light
and the most nutritious of all kinds of meat. It was also said to be the tastiest, not
only due to a balanced amount of juices, but also because it contributed to keeping
humoral balance inside the human body. 42 Maybe that is why Galen claimed that
eating pork in restorative diet 43 should start with fresh pig trotters boiled with
barley soup called πτισάνη (ptisáne) 44 then ham and other food should be
introduced gradually. 45 It was said that cured pork was also good, eaten with lentil
soup called φακῆ (phaké) and φακοπτισάνη 46 (phakoptisáne) – a liquid meal made
of lentils and groats. 47 This kind of food was believed to be tasty and light.
Considering all these advantages of cured pork, there is no wonder that ham was
also applied as a medicine. It was one of the ingredients of a remedy for arthritis
recommended by the physician of Pergamon. In De simplicium medicamentorum
temperamentis ac facultatibus he wrote about treating this condition with old
cheese that was first soaked in a stock (ζωμός [zomós]) made from cured pig's leg.
The cheese was ground in a mortar and put on the painful part of the body. Thanks
to this mixture the patient's skin opened without any cutting and new pieces of
callus flowed out every day. When all the cheese was used up, the patient was
given some fresh one and, when it became rancid, he applied the medicine on his
own. He also taught others, who had the same problem, to make this ointment. 48
This kind of treatment must have been effective in the following centuries because
it was well known to Oribasius, 49 Aëtius of Amida, 50 Alexander of Tralles (6th c.
AD) 51 and Paul of Aegina (7th c. AD). 52 They all almost literally quoted the story
given by Galen, with one little, but important, complement. According to them,
cheese should not only be old, 53 but also fat 54 and savoury, 55 moreover, the stock
should be cooked with an old, 56 fat 57 ham. Furthermore, Aëtius of Amida
prescribed more complex 58 medicine for the same illness, 59 which, in addition to
the meat stock from an old ham and a piece of an old goat cheese, should contain
some gum called ἀμμωνιακόν (ammoniakón), hyssop, deer bone marrow, wax and
beef suet etc. 60 Almost identical ingredients were mentioned by Oribasius in
Synopsis ad Eustathium filium, but this time in a chapter devoted to tumors 61 which
means that a very similar medicine was used in curing different types of ailments.
From this passage we learn that instead of dzomós made from old ham he
suggested using its fat; another modification was adding cow or goat cheese.
Moreover, the author claimed that the recipe came from Galen's medical treatises 62
so the medicament was used in the 2nd century AD. More details about this therapy
were given to us by Paul of Aegina. 63 According to him, the sore part of the body
should be first rubbed with some firm vinegar, and next with the ammoniakón gum
for many days. Then, a medicine of emollient properties, such as ointment made
__________________________________________________________________
from pérna should be used. 64 In the author’s opinion, a dressing, called
polymágmaton, made from ham 65 that was probably first chewed, was used in
curing illnesses of joints called ankýlosis. 66
In the ancient world, ham was an expensive 67 delicacy, 68 served on special
occasions 69. Recently salted 70 and streaky 71 meat was valued most. According to
the sources, it was eaten raw, 72 smoked, 73 dried 74 or cooked. 75 Accurate
instructions in making this dish were given in De re coquinaria – the only
remaining ancient cookbook, which was supposed to be written by a Roman
gourmet Apicius. Reading the recipes, we can assume that sweet hams were very
popular. To obtain this flavour, the meat was cooked in water with a large number
of figs. 76 The use of those fruits was recommended in all the recipes for hams in
De re coquinaria, and the phrase ʻut soletʼ (as usually) given in one of the
formulas, shows that it was a common practice. Perna could be put into this kind
of stock, flavoured with bay leaves. When it was almost soft, the skin was
removed, the meat was cut in the middle and honey was poured inside. Next, it was
wrapped in a pastry made from flour and olive oil, and baked in an oven. 77 The
dish was served hot. 78 Cooked ham could also be served with diced sweet bread
and boiled grape must (caroenum), spiced wine or sweet bread made with grape
must, called mustacei. 79
Another formula used petaso, that was probably a pig’s shoulder. This recipe is
unique, because the instructions usually did not mention quantities of ingredients,
while, this time, the author stated that 25 figs and 2 librae 80 of barley were needed.
