Food is everywhere. We often eat without thinking, and yet its impact on us and our surroundings is huge: because what we eat determines what our surroundings look like. The framework is defined by political and structural conditions. These entanglements and our options, as well as our specific product choices, determine which form of agriculture is practised, which plants are grown and what constitutes our agricultural environment.
What unconsciously guides and directs our food choices? And what does that mean? But asking ourselves these questions, as well as cooking and eating consciously, doesn’t mean that we need to ponder these issues all the time. Mind you, understanding how we move within the existing food system enables considering different futures and forms of society. My work engages with these questions and concerns.
Talking about food
Food and nutrition begin with each and every one of us. I encourage people to move beyond their first impression. This, as with other things, is also visual when it comes to food. It is important that we become more involved with other sensory experiences: smell, taste, feel or texture. What does something taste like? What does it feel like in our hands? We need to translate sensory acts into language if we want to share them with others. I encourage people to find their own language, one not shaped by advertising slogans, health guidelines or trends, but which uses images that reflect our own state of mind and situation. Something can taste as if I were lying on the beach with the sun shining on my skin. We can discover our own images and heed why they arise and what they trigger: Are they linked to our life story? Are they cultural heritage? We are shaped by food on several levels: culturally, economically and individually. We struggle to convey what shapes our identity and therefore must grapple with our formative experiences, from which other, communal ideas and experience can emerge.
Food in context
How we perceive and experience food, how we remember it, what it conveys about other issues, is also strongly influenced by context: consumption is situated, and each room contributes a lot to our overall impression of food. And so do friends, conversations and our mood: these factors blend and influence how we perceive food. What remains are memories and impressions of moments that are determined not only by food but also by space, time and people. Moreover: food is an ephemeral material and medium whose specific features prevent exact same replication.
What does this mean?
Looking at food and nutrition from different perspectives enriches our understanding. We begin to think in other dimensions. This approach has great potential. Western social structures are based on categorizing and ordering, which may polarize discussions and perceptions. In global contexts, however, many things are ambivalent and interconnected. Cooking and eating constitute a constantly repeating and transformational process in the in-between. We need to learn how to move in this environment, and how to initiate active creation. It is about becoming open and curious, and about experimenting.