What
are your favourite foods? Is chocolate your 'thing'? Would you
travel great distances for a choice steak dinner, a crisp, lettuce salad,
or a huge ice cream cone?
Or would you rather have some crispy caterpillar or smoked
eel? No? Then have some curdled milk with your blood sausage!
We tend to view all food as equally motivating to every
one because eating satisfies biological needs. But eating,
especially what we eat, is a social phenomenon in addition to a
biological one. A careful examination
of food preferences and taboos can make this very clear; foods that
attract and entice many people of the world may repulse the typical Northern
American. For example, many North Americans would object to goat,
smoked eel, stewed Guinea pig, roasted dog, or lye-soaked cod fish even
though these foods are delicacies in other parts of the world (parts of
Jamaica, Finland, Guatemala, China, and Norway, respectively). In
fact, to be served them can be a great honour reserved for special guests!
North Americans have similar foods they find highly motivating, yet are repulsive and perhaps even offensive to visitors. Make a list of foods you enjoy, but should hesitate to serve a guest from a different culture.