All this should be cooked with meat, next the flesh was boned, fat was discarded,
and before putting the ham into an oven, it was covered with honey. Partly baked
petaso was served with a sauce prepared with wine, raisin wine, some rue and
pepper. It was also used for soaking mustacei, which, in the end, were served with
roasted ham. 81
The above examples show that pickling was a very popular method of
preserving meat for a long time. Due to a long time of preservation, this kind of
meat became an important element of the diet of people who served in the army 82
or had to travel long distances by land or sea. 83 Cured meats were eaten raw, dried,
cooked, baked or smoked as a main course or added to soups like phaké or
phakoptisáne. This kind of food was not only a significant source of protein, but, it
was also valued for its dietetic properties. Salted meat was also commonly used by
ancient and Byzantine physicians in medical therapies (e.g. in curing arthritis).
Notes
1
Maciej Kokoszko and Łukasz Erlich, ʻRola mięsa w diecie późniego antyku i
wczesnego Bizancjum na podstawie wybranych źródeł literackich. Część I.
Zwierzęta hodowlane w sztuce kulinarnej oraz w teorii dietetycznej’, Piotrkowskie
__________________________________________________________________
Zeszyty Historyczne 12 (2001): 18-20; John M. Wilkins and Shaun Hill, Food in
the Ancient World (Malden, MA/Oxford/Carlton, Victoria: Blackwell Publishing,
2006), 142. The study has been prepared in connection with grant
2011/01/BHS3/01020. It is part of the article entitled ʻCured Meats in Ancient and
Byzantine Sources: Ham, Bacon and tuccetumʼ to be published in the journal
Studia Ceranea. Journal of the Waldemar Ceran Research Centre for the History
and Culture of the Mediterranean Area and South-East Europe.
2
The Geography of Strabo with an English Translation in Eight Volumes, III, 4,
11, trans. Horace L. Jones, vol. II (London: Heinemann/Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1960) (hereinafter: Strabo, Geographica).
3
Strabo, Geographica, III, 4, 11. Hams produced there were very priced both in
first and fourth century AD, see Martial, Epigrams with an English Translation in
Two Volumes, XIII, 54, trans. Walter C.A. Ker, vol. I-II (London: Heinemann/New
York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1919-1920) (hereinafter: Martial, Epigrammata);
Edictum Diocletiani et Collegarum de pretiis rerum venalium, IV, 1, 8, ed. Marta
Giacchero, vol. I-II (Genova: Istituto di storia antica e scienze ausiliarie, 1974)
(hereinafter: Edictum Diocletiani).
4
Varro, ʻOn Agriculture’, II, 4, 11, in Marcus Porcius Cato on Agriculture. Marcus
Terentius Varro on Agriculture with an English Translation, trans. William D.
Hooper (London: Heinemann/Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934)
(hereinafter: Varro, De re rustica).
5
Athenaei Naucratitae dipnosophistarum libri XV, XIV, 657e-658a, ed. Georgius
Kaibel, vol. I-III (Lipsiae: Teubner, 1887-1890) (hereinafter: Athenaeus of
Naucratis, Deipnosophistae).
6
Varro, De re rustica, II, 4, 10-11. Cf. Rudolf Laur-Belart, ʻGalische Schinken und
Würsteʼ, Suisse Primitive 17 (1953): 33-40.
7
Strabo, Geographica, IV, 3, 2.
8
Martial, Epigrammata, XIII, 54; Edictum Diocletiani, IV, 1, 8.
9
Varro, De re rustica, II, IV, 10-11.
10
Edictum Diocletiani, IV, 1, 9.
