According to the nineteenth-century cultural geographer Vidal de la Blache, “Among the connections that tie [people] to a certain environment, one of the most tenacious is food supply; clothing and weapons are more subject to modification than the dietary regime, which experience has shown to be best suited to human needs in a given climate.”

People do not simply eat what is available in their particular environment. Food preferences are strongly influenced by cultural traditions. What is eaten establishes one’s social, religious, and ethnic memberships. The surest way to identify a family’s ethnic origins is to look in its kitchen.

Popular Food Culture

In the popular culture of the twenty-first century, food preferences seem far removed from folk traditions. Popular food preferences are influenced more by cultural values than by environmental features. Still, some regional variations can be observed between and within countries. For example, what to call sweetened carbonated beverages varies within the United States (refer to Figure 4-32). And environmental influences remain important in selected items.

Why do Coca-Cola and Pepsi have different sales patterns (Figures 4-25 and 4-26)? The two beverages are similar, and many people are unable to taste the difference. Yet consumers prefer Coke in some countries and Pepsi in others.

Fast-Food and Pepsi In Rural QUÉBEC

Popular Food Preferences: Coke Versus Pepsi

Coca-Cola leads in sales in the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Russia. Pepsi leads in Canada, South Asia, and Southwest Asia.

Coca-Cola accounts for more than one-half of the world’s cola shares, and Pepsi for another one-fourth. Coca-Cola is the sales leader most of the Western Hemisphere. The principal exception is Canada’s French-speaking province of Québec, where Pepsi is preferred. Pepsi won over the Québécois with advertising that tied Pepsi to elements of uniquely French Canadian culture. The major indoor arena in Québec City is named the Colisée Pepsi (Pepsi Coliseum).

Cola preferences are influenced by politics in Russia. Under communism, government officials made a deal with Pepsi to allow that cola to be sold in the Soviet Union. With the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of communism, Coke entered the Russian market. Russians quickly switched their preference to Coke because Pepsi was associated with the discredited Communist government.

For many years, Arab countries in Southwest Asia & North Africa boycotted products that were sold in Israel, because they opposed the existence of a Jewish state. Because Pepsi was not sold in Israel until 1992, Coke was the only choice in Israel, whereas in most of Israel’s neighbors Pepsi was preferred.

Folk Food Customs

Folk food customs are embedded especially strongly in the environment. Humans eat mostly plants and animals—living things that spring from the soil and water of a region. Inhabitants of a region must consider the soil, climate, terrain, vegetation, and other characteristics of the environment in deciding to produce particular foods.

The contribution of a location’s distinctive physical features to the way food tastes is known by the French term terroir. The word comes from the same root as terre (the French word for “land” or “earth”), but terroir does not translate precisely into English; it has a similar meaning to the English expressions “grounded” and “sense of place.” Terroir is the sum of the effects on a particular food item of soil, climate, and other features of the local environment.

For example, a special type of lentil is grown only around the village of Le Puy-en-Velay, France (Figure 4-27). The lentil has a distinctive flavor because of the area’s volcanic soil and dry growing season.

Folk Food Customs: Terroir

A field of green lentils is being harvested outside the village of Le Puy, France.

People adapt their food preferences to conditions in the environment. For example, in Asia, rice is grown in milder, moister regions, whereas wheat thrives in colder, drier regions (see Chapter 9). In Italy, traditional preferences for quick-frying foods resulted in part from fuel shortages. In Northern Europe, an abundant wood supply encouraged the slow stewing and roasting of foods over fires, which also provided home heat in the colder climate. Certain foods may be eaten in folk cultures because their natural properties are perceived to enhance qualities considered desirable by the society.

Food Taboos

According to many folk customs, everything in nature carries a signature, or distinctive characteristic, based on its appearance and natural properties. Consequently, people may desire or avoid certain foods in response to perceived beneficial or harmful natural traits.

People refuse to eat particular plants or animals for a variety of reasons. Such a restriction on behavior imposed by religious law or social custom is a taboo. Other customs or practices, such as sexual behavior, carry prohibitions, but taboos are especially strong in the area of food. Some folk cultures may establish food taboos because of concern for the natural environment. These taboos may help to protect endangered animals or to conserve scarce natural resources. To preserve scarce animal species, only a few high-ranking people in some tropical regions are permitted to hunt, and the majority cultivate crops.

Relatively well-known taboos against consumption of certain foods can be found in the Jewish Bible. The ancient Hebrews were prohibited from eating a wide variety of foods, including animals that do not chew their cud or that have cloven feet and fish lacking fins or scales. These biblical taboos were developed through oral tradition and by rabbis into the kosher laws observed today by some Jews.

Muslims embrace a taboo against pork because pigs are unsuited for the dry lands of the Arabian Peninsula. Pigs would compete with humans for food and water, without offering compensating benefits, such as being able to pull a plow, carry loads, or provide milk and wool. Widespread raising of pigs would be an ecological disaster in Islam’s hearth.

Hindu taboos against consuming cattle can also be partly explained by environmental reasons. Cows are the source of oxen (castrated male bovine), the traditional choice for pulling plows as well as carts. A large supply of oxen must be maintained in India because every field has to be plowed at approximately the same time—when the monsoon winds bring rain. Religious sanctions have kept India’s cattle population large as a form of insurance against the loss of oxen and increasing population.

But the taboo against consumption of meat among many people, including Muslims, Hindus, and Jews, cannot be explained primarily by environmental factors. Social values must influence the choice of diet because people in similar climates and with similar levels of income consume different foods. The biblical food taboos helped the Jewish people maintain their identity and communal affiliation. That Christians ignore the biblical food injunctions is consistent with Christianity as a religion that seeks to attract many adherents from many places (see Chapter 6).

Pause & Reflect 4.2.4

What foods do you avoid? Do you avoid foods because of taboos or for other reasons?