How We Eat: Appetite, Culture, and the Psychology of Food PDF
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How We Eat How We Eat Appetite, Culture, and the Psychology of Food LEON RAPPOPORT, PH.D. Copyright © Leon Rappoport, 2003 Published by ECW PRESS 2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW PRESS. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA Rappoport, Leon How we eat: appetite, culture, and the psychology of food / Leon Rappoport ISBN 1-55022-563-4 1. Food habits—History. 2. Food habits—Psychological aspects. I. Title. GT2860.R36 2003 394.1’09 C2002-905418-4 Acquisition editor: Emma McKay Copy editor: Judy Phillips Design and typesetting: Yolande Martel Production: Emma McKay Printing: Transcontinental Cover design: Guylaine Regimbald – SOLO DESIGN Front cover illustration: John Martin This book is set in Electra The publication of How We Eat: Appetite, Culture, and the Psychology of Food has been generously supported by the Canada Council, by the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative, by the Ontario Arts Council, and by the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program DISTRIBUTION CANADA: Jaguar Book Group, 100 Armstrong Avenue, Georgetown, Ontario L7G 5S4 UNITED STATES: Independent Publishers Group, 814 North Franklin Street, Chicago, Illinois 60610 EUROPE: Turnaround Publisher Services, Unit 3, Olympia Trading Estate, Coburg Road, Wood Green, London N2Z 6T2 AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND: Wakefield Press, 1 The Parade West (BOX 2266), Kent Town, South Australia 5071 PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA To Lula Francis and in memory of her Uncle Paul Contents Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION A Half-Baked Notion The author’s itinerary from Holocaust studies and Zen practice to research on how people think about food CHAPTER 1 From Myths to MacAttacks How objects in nature become foods: the psychology and culture processes that have moved us from myths to McDonald’s and from the raw to the cooked CHAPTER 2 You Are What You Eat Food preferences and ways of eating: how we present ourselves through our food habits and judge others through theirs CHAPTER 3 Feeding Frenzies Eating disorders and eccentricities: their origins, treatments, and social psychological implications CHAPTER 4 The McDonaldization of Taste Belief systems centered on hedonism, nutritionism, and spiritualism, and the sociopolitical uses of food CHAPTER 5 From the Raw to the Cooked to the Haute Cuisine Social, emotional, and cultural factors underlying the evolution of cuisines CHAPTER 6 Champagne Slippers, the Twinkie Defense, and He-Man Diets Psychoanalytic insights on the connections between eating, sexuality, and aggression; and on military rations and morale CHAPTER 7 The Road to Wellville New products, technologies, and marketing: consumer confusions and likely effects on eating habits CHAPTER 8 Concluding Reflections The anarchy of food and the development of critical self-awareness Sources Index Acknowledgments WHEN IT COMES TO FOOD and eating habits, practically everyone has something interesting to say. But since the list of all those colleagues, students, friends, and family members who in one way or another contributed toward the development of this book could approximate a small telephone directory, I can single out only a few for special thanks. The idea that food carries profound social-psychological meanings, and that our eating behaviors represent important ways of our “being in the world,” first emerged from work I was doing on psychological aspects of the Holocaust with my friend and colleague George M. Kren. It was clear to both of us that starvation was a major factor allowing the Nazis to dehumanize many of their victims. As a historian of modern European culture, George was fully aware of both the symbolic and the concrete significance of food in human affairs, and he offered important perspectives on the contents of this book. I am also grateful to Joe Amato, a leading historian of Midwestern American culture, for his encouragement and helpful critical reading of the draft manuscript. Some of the research findings noted in the book grew out of discussions with my colleagues Ron Downey and George Peters. Over several years, we conducted a series of studies focused on the various ways different people (young and old, men and women) think about food and negotiate their desires for tastiness, health, and convenience. Later joined by Lin Huff-Corzine, our research group became a major source of support for the book project. I am indebted to all of them, particularly Ron Downey, who has seen it all the way through with me. Many of the ideas discussed in chapter 4 were developed in collaboration with Julio Angulo when he was completing his graduate studies with me. Originally from Chile, Julio has traveled widely and has a strong sense of the extent to which food and cuisine can be a vehicle conveying social and political ideologies. This is also true of my friend Erika Apfelbaum, a French social psychologist based at the National Center for Social Research in Paris. We met during one of her visits to the U.S. and discovered that we had almost identical views on the meanings of food in daily life, including that it was generally ignored by most social scientists. Much of the material examined in this book is based on the work we did together when I was able to spend part of a sabbatical in Paris. Her insights and belief in the importance of the project have been invaluable.
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