11
Athenaeus of Naucratis, Deipnosophistae, XIV, 657e. Hams produced there were
undoubtedly best known in the Byzantine Empire. About regions where the meat
was brought from to Constantinople see Paul Magdalino, ʻThe Maritime
Neighbourhoods of Constantinople: Commercial and Residential Functions, Six to
Twelfth Centuries’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 54 (2000): 214-215; Jean-Claude
Cheynet, ʽLa valeur marchande des products alimentaires dans l’Empire byzantin’,
Βυζαντινών διατροφή και μαγειρείαι. Πρακτικά Ημερίδας “Περί της διατροφής στο
Βυζάντιο”. (Food and Cooking in Byzantium. Proceedings of the Symposium ‘On
Food in Byzantium’.) Thessaloniki Museum of Byzantine Culture 4 November
2001, ed. Demetra Papanikola-Bakritzi (Athens: Πέργαμος A.B.E.E., 2005), 40-41.
__________________________________________________________________
12
Iulii Polluciis Onomasticon cum annotationibus interpretum, VI, 52, ed.
Guilielmus Dinorfius, vol. I-V, pars 1 (Lipsiae: Libraria Kuehnina, 1824)
(hereinafter: Pollux, Onomasticon). Cf. Frank Frost, ʻSausage and Meat
Preservation in Antiquityʼ, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 40 (1999): 248.
13
Henry G. Liddel and Robert Scott, eds., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1996), 1394, s.v. πέρνα; Frank Frost ʻSausage and Meatʼ: 248;
Andrew Dalby, Food in the Ancient World from A to Z (London/New York:
Routledge, 2003), 269.
14
Joan Frayn, ʻThe Roman Meat Trade’, Food in Antiquity, eds. John Wilkins,
David Harvey, Mike Dobson (Exeter: Exeter Press, 1999), 111-112. Cf. Jacques
André, L’ alimentation et la cuisine à Rome (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1961), 145,
note 115. More information see Timothy J. Leary, Martial Book XIII: The Xenia.
Text with Introduction and Commentary (London: Duckworth, 2001), 107-108.
15
David L. Thurmond, A Handbook of Food Processing in Classical Rome. For
Her Bounty No Winter (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2006), 211.
16
Columella, ʻOn Agricultureʼ, XII, 55, 3, in Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella
on Agriculture and Trees with an English Translation in Three Volumes, trans.
Edward S. Forster and Edward H. Heffner, vol. III (London:
Heinemann/Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955) (hereinafter:
Columella, De re rustica); Palladii Rutilii Tauri Aemiliani viri inlustris opus
agriculturae de veterinaria medicina de insitione, XIII, 6, ed. Robert H. Rodgers
(Lipsiae: Teubner, 1975). Cf. Thurmond, Handbook of Food Processing, 211.
17
Thurmond, Handbook of Food Processing, 211.
18
Columella, De re rustica, XII, 55, 1. Cf. Thurmond, Handbook of Food
Processing, 211.
19
20
Ibid.; Frost, ʻSausage and Meatʼ: 245.
21
According to Galen for pickling sea or salty water could be also used when the
egg put into the water remained afloat. If not, the solution did not contain enough
salt, see ʻGaleni de simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus
libri XIʼ, XI, 691, 15-692, 4, in Claudii Galeni opera omnia, ed. Carolus G. Kühn,
vol. XI-XII (Lipsiae: Cnobloch, 1826-1827) (hereinafter: Galen, De simplicium).
22
Cato, ʻOn Agriculture’, CLXII, 1-3, Marcus Porcius Cato on Agriculture.
Marcus Terentius Varro on Agriculture, trans. William D. Hooper (London:
Heinemann/Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934) (hereinafter: Cato,
De agricultura).
23
Columella, De re rustica, XII, 55, 4.
24
Columella did not write exactly when.
25
Columella, De re rustica, XII, 55, 1-3. Cf. William Cavanagh, ‘Food
Preservation in Greece during the Late and Final Neolithic Periods’, Cooking Up
__________________________________________________________________
the Past. Food and Culinary Practices in the Neolithic and Bronze Age Aegean,
eds. Christopher Mee and Josette Renard (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2007), 114.
26
This fragment comes from Didymos.
27
Geoponica sive Cassiani Bassi Scholastici de re rustica eclogae, XIX, 9, 1-4, ed.
