Food Cultures: Understanding Traditional and Modern Eating

Food cultures can play an important role in shaping people’s health and well-being. This chapter characterizes food cultures with regard to traditional and modern eating. First, it examines conceptualizations of traditional and modern eating, demonstrating its multidimensionality via two major dimensions (what and how people eat) and 12 subdimensions. Second, it provides a comparative analysis of the food cultures of Brazil, China, Germany, France, US Americans with European ancestry, US Americans with African and Latin ancestry, Ghana, India, Japan, Mexico, and Turkey, highlighting distinguishing aspects and similarities. In terms of distinguishing aspects, the examined food cultures varied greatly in whether they considered the consumption of dairy products, the consumption of red meat, eating home-canned food, having sweet desserts at the end of a meal, and attaching importance to table manners to be part of traditional eating. Food cultures agreed far more on what constitutes modern eating than what constitutes traditional eating. The chapter concludes with the implications of gaining a better understanding of the link between food cultures and health and well-being.