Do culinary shibboleths exist today?
JBK and Professor Dyer's article was really interesting and made a lot of sense to me- of course we prefer foods that are fermented with our own bacteria, both from the soil of our home and from our own bodies. Otherwise, such foods wouldn't agree with us. Like certain cheese smells similar to feet, we tend to reject the unfamiliar and experience it as bad.
Our associations with seeing food from the "other" as also being "other" only serves to complicate things. If your culture views a particular religious or ethnic group as dirty, for example, everything about that group, including their food, is then seen in the same light. While some of this exists today, I can only imagine how much more apparent it was in Biblical times, when Jews would not drink Gentile wine because of its contamination in their mind.
However, in our society today, we can get a taste of just about any culture's food that we want, and typically pretty quickly. Even being at Wheaton, inside the "bubble", we have sushi, Indian cuisine, and tacos essentially at our fingertips (dining hall food excluded for obvious reasons). There are even inventive overlaps of sorts; one example is the "sushirrito" shown below, a sushi roll in the shape of a burrito. (Can we get these for class? There's probably an excuse).
Despite the differences in these types of food, I personally enjoy them all and know many many others who feel the same way. But what would happen if, for example, we went to war with Japan? Would sushi be outlawed, or viewed as bad? How strong are these ideas of cultural and culinary "shibboleths" today? In religious circles, do these notions still exist strongly? We are more accepting of others, generally, today. So do some people still avoid foods and cuisines on the basis of the supposed contamination of the group that the food originates from? (This is an actual question- if anyone has some examples, please share!)
Our associations with seeing food from the "other" as also being "other" only serves to complicate things. If your culture views a particular religious or ethnic group as dirty, for example, everything about that group, including their food, is then seen in the same light. While some of this exists today, I can only imagine how much more apparent it was in Biblical times, when Jews would not drink Gentile wine because of its contamination in their mind.
However, in our society today, we can get a taste of just about any culture's food that we want, and typically pretty quickly. Even being at Wheaton, inside the "bubble", we have sushi, Indian cuisine, and tacos essentially at our fingertips (dining hall food excluded for obvious reasons). There are even inventive overlaps of sorts; one example is the "sushirrito" shown below, a sushi roll in the shape of a burrito. (Can we get these for class? There's probably an excuse).
Despite the differences in these types of food, I personally enjoy them all and know many many others who feel the same way. But what would happen if, for example, we went to war with Japan? Would sushi be outlawed, or viewed as bad? How strong are these ideas of cultural and culinary "shibboleths" today? In religious circles, do these notions still exist strongly? We are more accepting of others, generally, today. So do some people still avoid foods and cuisines on the basis of the supposed contamination of the group that the food originates from? (This is an actual question- if anyone has some examples, please share!)
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