Henricus Beckh (Lipsiae: Teubner, 1895).
28
Christopher Grocock and Sally Grainger eds., Apicius. A Critical Edition with an
Introduction and an English Translation of the Latin Recipe Text Apicius, I, 10,
(Blackawton/Totnes, Devon: Prospect Books, 2006) (hereinafter: Apicius, De re
coquinaria).
29
Pliny, Natural History with an English Translation in Ten Volumes, XXIV, 1, 3,
trans. William H.S. Jones, vol. VII (London: Heinemann/Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1966).
30
Terence, ʻThe Brothersʼ, 380, Terence with an English Translation in Two
Volumes, trans. John Sargeaunt, vol. II (London: Heinemann/New York: G.P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1920).
31
Dalby, Food in the Ancient, 95. Cf. Apostolos Karpozelos, ʻRealia in Byzantine
Epistolography XIII-XV c.ʼ, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 88 (1995): 76; Michael
Grünbart, ʻStore in a Cool and Dry Place: Perishable Goods and Their Preservation
in Byzantium’, Eat, Drink and Be Merry (Luke 12:19). Food and Wine in
Byzantium. In Honour of Professor A.A.M. Bryer, eds. Leslie Brubaker and
Kallirroe Linardou (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007), 45-48.
32
Dalby, Food in the Ancient, 95, 169, 313, 334, 336-337; Maciej Kokoszko,
ʻKuchnia i dietetyka późnego antyku oraz Bizancjum. Kilka uwag na temat
spożycia, sporządzania, przyrządzania, wartości dietetycznych i zastosowań
medycznych konserw rybnych w antycznej i bizantyńskiej literaturze greckiej’,
Acta Universitatis Lodziensis, Folia Historica 80 (2005): 7-25; Maciej Kokoszko,
Ryby i ich znaczenie w życiu codziennym ludzi późnego antyku i wczesnego
Bizancjum (Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2005), 41, 107-109,
317-329.
33
ʻGaleni de temperamentis libri IIIʼ, I, 661, 16, Claudii Galeni opera omnia, ed.
Carolus G. Kühn, vol. I (Lipsiae: Cnobloch, 1821).
34
Aëtius of Amida in his treatise writes generally about pickling the meat of
different species of animals: mammals, birds and fish.
35
ʻGaleni de alimentorum facultatibus libri IIIʼ, VI, 746, 6-11, Claudii Galeni
opera omnia, ed. Carolus G. Kühn, vol. VI (Lipsiae: Cnobloch, 1823) (hereinafter:
Galen, De alimentorum facultatibus); Oribasii collectionum medicarum reliquiae,
IV, 1, 36, 3-37, ed. Ioannes Raeder, vol. I-IV (Lipsiae/Berolini: Teubner, 1928-
1933) (hereinafter: Oribasius, Collectiones medicae); Aetii Amideni libri
medicinales I–VIII, II, 149, 1-14, ed. Alexander Olivieri (Lipsiae/Berolini: Teubner,
1935-1950) (hereinafter: Aëtius of Amida, Iatricorum libri).
__________________________________________________________________
36
Oribasius, Collectiones medicae, IV, 1, 39, 1-40, 1; Aëtius of Amida, Iatricorum
libri, II, 149, 11-12. A 6th century physician, Anthimus, writes in the same way
about salted beef and ox (carnes uaccinae uel bubulinae insalatae), see Anthimus,
On the Obserwance of Foods. De observatione ciborum, 12, ed., trans. Mark Grant
(Totnes/Blackawton, Devon: Prospect Books, 2007).
37
Galen, De alimentatorum facultatibus, VI, 746, 9-11; Oribasius, Collectiones
medicae, IV, 1, 36, 5-37, 1; Aëtius of Amida, Iatricorum libri, II, 149, 8-10.
38
Galen provided this kind of information writing about salted fish, see Galen, De
alimentatorum facultatibus, VI, 747, 4-11; Oribasius, as well as Aëtius of Amida,
quoted this opinion when writing generally about curing meat, see Oribasius,
Collectiones medicae, IV, 1, 39, 1-40, 1; Aëtius of Amida, Iatricorum libri, II, 149,
12-13.
