Food and Culture

Rating:
Summary: Yum to both tastes and territories
Review: Many discussions of cultural difference gnaw on intangibles. Communication styles, values, equity, political correctness and globalization strategies may be cut up to be analyzed or chewed with passion, but often remain abstract, easy to deny, hard to concretize and forever shifting. Not so food. "You eat what you are," exclaim the authors of Food and Culture. The visible variety of the table gives a rich taste of the history, habits and behaviors of people, and often provide handles for grasping the less concrete aspects of culture.

Kittler, a nutrition consultant, and Sucher, a professor of Food Science, have ostensibly written a textbook for health and food service professionals. Food and Culture, however, reaches far beyond ingredients and dishes on the table in diverse US households, cafeterias, restaurants and hospitals. Food in almost every instance transcends simple nourishment. It has inevitably interpersonal, aesthetic, social, religious, demographic and even political implications. Food is the staff of life in the fullest sense of the word, whether it be anchored in bread, rice, tortillas or taro root. It deserves more attention from interculturalists and diversity trainers in general than it usually gets.

The diversity of diet found among the various groups in the USA is the meat of this book. However, starting with Native Americans and moving through the waves of immigration, this means just about everybody in the world. The authors distill this breadth and complexity by a clear focus on health, broadly understood as physical, psychological and social. They describe how the diverse US population, both by ethnicity and region, express their traditional culinary preferences as well as lift the lid on what is being cooked up in the stew pot of assimilation. In all this they never lose sight of how the health care practitioner like a good maitre d' can competently interpret, assist and advise.

The book opens with an overview of how food and culture relate to each other and to traditional health beliefs and practices. Kittler and Sucher recognize that counselors, educators and healthcare professionals need interpersonal cultural competence, and provide them with a high-caloric chapter on intercultural communication, geared to their specific needs and activities. While many diversity initiatives avoid the treacle of religion, it is an essential ingredient for digesting the topic of eating habits. Food and Culture contains not only an introductory chapter on Food and Religion, but returns to the theme whenever discussing a specific group requires it.

Kittler and Sucher have a set menu for serving up each cultural group. They ready the table with its history in the US. As an aperitif, they describe its "worldview," in particular the institutions of religion and family. The entree is a buffet of the group's common foods and ingredients, laid out to show how meals are composed and served daily, as well as on festive occasions. This is followed by a main dish, the story of what various foods mean to the group and how therapeutic beliefs and practices surround their consumption. Finally, there is a digestive look at how the group has adapted its food habits in the USA and the practical implications for dieticians and healthcare workers dealing with members of the group.

Offering "international food days" in company cafeterias by featuring various cultures or highlighting them in catering events have often been pooh-poohed as "diversity lite" or at best, icing on the cake. Certainly this need not be the case if one were to enrich such events with an educational surround drawn from insights provided by Goyan and Sucher. In any event, this book has a place in every corporate diversity library and trainer's bookshelf. Its contents should be used to provide educational nutrients as well as spice to diversity programs and presentations.

Finally, despite its systemic organization and somewhat reference-book appearance-almost 500 pages of text, charts and images-this new edition of Food and Culture is simply a good read. I was able to finish this review only because there were no recipes included. Otherwise I would still be cooking!