The Effects of
Lineage and Environment on Food Culture
As Americans we all have very different backgrounds and
nationalities that make up our families’ heritages. These different nations and
cultures all have very diverse food cultures. These varied nations didn’t just
have different food sources but different ecological environments presented to
them that have forever shaped their genetic makeup. For example, historically
the Inuit people and Norwegian fisherman, who lived in very cold regions,
developed a response to frost bite called the Lewis wave. The Lewis wave is a
pulsing of the blood in the extremities to protect against frost bite, while
the blood mainly stays close to vital organs to prevent organ failure due to
the cold temperatures. During the Korean War, African American soldiers were
much more prone to frostbite than the other soldiers as a result of their lack
of a response to fight frost bite (Moalem 36). Another example comes from our
biochemical response to sunlight. Sunlight helps your body create vitamin D,
but destroys your body’s reserves of folic acid. Different populations have
evolved a combination of adaptations to help protect folic acid and ensure sufficient
vitamin D (Moalem 50). These adaptations can most clearly be seen in our skin
color, which are directly linked to the amount of sun that a particular
population was exposed to for long periods of time. Darker skin protects
against the absorption of UV light, which protects against sunburns and the
loss of folic acid (Moalem 53). As a result of this extra protection, in the
form of much more of the dark melanin, a specialized pigment that absorbs
light, produced in those with darker skin tones (Moalem 53) African Americans
are much less likely to get melanoma. According to Sharon Moalem, author of Survival of the Sickest, “European
Americans are ten to forty times as likely to get melanoma as African
Americans” (54). These genetically linked predispositions, based entirely on
what region of the world your ancestors were from, lead me to believe that the
same may be true for dietary needs. Perhaps our ancestors’ environments have
given us certain predispositions in specific areas of our diets. Personally, I
am of Mexican, Spanish, and German decent, but have been raised in the vastly
diverse American food culture. Genetically speaking, I have been encoded with
certain needs that differ from other nationalities; even, or more especially,
from the American food I’ve had my entire life. Are our preferences and needs
in food culturally and genetically passed down to us by our families or are
they a product of the environment in which we are brought up in?
I am predominately Mexican and therefore it is the
culture I most closely associate with my heritage, especially since all of my
relatives are at least half Mexican. In my experience, in the Mexican culture,
food is so much more than just what gets put on the table: it is a social
experience, and a mother or grandmother’s area of expertise. This idea of the
kitchen being the woman’s domain is strong in the Mexican culture. Even if you
aren’t hungry they will cook you something to eat, even if you insist that you
don’t want anything, you will be brought more food than you ever have any hope
of finishing. Stereotypically this is a display of love in most Mexican
families and if I didn’t think it would kill me I would live off of just my
grandmother’s tortillas. The Mexican food culture today is quiet varied, from
its pre-Columbian influences, to the influences of the indigenous Indians,
Spanish, and French. In the past, diets were limited by the geographic
proximity to local fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy products, and protein
sources. To most people the Mexican diet is very unhealthy, as frying is the
most popular cooking method; therefore everything is high in fat. Also Mexicans
tend to have a diet rich in complex carbohydrates, which are accounted for most
generously by the corn and flour tortillas served with almost every meal, as
well as rice and breads. Protein is likewise quite common in form of beans,
eggs, fish, pork, and poultry. The fruits and vegetables that are most common
are tomatoes, squash, sweet potato, avocado, mango, pineapple, and papaya.
However while the Mexican diet is rich in the areas of complex carbohydrates
and protein, it is much less so in the form of calcium, iron, and vitamins A
and C (Smith). This dietary culture could be responsible for predispositions
like an adaptation that allows for easier breakdown of complex carbohydrates or
perhaps a less pressing need to ingest sources of vitamin D, given the sunny
clime from which the Mexican people were created.
It
is not at all coincidental that the Spanish dietary culture closely resembles
that of Mexico, as they probably inherited this culture from their mother
country Spain, therefore directly affected my culture and the food culture
passed down through my ancestors. Spain was highly influenced by their
historical ruling forces, the Romans and the Moors, and with this change of
ruling powers a wide range of cooking styles and ingredients made their way
into Spain. Given that Spain isn’t very agriculturally sound, due to poor soil
quality, much of their ingredients for their traditional meals came from trade,
other than Mediterranean staples like, grapes, oranges, and olives. Unlike
Mexico, Spain’s main meat sources come from sheep and fishing (mussels,
sardines, anchovies, squid) (Pohlman). This particular diet doesn’t lack for
resources of vitamin C (oranges and other citrus fruits) or sources of lean
protein. The Spanish blood in my heritage may have created predispositions
involving adaptations around the tolerance and digestion of seafood or maybe
even further back created a predisposition to need less nutrients, because if
the land didn’t yield much, natural selection would select those who could do
without.
