The Geography of Food

Abstract

What a combination: geography and food. Does food have a geography? Of course it does. Everything has a geography. Food is inherently geographic. Food comes from somewhere. Different foods are associated with different groups of people. And such cultural identities are usually place based: steak and kidney pie and the English, for example. Food is exotic, or it is bland, but it is always noteworthy. The great English beer drinker has become the lager lout made famous by so many international soccer tournaments and brought to our television screens on slow news nights. The same dipsomaniacs are also featured as the shirtless, and lobster pink, individuals that have made Spanish resorts what they are today: places inundated with British style pubs and cafeterias selling "traditional" British fried breakfasts, and offering fish and chips in the evening. Where did all of the tapas go? Over a Thanksgiving meal (which for me, being English, held no sense of family tradition, but served only as a dress rehearsal for my imminent Christmas Day meal of Turkey) I was loudly informed from across the table, by a German guest, that the English eat horsemeat. This was no statement of simple fact meant to educate the non-European hosts. This was good old European cultural animosity. The horsemeat insult has made its rounds as far back as I can remember. As a child I always believed that it was the French that ate horsemeat, and I was also indoctrinated with that base and foul, racist lie that south Asian restaurants in Britain used cat, and dog, meat in their curries. This reminds me of the 2002 World Cup soccer tournament held in both Japan and South Korea. The South Koreans wanted to hand out free hot dogs to spectators at some of the soccer matches. The only problem was that the South Koreans actually do eat dog meat. Were the hot dogs really dogs? The European media certainly exercised itself over this revelation. The sense of outrage was palpable. Simply put, food is deeply associated with people and places. Food feeds our cultural stereotypes. It is inherently geographic. It is a social and cultural marker and is never devoid of meaning and significance. Food and food practices denote cultural, class and moral