39
ʻGaleni in Hippocratis de victu acutorum commentaria IVʼ, XV, 739, 8-13, in
Claudii Galeni opera omnia, ed. Carolus G. Kühn, vol. XV (Lipsiae: Cnobloch,
1828).
40
Oribasius, Collectiones medicae, III, 9, 1, 1-2, 5 (tárikhos – III, 9, 1, 3); Aëtius
of Amida, Iatricorum libri, II, 246, 1-9 (tárikhos – II, 246, 3).
41
Oribasius, Collectiones medicae, III, 2, 19, 1-20, 1.
42
Maciej Kokoszko, ʻSmaki Konstantynopola’, Konstantynopol. Nowy Rzym.
Miasto i ludzie w okresie wczesnobizantyńskim, eds. Mirosław J. Leszka and Teresa
Wolińska (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2011), 494.
43
ʻGaleni de methodo medendi libri XIV’, X, 488, 11-15, Claudii Galeni opera
omnia, ed. Carolus G. Kühn, vol. X (Lipsiae: Conobloch, 1825) (hereinafter:
Galen, De methodo medendi).
44
For some recipes for this barley soup called tisana in Latin, see Apicius, De re
coquinaria, V, 5, 1-2. For more information about medical uses of ptisáne, see
Maciej Kokoszko, Zofia Rzeźnicka and Krzysztof Jagusiak, ʻHealth and Culinary
Art in Antiquity and Early Byzantium in the Light of De re coquinaria’, Studia
Ceranea. Journal of the Waldemar Ceran Research Centre for the History and
Culture of the Mediterranean Area and South-East Europe 2 (2012): 161-162;
Maciej Kokoszko, Krzysztof Jagusiak and Zofia Rzeźnicka, ʻKilka słów o zupie
zwanej ptisane (ptis£nh)’, Zeszyty Wiejskie 18 (2013): 282-292.
45
Galen, De methodo medendi, X, 489, 5-8.
46
Galen, De alimentatorum facultatibus, VI, 528, 1-2; Oribasius, Collectiones
medicae, IV, 1, 25, 3-26, 1.
47
In De re coquinaria we can find recipes for lentil dishes (lenticula), see Apicius,
De re coquinaria, V, 2, 1-3, but there are no recipes for phakoptisáne.
48
Galen, De simplicium, XII, 270, 18-271, 13.
49
ʻOribasii synopsis ad Eustathium filium’, IX, 58, 1, 1-3, 1, Oribasii synopsis ad
Eustathium filium et libri ad Eunapium, ed. Ioannes Raeder, vol. IV, 3 (Lipsiae:
__________________________________________________________________
Teubner, 1964) (hereinafter: Oribasius, Synopsis ad Eustathium filium).

50
Aëtius of Amida, Iatricorum libri, II, 102, 1-10.
51
ʻAlexandri Tralliani therapeutica’, II, 561, 5-11, Alexander von Tralles, ed.
Theodorus Puschmann, vol. I-II (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1963) (hereinafter:
Alexander of Tralles, Therapeutica).
52
Paulus Aegineta, III, 78, 24, 9-13; VII, 3, 19, 98-101, ed. Ioannes L. Heiberg,
vol. I-II (Lipsiae/Berolini: Teubner, 1921-1924) (hereinafter: Paul of Aegina,
Epitome).
53
Oribasius, Synopsis ad Eustathium filium, IX, 58, 2, 1; Aëtius of Amida,
Iatricorum libri, II, 102, 4; Paul of Aegina, Epitome, III, 78, 24, 10; VII, 3, 19, 98.
54
Paul of Aegina, Epitome, VII, 3, 19, 98.
55
Oribasius, Synopsis ad Eustathium filium, IX, 58, 2, 1; Alexander of Tralles,
Therapeutica, II, 561, 7; Paul of Aegina, Epitome, III, 78, 24, 10-11; VII, 3, 19, 99.