My German heritage is a little elusive to me, which is
probably why I don’t think it has had much an effect on my food culture. I’ve
never met any of my German-American relatives, the product of Mexican migrant
workers and German settlers in the hill country of Texas, who weren’t more Mexican
than German. However, German food culture is very present in American food
culture if only for the words hamburger and frankfurter, and more so in the
forms of bratwurst, egg noodles, and other American dishes that have German
origins. The predominant form of beer in the United States is lager beer, which
was brought by German immigrants (Essman). The traditional German cuisine is
often quite regionalized but some of the most popular dishes are Blood Sausage,
made from barely and meat blood, Sauerkraut, fermented chopped up cabbage, and
Spatzle, egg noodles served in soup, and a variety of different types of
sausages and cured meats (Parry). This hearty meat and potato diet is not
uncommon in most of America as more than one fourth of the population is of
German descent (Essman). Predispositions that may have arisen from this part of
my lineage might possibly include a higher alcohol tolerance, given that beer
was so popular, perhaps natural selections selected for those who had higher
tolerances for alcohol, as historically fermented drinks were the safest choice
of beverage, or maybe a predisposition involving an adaptation for the
tolerance and digestion of red meats.
America
is a relatively new nation created by immigrants, bringing with them their many
different food cultures, therefore America has never had one particular
culinary tradition to guide our dietary choices (Pollan 5). The American food culture, if it can be called
that, according to Michael Pollan author of The
Omnivore’s Dilemma, is more like a national eating disorder that causes
mood swings from one fad to another (2). Pollan also states that if we had a
more stable culture of food we would not be so susceptible to diet books and
other quackery. We would not eat our one fifth of our meals in cars and feed
one third of our children fast food everyday (Pollan 3). Compared to some of
our European contemporaries, who decide their dinner decisions based on ideas
like pleasure and tradition, eat all manner of “unhealthy” foods and still wind
up being healthier and happier than we are, the American food culture is quite
simple, a culture of convenience, because our citizens don’t have time to cook
(Pollan 3) (Rosengarten 7). Although this culture could be linked back to our
founding, the citizens of Jamestown, Virginia had greater worries than creating
a grand cuisine, they were fighting to stay alive, and in the ethical approach
of “eating to live” rather than “living to eat”, we have become very economical
in the amount of time we are willing to put into our food. Another theory is
that America lacked the motivating drive of needing to create a type of
national food for a royal court (Rosengarten 7). But whatever the driving forces,
the characteristics of America’s dominant food culture, according to John Ikerd
of the University of Missouri, are “cost, convenience, and appearance”. We want
our food to be cheap, require little effort to get, and look good. However,
Ikerd also qualifies that “a growing number of Americans are expressing doubts
and dissatisfaction with the current American food system” especially in regard
to the “safety and nutritional value of their food.” As well we should be. American food, while
quick and easy to come by, whether at a supermarket or at a fast food chain, is
in most cases void of much nutrition and high in calories and fats (Moalem 162).
This lack of nutrition isn’t just effecting the current generations but the
future generations as well. There is new evidence that a predisposition to
obesity may be linked to the eating habits of women in the first stages of
their pregnancies (Moalem 156). In the first few weeks of pregnancy if a woman
is eating a junk food filled diet the embryo will receive signals that it is
going to be born into an environment where nutrition is scarce and when the
baby is born it will be smaller and require less food to survive. However when
the child is raised in the food abundant 21st century America they
become obese (Moalem 163). These correlations are not just found from mother to
offspring, recent studies are showing that maternal grandmother’s have been
having profound genetic influence on their grandchildren. When your mother was
still insider her mother’s womb the egg that created you was already developed,
therefore the genetic signals sent to your mother from your grandmother, were
in essence passed to the egg that would one day make up half of your DNA
(Moalem 166). These studies follow along with the idea that our dietary needs
are not all the same and are without a doubt influenced by our genetics.
Culturally,
America has pulled together many different immigrant cultures to form the
melting pot culture we have today. Which has unfortunately led to the rather
disastrous results of, according to Moalem, gallons of sugary soda, baskets of
fatty fries, and too many hours watching television and playing videogames
(156). My particular melting pot included Mexican, Spanish, and German heritages,
but in terms of food culture, have they had any effect on me in comparison to
the American food culture of my much more recent lineage? I think it is a
mixture of both. I believe we have predispositions within us, that were
determined long ago, like our skin pigmentation and production of vitamin D, or
our response to extreme cold, but other genetic predispositions are much more
recent, passed from grandmother, through mother, to offspring, or just from the
mother. However as Moalem points out, DNA is not destiny, its history. Our
genetic codes cannot determine our life, although it can be a contributing
factor in shaping it. (XV) That is the way natural selection works, those
predispositions previously mentioned, served a purpose at one point, they
increased the chances of survival in their current environments, even though
they now may not be of much use (Moalem 47) What it really comes down to is
your environment and your choices (Moalem XVI). You have to make the most of
the predispositions you have been given and do your best to work well in your
given environment, just like every human, animal, and plant has done since the
beginning of time.
Cited Works
Polhman, .
"Introduction to Spanish Food and Culture."Bowling Green State
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Smith, Keith, ed.
"Cultural Diversity: Eating in American, Mexican-American." Ohio
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<http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/5000/pdf/5255.pdf>.
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Parry, Kathyrn.
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Rosengarten, David.
"We Are What We Eat: We are a Nation of Immigrants!." US
Society and Values. US State Department. Web. 4 Dec 2012. <http://infousa.state.gov/life/people/docs/ijse0704.pdf>.
Ikerd, John. "The
New American Food Culture." University of Missouri. N.p.. Web.
4 Dec 2012. <http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/papers/SFTFoodCulture.htm>.
Moalem, Sharon. Survival
of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease. 1st ed.
New York City: HaperCollins Publishers, 2007. Print.
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