Food and Identity in Modern America, Part 1

“Men are made of what is made,

The meat, the drink, the life, the corn,

Laid up by them, in them reborn.”

-Edwin Muir

 

The common English adage “you are what you eat” is by no means a new idea. In the early 1800s Frenchman Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, "Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es”: “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.” Less than forty years later Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach echoed, "Der Mensch ist, was er ißt," or “Man is what he eats” (English Proverbs). However, new circumstances give this old proverb new meaning and intriguing questions. In a society in which fewer and fewer people are directly involved with their own food production, understanding one’s food is becoming less common. This combination of old wisdom and new circumstance begs the question: if you are what you eat and you don’t know what you’re eating, do you know who you are?

Identity is formed from an individual’s understanding of the limits, separations, relationships, and contexts in which he or she operates. According to William Jordan, director of the New Academy for Nature and Culture, “Everything is defined by difference” (Jordan 49). The self exists because it is distinct from the other. Thus, the first step in developing an identity is “achieving awareness of the other” (Jordan 51). He gives the example: “A human infant regards itself as omnipotent or co-terminus with the world, making no distinction between what it desires and what the world has to offer.” The development of an identity, then, requires “the breakdown of this illusion of an all-inclusive self, as the other appears on the horizon of awareness” (Jordan 51). Jordan calls this recognition of limitation and separateness “shame,” affirming that “this shame is inseparable from any experience of relationship for the simple reason that any relationship forces on us an awareness of difference, and therefore of limitation” (Jordan 47). In order to develop identity, we first recognize the other, establishing the boundaries of the self, and then engage the other, building relationships through which we understand ourselves as individuals.

One of the most common ways we engage the other, and thereby develop identity-forming relationships, is eating. In their extensive study on The Meaning of Food, Patricia Harris, David Lyon, and Sue McLaughlin write, “Food is the universal human experience” (Harris et al 2). As such, the food one eats is central to forming his or her identity. Engaging the other through food establishes or influences various relationships, including relationships with other individuals, cultures or peoples, and places. As we come to understand ourselves and build our identities in part through these food-based relationships, we “are what we eat” in much more than just a physical sense. Understanding the genesis of and profoundly engaging the food we eat therefore becomes of the utmost importance.