56
Aëtius of Amida, Iatricorum libri, II, 102, 3-4; Paul of Aegina, Epitome, III, 78,
24, 11.
57
Paul of Aegina, Epitome, III, 78, 24, 11; VII, 3, 19, 100-101.
58
It is possible that it is the same medicine mentioned by Paul of Aegina. He writes
about more complex medicine for arthritis (Paul of Aegina, Epitome, III, 78, 24, 1-
25) prepared from ham with an addition of some myrrh oil or without it, see Paul
of Aegina, Epitome, III, 78, 24, 13-15.
59
Aëtius of Amida, Iatricorum libri, XII, 65, 1-42.
60
Ibid., XII, 65, 22-26.
61
Oribasius, Synopsis ad Eustathium filium, VII, 34, 1, 1-5, 1.
62
Ibid., VII, 34, 4, 3-5, 1.
63
Paul of Aegina, Epitome, IV, 32, 1, 1-2, 16.
64
Ibid., IV, 32, 2, 11-16.
65
Ibid., IV, 55, 1, 18.
66
Ibid., IV, 55, 1, 1-21.
67
According to the Edict on Maximum Prices one pound of ham (27,3 g) could
cost even 20 denarii, see Edictum Diocletiani, IV, 1, 8-9.
68
In comedies by Plautus characters are always hungry for this delicacy, see
Plautus, ʻThe Captives’, 850; 903; 908, Plautus with an English Translation in
Four Volumes, trans. Paul Nixon, vol. I (London: Heinemann/New York: G.P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1916); Plautus, ʻCurculio’, 323, Plautus with an English
Translation in Five Volumes, trans. Paul Nixon, vol. II (London: Heinemann/New
York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917).
69
Plautus, ʻPseudolus’, 166, Plautus with an English Translation in Five Volumes,
trans. Paul Nixon, vol. IV (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press/London:
Heinemann, 1980) (hereinafter: Plautus, Pseudolus); Petronii Arbitri Satyricon
reliquiae, 66, ed. Konrad Müller (Monachii/Lipsiae: K.G. Saur, 2003).
__________________________________________________________________
70
Martial, Epigrammata, XIII, 55.
71
Ibid., III, 77, 6.
72
Ovid’s Fasti with an English Translation, VI, 158, trans. James G. Frazer
(London: Heinemann/Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959).
73
Horace, ʻSatires’, II, 2, 117, Horace. Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica with an
English Translation, trans. Henry Rushton Fairclought (London: Heinemann/
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962).
74
Juvenal, ʻSatires’, VII, 119, Juvenal and Persius with an English Translation,
trans. George G. Ramsay (London: Heinemann/New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons,
1928).
75
Plautus, Pseudolus, 166; Apicius, De re coquinaria, VII, 9, 1-3.
76
Apicius, De re coquinaria, VII, 9, 1-3.
77
Ibid., VII, 9, 2.
78
Ibid., VII, 9, 1. Modern version of this recipe was published in cookbooks by P.
Faas and S. Grainger, see Patrick Faas, Around the Roman Table. Food and
Feasting in Ancient Rome, trans. Shaun Whiteside (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 2005), 268; Sally Grainger, Cooking Apicius. Roman Recipes for
Today (Blackawon/Totnes, Devon: Prospect Books, 2006), 62-63.
79
Apicius, De re coquinaria, VII, 9, 2. The recipe for mustacei is given by Cato,
see Cato, De agricultura, CXXI.
80
Libra = 327,4 grams.
81
Apicius, De re coquinaria, VII, 9, 3. Modern version of this recipe both for meat
and mustacei is published in Andrew Dalby and Sally Grainger, The Classical
Cookbook (London: British Museum Press, 2000), 109-111.
82
Roy W. Davies, ʽThe Roman Military Dietʼ, Britannia 2 (1971): 124; Hilary E.
M. Cool, Eating and Drinking in Roman Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge
83
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Tasting Cultures

Probing the Boundaries

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A Probing the Boundaries research and publications project.

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