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Food in Chinese Culture
T0 say that the consumption of food is a vita part of
chemical process of life is to state the obvious, but sometimes we fail to
realize that food is more than just vital. The only other activity that we
engage in that is of comparable importance to our lives and to the life of our
species is sex. As Kao Tzu, a Warring States-jodp1iilosopher and keen observer
of human nature, said, “Appetite for food and sex is nature.”1 But these two
activities are quite different. We are, I believe, much closer to our animal
base in our sexual Endeavour’s than we are in our eating habits, too, the range
of variations infinitely wider in food than in sex. In fact, the importance of
food in understanding human culture lies precisely in its infinite variability
-variability that is not essential for species survival. For survival needs,
all men everywhere could eat the same fou4 td be measured only in calories,
fats, carbohydrates, proteins, and vitamins But no, people of different
backgrounds eat very differently The basic stuffs from which food is prepared, the
ways in which it is preserved, cut up, cooked (if at all); the amount and variety at
each that are liked and disliked; the customs of serving food, the utensils,
the beliefs about the food’s properties-these all vary.
The number of such “food variables” is great.
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