One of the themes that has struck me the most in Plate 1 is the concept of cleanliness shared by communities.
The communities we have studied thus far all believe in eating ‘clean’ food, however, it seems there is no consensus on what is clean.
For Christians, as I was reminded in Dr Thompson’s lecture, Christ’s blood and body are clean. Not only clean, but actually purifying. In a way that’s similar yet different, for several Maori tribes in the past, human flesh was also clean enough for consumption. However, rather than imbuing the consumer with the Spirit, it represents the total domination of another’s.
In the documentary ‘H.O.P.E: What you eat matters’, an optional reading provided by Dr Sharpe, there is nothing less clean than flesh and blood. Instead of being sacred, meat is seen as sinful, dirty, and reprehensible. The new fad of ‘clean eating’ completely excludes animal products. In another take on what it means to be clean, dumpster diving is seen as more clean than purchases from a supermarket, as the produce on the shelves is dirtied by its carbon miles, genetic modification, and subjection to pesticides.
Even linguistically, a key part of producing meat involves cleaning.
(A synonym for gutting poultry or fish is ‘cleaning’ it.)
So why as a society, and in fact, as a species, are we so obsessed with food purity? I can’t ask 7 billion people, so I’ll ask you. What is clean food to you? Why do you want to eat clean?
As with pretty much everything, human’s actions now are caused by events that happened in the past. Operant conditioning 101. This effect influences anywhere from wanting to eat your favourite dessert again, to our entire evolutionary chain. It’s pretty fundamental.
The reason we have these standards of cleanliness is that they kept us alive 200,000 years ago, before we could analyse the sodium content or remove the gluten. To be fair, that was a lot more rudimentary back then; “smell good then eat good” is a little less sophisticated than our judgement systems today.
As a species, we have spread and diverged into different paths and cultures, each defining cleanliness. For Maori tribes, as you mentioned, the human body was sanitary. For Christians, flesh was only safe to eat if it came from ‘the purest person of them all’. These ideas and cultures soon merged to become the general global perspective (i.e. don’t eat your neighbour, that’s gross, dude)
The issue now is that while technologies and methods in food preparation have evolved, these standards of what is “clean” have stayed relatively stagnant. What was initially a mechanism to prevent poisoning is now one that is more selective, rejecting food that would have gone above and beyond our standards only a few centuries (or even decades) ago.
That is why these contemporary ideas of ‘dumpster diving’ are looked down upon, whereas less hygienic options, such as mass meat production, are being consumed by the tonne. We have not adapted to this new age of food health.
Then again, can clean food ever be objectively defined, or is it just a trait of the times? We would never imagine eating what our ancestors ate 4,000 generations ago – how would the humans of future societies view us?
Clean food, such as ‘good music’ or dancing ability, can never be objectively measured or defined.
Clean food is what we believe it is, with our narrow scope, limited technology, restricted access to food production and deep cultural biases.
Thank you for your thoughtful response!
You raise a good point- the ideas of clean eating, while dependent on the individual you ask, probably stem largely from the barrage of ideas we experience every day on the topic of ‘clean food’. In the same way that opposing views have resulted in an eventual, more or less global conclusion (i.e. “don’t eat your neighbour, that’s gross”), I wonder if our views today will ever reach a conclusion?
Maybe the success/acceptance of alternative food initiatives relies on making them less ‘alternative’? It seems that the language we use helps to determine what is acceptable, e.g. the word ‘cannibalism’ is more frequently used than the Maori alternative, which would have much different connotations. Instead of ‘dumpster diving’, if we called it ‘food rescue’, it might be more successful…
Thanks again for your comment,
Hannah
Clean food is an interesting concept as it deliberately restrains people’s eating habits, and it is often to do with certain religious beliefs. This categorisation of food itself probably starts with the many diseases that certain food helped spread in the past .
I’ll raise an interesting point. In China, there is a joke saying that ‘whatever we can not eat directly, we will make it into medicine then eat it.’ This is literally true, as many ingredients of Chinese medicine can only be described as harmful both mentally and physically. Examples are Cockroach, young boy’s urine ,placenta, rat droppings…. and many others.
This is another perspective in thinking about the cleanness of food. Rather than giving up unclean food completely, Chinese people using their Philosophy of persistence , tried really hard and really imaginatively to come up with ways to clean unclean food then eat it.
I loved your post Hannah – truly thought-provoking!
I found it most interesting how our understanding of ‘clean’ food is largely derived two spheres of human discourse: spiritual contexts (food morality, rituals, ethics etc.) and ‘scientific’ contexts (food hygiene, artificial additives, microbial knowledge etc.) As you have eloquently demonstrated, the position each demands for us to adopt is often contradictory, or even inherently hostile of the other.
The question I now pose to the brainy-boffin bunch we are is this: which sphere of human discourse, if we could only choose one should we follow? Ritualised food culture which irrationally imbues food with human experience, or emotionally-void food science? No cop-out’s arguing that we need both either.
It is no wonder food purity is controversial – it challenges us to question whether the foundations of our identity are merely built on sand.