Rina Santos //
Our dietary habits and relationship with food are, as all things, engulfed by the overarching tentacles of capitalism. If we make the attempt to imagine the daily supper of a miner in the nineteenth century and contrast that image with a bourgeois dinner in Europe, the differences are quite stark. For the former, we might imagine a dull-looking metal plate with some stale bread, potatoes and salted beef; maybe these ingredients actually make up a stew, perhaps with a bit of musty wine or ale to wash it all down. As for the latter, the image becomes diametrically opposite. First, we have a better look at the table; it is a bigger, brighter image, not only in dimension, but also in grandeur. On top of what is likely a china plate, colourful and vibrant, we’ll find plenty of meat or fish, some entremets with fresh vegetables or a pudding of sorts. Not only that, but this plate is probably only the main one among three or four other courses. These are absurdly different realities; one could even argue that they demonstrate completely different relationships with food. The working class’s meal is sustenance, nothing more. Whereas the bourgeois’s relationship with food is heavily marked by performance. It is not simply a matter of nutrition – they already have the upper hand in that –, it has to become a spectacle in itself.
If we compare nineteenth-century European reality to that of today, we find these two disparate realities have met somewhat in the middle – at least in the context of the average worker’s household. Generally speaking, we all have pretty similar plates, pretty similar dietary habits – usually all composed of one protein, one carb, and, ideally, some greens – we don’t make our meals performances; in fact, we all probably sit at a table, or even on our couches. This is not to say that there aren’t large portions of the population who still live in situations similar to those of Victorian workers – they are very much present. But for the most part, we find that the relation-to-food gap between classes has greatly decreased – now, if we are talking about the quality of food, that is a completely different debate.
Nevertheless, there is still one specific element present at the moment of eating that digs in the class rift above discussed: cutlery. And again, in a European context. On a regular basis, we are rarely confronted with anything more than a spoon, a fork and a knife, and we look at these utensils and the only thing that sets them apart in use is practicality. If I’m eating rice, I will use the spoon; if I’m eating meat, I’ll use a knife and fork, just as if I were eating fish. Now, in a setting where there are more of the same kind present, say, at a social gathering, this can easily demarcate people as belonging to different socio-economic statuses. It is no longer a matter of practicality but rather one of ceremony – almost alluding to the performative nature of the bourgeois meal. These events create moments of class tension: they provoke embarrassment in those who lack the performative knowledge of the cutlery, whilst those who do look at the former with disdain – almost as if they are reduced to a non-socialised state, on the fringe of society.
Although admittedly Eurocentric, this view of the relationship with food is important to stress isn’t exclusive to a Western vision of the world. In China, for example, how high or low someone holds chopsticks is a direct indicator of their social status. In India, where the use of the right hand usually takes precedence over the use of cutlery, food is intimately related to caste and social status. In summary, albeit attenuated, the relations we hold with food and its consumption are still heavily circumscribed by class, and to understand food requires its deconstruction.