Cultures of Humans, Cultures of Microbes; Food and Globalization

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In the article Cultures and Cultures: Fermented Foods as Culinary 'Shibboleths' by Jonathan Brumber-Kraus and Betsy Dexter Dyer, the biology and religious cultural contexts for the presence of shibboleths in food is explored. The article defines shibboleths as a food that distinguishes one culture from another. These foods generally involve a fermentation component. For this reason the culture of the food has a particularly strong biological role in its development.

Two of the three biological reasons for shibboleths explained in the article are:

  1. " 1.The original fermenting communities of microbes were (and many still are) no more than the indigenous microbes of a particular region and of its human population. Microbes from local soils and waters confer a characteristic ‘terroir’ by tumbling into open buckets of milk and vats of grape juice. The indigenous microbiota dwelling in and on humans produce not only familiar body odors and flavors but also those same nuances in fermented cuisines. It is no coincidence that a well-ripened, surfaced-washed cheese can reek of foot odor. The same bacteria cause both. 

  1. Our senses of taste, smell, touch, sight, and hearing vary according the genes that code for the functions. The normal, ancestral situation was for a continuous lineage of humans to dwell in a small, inbred settlement with a limited travel radius. Such conditions are ideal for concentrating genetic traits including perceptions of food that might lead to strong preferences and aversions. Small, related communities are also ideal for the transmission of cultural information concerning culinary preferences. However, when these groups become less socially and geographically isolated from one another, ‘culture’ enables them to adapt their genetically inherited preferences in order to negotiate their new experiences of familiarity with the Other as friend or foe."
Therefore, a key biological element in the development of a food culture that has shibboleths relies on a human population cooking in an geographically isolated community. Today we live in a world that is adapting to globalization. The effects this has on culture is profound. Food is a great example of globalization and looking at the development of shibboleths from the perspective of a globalizing world makes me wonder whether new shibboleths will be able to be created in the future. Instead of inventing completely new and original foods that include specific, unique human microbes, food is developing in different ways. For example take this "well-traveled salad". It is made up of a combination of different shibboleths from different cultures from feta cheese, olives and vinaigrette. There is some cultural crossover between the different incidents however as the picture below shows, this salad would be much harder to create without the globalization of food.


The "well-traveled salad" doesn't just end with salads however. In addition to ingredients traveling with globalization chain restaurants that originate from a specific culture are now being spread all across the globe. For example, McDonalds can be found all over the world. The process of globalization is dynamic however. The restaurant may be found all over the world however the menus do seem to vary in interesting ways depending on the location. In this way, the biological component of isolated food culture environments that goes into creating shibboleths is somewhat hearkened back to.



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