FOOD AS FAUX PAS
According to the voice-over, “Max has never had a hot meal. He’s nine years old”; similarly, “Every mealtime is a nightmare for Sophia and Arid, as four-year-old Kiran refuses to eat anything but sugary treats”, while another child “In fact mastered the art of making himself sick at the table when I tried to get him to eat something he didn’t want to”, or so a young mother tells the camera. This is the raw material “Supernanny” Jo Frost’s imperium is made of: bad children and worse parents. Since 2004, the British nanny has been called in to help with a myriad of child-rearing problems, with a constant factor on the show being difficulties at the table. Getting a child to eat, it turns out, isn’t always easy.
“What happens when our personal taste preferences and those deemed acceptable don’t align?”
At the same time, at your table, you might hear a dinner guest say “I like everything” with a certain pride in their voice, or you could be told about that time someone — still a toddler! — was photographed munching on a bowl of olives — suggesting that a lack of food aversions is an accomplishment, something to be proud of. When thinking about taste, it is language that forces us to consider two thoroughly different concepts simultaneously. The first, a question of basic evolutionary biology, of receptors in our mouths and noses, of one of five senses and signals to our brain. The second, a complicated set of societal and cultural constructs, of “good” and “bad”, “acquired” and “basic”. But are these two concepts really just bound by language? What factors are at play in forcing us, throughout our lives, to balancethe interface of taste and “taste”? What happens when our personal taste preferences and those deemed acceptable don’t align? And who even decides where these lines are drawn?
Seemingly, we all start out on a level playing field. Research shows that regardless of culture or origin, babies enter the world with one taste in mind: sweet. There are different theories as to why that is, but likely, the sweetness of milk plays a role: A child simply has a significantly higher chance of survival if it actually likes the stuff that will keep it alive. A little later in life, as it starts eating, another aspect comes into play. Humans throughout history have been in grave danger of death and disease through the ingestion of poisonous food, so evolution had a strategy. Sweet foods, which are likely to be nutrient-dense and high in calories, are good for growth, while poisonous ingredients often taste bitter. A biological disposition towards sweet foods makes sense under the circumstances of hunting and gathering, but that same strategy backfires in a world consisting of miles of aisles filled with sugary sweets and sodas. Long story short: every child will prefer candy bars over broccoli — but there’s a catch. Long before any of us see the light of day, our sense of taste already develops. During the last trimester of pregnancy, the foetus develops taste buds that are capable of detecting taste and transmitting information to the central nervous system. This means that the amniotic fluid, of which foetuses drink up to a litre a day and which is packed with flavour — is actually tasted. How this fluid tastes largely depends on the mother’s diet, and research suggests that a child’s taste preferences and acceptance of not-sweet foods later in childhood largely depend on what it’s been exposed to during pregnancy and lactation. Turns out the playing field is wonky to begin with.
But there’s no accounting for taste, right? It shouldn’t matter — except, of course, it does. It’s obvious that good health is an advantage in life, but we’ve reached the point where the issue is no longer just biological, but social as well. Jo Frost’s picky toddlers might have someday ended up on TLC’s reality format Freaky Eaters, had it not mysteriously been taken off the air after a mere fourteen episodes. Maybe four-year-old Kiran’s fate would have mirrored the woman’s who ate nothing but French fries for twenty-six years, while Max might just as well have been Daniel, who douses his food in maple syrup worth 912 pounds of sugar each year. The children on Supernanny seem to have no scruples about crying in restaurants, refusing to eat or spitting food on the floor, but most people, including those on Freaky Eaters, soon develop a form of shame around their eating habits whenever these don’t align with societal expectations or norms. No one likes to be called freaky, it seems. A 2015 study suggests a link between selective eating in children and a multitude of psychological problems like depression and heightened anxiety later in life, which likely has to do with feelings of social exclusion and shame resulting from picky eating habits. Around our teenage years, a lot of us begin to deliberately push the boundaries of our palates to comply with social conventions. Very few people like their first cup of coffee or first shot of vodka, yet many push themselves further and further out of their comfort zones. At first, it might be milk with a drop of coffee and hazelnut syrup or berry-infused vodka mixed with sprite, and the road may very well end there. The bearers of “good taste”, however, go on to prefer Ethiopian over Kenyan coffees (or the other way around), light-roasted of course, and find themselves buying extra suitcases to bring home those lovely bottles of Riesling with their elegant acidity.
Many of us are somehow aware that the cuisine of the region we grew up in affects our taste. What we’re less aware of is that within those regions, one can hardly speak of one single cuisine. Today, as they have been for a long time, our societies still are divided into social classes, and the social class we are born into provides us with certain types of capital — or lack thereof. This capital is not just monetary, but also, as Pierre Bourdieu described in his most famous book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, social and cultural. It is the people who possess high volumes of these forms of capital, for example in the form of education, skills and connections, who dictate what is considered good taste, and, by extension, where the lines between “high” and “low” culture are drawn. Those with lower volumes of cultural and social capital tend to accept this taste as the standard, although its products are inaccessible to them. This does not solely relate to financial resources. A conversation about, for example, artwork or literature, is rendered impossible for these classes, because the “right” terminology, knowledge and taste are unavailable. Bourdieu argues that by asserting a monopoly over the rights and wrongs of aesthetics, the leading class asserts power and a form of symbolic violence over the rest of society. It needs to be said, of course, that in multicultural societies, questions of race also play into this power dynamic.
