Question

The Birth of Food Culture

Everybody has to eat. It’s obvious, right? And eating has been a large part of every human enterprise in existence. (Clearly the Magna Carta was not written on an empty stomach and World War II was not won by a starving army.) So it might surprise you that humans have only really thought critically about food in the last couple centuries.

That’s not an entirely true, of course. Food has always been a primary concern of humanity, but choosing food, planning menus, and thinking about food as a concept are recent innovations. Before humans thought about food, they only thought about the need for food. Thus, the only thought process about food concerned when to get it and how to get it, and things like taste were not factors. Until the Middle Ages, though, most people in the world did not have access to even simple spices such as salt, let alone more exotic ones. Before Marco Polo brought spices back to Europe from Asia in the 1200s, there was no concept of how food tasted. Once spices became more common, suddenly food became more interesting. And once it became more interesting, people began to be—you guessed it—interested in it beyond simple matters of sustenance.

Still, food was not thought of as a choice for another five centuries. Before the 1600s and 1700s, food was still scarce. Drought and prolonged wars plagued much of Europe, and most people lived in states of indigence and need. Thus, food, scarce as it was, was still something of a luxury item, and so-called “good food” was even more luxurious. After the industrious revolution (a time when people began to perform work tasks for money rather than committing labor on feudal lands), though, a middle class emerged. And with the middle class came an abundance of money, money that could be used to not just buy one product but to actively choose products based on desire instead of need. Thus, families could now choose to make their food taste good, not merely choose to eat food. As the saying goes, one only thinks about lunch when he knows he will eat dinner. And likewise, when one knows he will eat, he can choose what he wants to eat.

The abundance created by the industrious revolution coincided with the emergence of new sources of flavor too, in North and South America. Sugar was suddenly abundant, thanks to the sugar plantations created in the West Indies, and the Columbian Exchange had similarly brought back all sorts of new crops to Europe, including corn, tomatoes, potatoes, and vanilla beans. The European consumer now had choices in what to eat and began to develop new ways of cooking and consuming these new foods.

A scant century later (and coinciding with the continuing rise of the middle class thanks to the Industrial Revolution), cookbooks, restaurants, and food critics would all come into existence, and a veritable food culture would be born. In the centuries since then, food has become something of an obsession. Today, entire stores are devoted to cookbooks, and no fewer than four cable networks devoted to cooking can be found. Yet, for something so ingrained in our culture, it was not that long ago that Westerners thought of food much like the rest of the world still does: as a need that is far too often unobtainable.

The author of this passage argues, the before “the 1200s, there was no concept of how food tasted” and that “things like taste were not factors” in choosing what to eat. Respond to this argument. Are there any problems with this idea? Can you provide any counterevidence?

Answer 1

Imagine it's England, 1209, and you're a wealthy baron. You arrive home from London one day to discover that King John's minions have once again raided your stores of grain. It's the king's right, of course — he has a large household and armies to feed — and there's a promise of compensation.

But all too often that payment arrives late, if at all. And there was that incident last year where the bailiff was caught selling the seized goods instead of handing them over to the king's men.

These events aren't simply the makings of the next Robin Hood movie. The practice of seizing food for the king, known as "purveyance," was common in medieval England, as was the greed and corruption associated with it. It was one of the key gripes that drove England's barons to negotiate the Magna Carta with King John in 1215.

The Magna Carta is considered one of the great legal documents in the history of democracy. Five centuries later, the legal principles it set forth inspired American colonists in their own rebellion against the British crown. And Americans now have their own copy on display at the National Archives, thanks to a permanent loan from billionaire David M. Rubenstein, who bought a 1297 reissue of the Magna Carta at auction. Careful readers of the document — or, more likely, its translation — may be surprised at what the charter has to say about food.

Answer 2

The Birth of Food Culture

Everybody has to eat. It’s obvious, right? And eating has been a large part of every human enterprise in existence. (Clearly the Magna Carta was not written on an empty stomach and World War II was not won by a starving army.) So it might surprise you that humans have only really thought critically about food in the last couple centuries.

Step-by-step explanation:

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