The Raw and the Cooked

"He’s a French structuralist, don’t even try it. This book is based on fieldwork he did in the 1930s in the Amazon. He was of Jewish descent and fled oncoming fascism. He already saw the problems coming in the 1930s, and went to Brazil. He was the first person to study the Indian tribes in the Amazon. His greatest contribution, for me, is that he describes those tribes as having an extremely complex culture. They were then, certainly, and even today seen as extremely primitive, but he showed that these are people with a coherent, systematic set of beliefs about all kinds of things, particularly food – up to the standard of the imperial cuisines that Rachel Laudan describes. So here you have the other end of the spectrum. Lévi-Strauss’s argument in Le Cru et le Cuit (The Raw and the Cooked) is that the first, most basic dichotomy in food history—in terms of complex classified systems of thinking about food—is between the cooked and the non-cooked. We changed, as mankind, when we discovered fire. That changes everything because cooking makes food more available in a biological way, it makes it possible to keep it, and it also starts the division of labour between men and women. So these Amazon Indians have an exceedingly coherent, logical system about how to classify food, which starts from that basic dichotomy all the way down, about what fish to eat and why. Around every one of these classifications, there was a whole system of beliefs and explanations and myths. The reason I put it on the list is because nobody knows this anymore. This was the first work that opened our eyes to the fact that wherever you go, food is so important that it leads to very complex classifications and mythologies. It is a seminal book. It’s impossible to read, but it is absolutely essential, because it shaped our thinking. “There is nothing in our daily behaviour that is so ingrained or so twisted around moral ideas as food.” Also, Lévi-Strauss, in this period in the Amazon, took a camera with him and took some of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen of people. These were primitive people, who didn’t even have clothes or hardly any clothes. They lived in thatched huts in the forest and were completely oblivious of the camera. You see these women and children playing together. They had no toys, nothing. There is a serenity and a joy in their faces, and they are extremely beautiful. You see girls that could be models today, sitting in the sand or a boy playing with a little monkey or something. It’s of a beauty that is nearly supernatural. Everybody has myths. Everybody has not just myths, but classifications about good and bad. There is nothing in our daily behaviour that is so ingrained or so twisted around moral ideas as food. We know what is good and bad in terms of eating, in terms of food stuffs, in terms of sharing or not sharing, or eating alone. We have moral categories for everything around food. So you see, again, these moral categories. Then I look at the science. I am, after all, a scientist, and I see that what the media has made out of it is not at all held up by the science. In this particular case, the science only says that if you look at certain components in the sausages, the risks of those components, in the long term, causing bowel cancer is greater than from some other categories. But, as always in food, the number one rule is that you cannot rely on any studies that only look at one particular food stuff because it is the pattern that counts, and the pattern over time. “If you eat a hamburger everyday, it’s a problem. But if you eat a pineapple everyday, it’s not a good idea either. It is diversity that counts” That’s why the epidemiology of food intake related to health is so extremely complicated. In this case, yes, there is a slight risk, not just with sausages, but with red meat in general. That doesn’t mean that if you eat small quantities of red meat three times a week there is a major problem. Of course not. It’s very unfortunate. This is what we were talking about at the beginning: why are we so worried? It’s also because the media is always making some bad news out of something which, from a scientific point of view, is far more nuanced and far more complicated. Yes. And of course the other driver is that scientists, because they are underfunded nearly everywhere in the world, have a benefit in bringing out bad news because it attracts attention and maybe leads to new funding. Of course. The best rule is, first of all, not to worry too much about food, because if it becomes an obsession, you don’t enjoy it anymore and you’re not making things any better. I’m really serious about that. The second rule is diversity, diversity, diversity. There is not a single food item, not even a hamburger, that is wrong in itself. This is where your moral categories sometimes intersect with the practice of life. There is not something bad or good about a single thing — unless it is made with no attention to animal welfare or with child-slavery, or it’s polluted or toxic. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Normal food stuffs, in our countries at least, are not unhealthy by definition. They are not morally bad by definition. They become bad if they’re part of a pattern that is unhealthy. So if you eat a hamburger everyday, it’s a problem. But if you eat a pineapple everyday, all the time, it’s not a good idea either. It is diversity that counts and food needs to be part of a healthier pattern. We are now focused on lots of people being overweight. Overweight becomes a problem if it is part of a pattern of not moving at all. A lot of people may have a BMI that’s slightly higher than the normal, but if they are still moving, that is not a risk. Of course, people do not understand how the concept of risk works either. They think risk is telling them what will happen, when it’s only a probability."