The Culture of Food

"This was the first book I read, and it’s a summary of European food culture; what these cultures are, and where they came from. An example of the kind of thing Massimo Montanari talks about is how the Romans became farmers. Because they had an urban civilisation, and a lot of urban ideas, they were forced into creating an agricultural economy because that’s the only way you can really feed a city. They couldn’t understand why the Germans in the north of Europe didn’t become farmers. “The profound separation between man and the natural environment comes with industrialisation, when it becomes clear that we are actually destroying nature.” Montanari explains that this is because the Germans were forest dwellers who prioritised hunting, and therefore meat eating. This difference generated profound cultural differences. For the Romans the cultivated land around the city, the ‘Ager’, was seen as sacred, and also a part of the city, and they saw the wilderness as a bit dangerous and basically useless. The reverse is true of the Germans, who saw the wilderness as their home: they lived there. There was a complete clash of conceptions of land, identity and even gods. It’s just such a fascinating thing that there are these extraordinarily powerful, deeply buried understandings of who we are and what we are that can be understood through how we feed ourselves. I was unbelievably lucky to have come across this book first."