“ It is only when basic necessities are met that one can begin to think about how to distinguish oneself.”
It is easy to see how this topic ties into discussions about food; after all, the word “taste” originally applied to the sense that allows us to enjoy or dislike food. While food, of course, fulfils a physiological need, it is also a symbolic system that reflects societies in their social, political, economic and religious characteristics. Research shows that the ratios in which food fulfills these two very different roles, meaning food as fuel and food as culture, vary depending on class. For example, while the leading class buys more expensive, status-oriented food, the working class buys cheaper, more filling food, while spending a higher percentage of its income on it. This division is defined as the taste of necessity versus the taste of freedom: It is only when basic necessities are met that one can begin to think about how to distinguish oneself. The nutritional value of the food itself is, in this context, also to be defined as a question of luxury; while middle and upper-class individuals are likely to take perceived health benefits into account, thus considering long-term effects, working-class individuals are more concerned with solving today’s problems (or today’s full stomach). Given that taste preferences are largely predestined by the flavours a child is exposed to during pregnancy, these “unhealthy” food choices can easily become generational.
From the film Spy. Via 20th Century Fox
From the film Spy. Via 20th Century Fox
So, what to do when one has been burdened with “bad taste”? In many cases, climbing the social ladder proves to be more difficult than simply hitting the jackpot, as non-economic forms of capital cannot be acquired through sheer luck. The possession of high economic capital combined with low social and cultural capital makes up what is commonly referred to in a derogatory manner as “new money”, meaning “all money and no class”. Moving around in a society that has been created and is ruled by the self-proclaimed elite creates difficulties for those who have not been socialised under those circumstances. A scene in the 2015 comedy Spy illustrates how this is true for societal spaces in which the social distinction as it relates to food is expressed and celebrated. Melissa McCarthy’s character Susan, who is undercover in Rose Byrne’s ultrarich character Rayna’s world, finds herself confronted with having to choose from a wine menu in a chic restaurant. Trying to pass as someone who belongs,, she describes liking “a white with the grit of a hummus that’s of course been thinned out and will just kind of jump up in the front of your palate and then rip back and sizzle — almost a mineral kind of dirt finish, if we’re having meat.” She ends up ordering the Sapori e Delizie, which turns out to be the name of the restaurant. In another restaurant scene, she mistakes a wet hand towel for an appetiser. The humour in these scenes works because we realise that some of the words that are in fact used to describe taste notes in wine are hardly less ridiculous than comparing it to a thinned out hummus, with the major difference that the prior has been deemed “correct”: The ice is thin and it is slippery.
“Many societies today are obsessed with health and the idea that it is always a product of our own doing, and thus, we invest in our mental and physical well-being in search of self-fulfilment.”
What is deemed “good taste” is by no means set in stone either, as is shown by intercultural differences and changes within one culture over time. It appears that these changes often have to do with the rarity or abundance of certain foods. As European colonisers settled in North America, they were confronted with piles of lobsters washing ashore. Their funky look, combined with their overabundance, got them referred to as the “cockroaches of the sea”, with the lobster soon being used as fish bait or fertiliser. At the same time, they made up for an important food source to the lower classes, and were fed to prison inmates and enslaved people. During the 1800s, however, with the new technology of canning, the lobster slowly became more popular, and as prices rose due to their shrinking volumes, the humble lobster developed into the expensive treat it is considered today. On the flipside, shifting perspectives can also cause food to fall out of favour. Many societies today are obsessed with health and the idea that it is always a product of our own doing, and thus, we invest in our mental and physical well-being in search of self-fulfilment. White bread, which was once considered a luxurious treat due to the extensive labour that goes into producing it, as well as its finer crumb and more delicate flavour (in certain Northern-European languages a ‘honeymoon’ is referred to as ‘white bread weeks’), is now shunned in favour of wholegrain, pure, unprocessed alternatives that are deemed healthier. Of course, due to modern manufacturing techniques, white bread is now also readily and cheaply available. So where is the truth?
There isn’t any to be found far and wide. You, the reader, no doubt hoped for a conclusion a little more conclusive than the umpteenth repetition of a cliché, but here it is: there is no objective standard for taste — that is to say, adjectives like “good” and “bad” just won’t stick to it. That doesn’t mean, however, that we can’t dig a little and find out how our personal taste has been informed, why we like some things and others not so much. Now, a general (and understandable) aversion against beetroots isn’t what is meant here, but the broad strokes. Think about it: What, to you, constitutes comfort food, a nice restaurant, good coffee? Does food help you distinguish yourself from others? Do you flaunt your taste preferences or would you rather be left alone with them? None of it is accidental.
Text: Yannic Moeken
Illustrations: Gemma Wilson
Copy Edit: Charlotte Faltas
Sources:
Pierre Bourdieu: Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste
Catherine A. Forestell: Flavor Perception and Preference Development in Human Infants
AmiLin McClure: How Lobster Went From Prison Food to an Expensive Delicacy
Priscilla de Morais Sato et al.: The use of Pierre Bourdieu’s distinction concepts in scientific articles studying food and eating. A narrative review
Unknown: What Picky Eating Might Mean for Children Later
