Taste and Culture

Rachel Fulton’s article “Taste and see that the Lord is sweet” (Ps. 33:9): The Flavor of God in the Monastic West” opens with a discussion about the ways that taste is used in language.  She explains that people describe others as “having taste” (positive) or having “bad taste” (negative), which are aesthetic judgments by another individuals.  This relates to her later explanation that we refuse to taste certain foods, because we have already structured what we do and do not like, therefore we fear those things which are mysterious to us.  The fear of these objects, I believe is what pushes us to judge others about what they taste as “more or less civilized or socially acceptable” (Fulton, 171). 

I was interested in look deeper into the connection between culture and food and stumbled across an article, by anthropologists Yuson Yung and Nicolas Cisterna, which discusses food and sensory experience.   The authors explain that through individual sensory experience, certain foods become valorized.  The search for healthy, flavorful, and high quality foods indicates a deep connection between sensory experience and food, which in this example is seen through the language used to describe it. Jung and Cisterna give a few examples one being the connection between vision and taste in Japan.  In specific instance, there is a higher value placed on flounder that are caught in the wild, despite living directly next to hatchery flounder.  Hatchery flounder are described as having dark spots on their body, decreasing their value and taste, while wild flounder have a “truer wilderness taste”, indicating the higher value of nature.  The connection with nature points to the potential “freshness” of wild fish versus, those born in a hatchery, however it may also be tied to Jung and Cisterna’s later discussion of taste as a symbolic marker for social status.  The authors also explain the connection between food and politics with the example of Palestinian extra virgin olive oil.  This olive oil serves as an example of ethical consumerism, because the oil is not only organic but fair trade as well, connecting the consumption of the product with global morality.  I found this example to be interesting because it appears to place a taste value on something, because of what it represents, rather than the flavor.