Food for Survival

This week’s topic is what is the need for our chosen activity in my life? When that question was asked I thought it was quite obvious, if you don't eat you don’t function well then die, therefore cooking in necessary for survival. As Baines (2006) state “Humans need fuel to live, it provides energy the body needs to grow, stay warm and think” (p.7), but I thought considering we are having a whole class there must be more behind it, turns out I was right.

This is where I tell you another story of when I last cooked, then go through and analysis it.

It was Wednesday afternoon and mince was the only meat left in the fridge. I was a bit disappointed because I am not a huge fan if mince, when I was younger it was always the last meat left in the freezer meaning we would have nothing other than mince for a month sometimes. Then I moved to a boarding school, I think it was decided mince was cheap and they really knew how to make it taste bad!! But back to my cooking, I decided I would make Tacos with it, when I got to the supermarket that changed to wraps, but close enough.

I’m a bit of a fan of making wraps, mainly because they are quick easy and normally they taste yum. Today really was no different. Chopped up an onion and cooked that with the mince, then spent the next 5 minutes trying to make all the lumps in the mince go away, added the packet of seasoning (yes I cheated) and let it simmer, just long enough to cut tomato, cheese and lettuce, and wash the very few dishes I had used, then it was time to call the rest of the flat for dinner, and leave the rest of dinner up to the individual.

Many years ago there was an expectation that if you were a woman you did all the cooking, and although woman still do 75% of the cooking (Price, 2007), these statistics are changing, so why do I choose to cook.

The need for cooking - I cooked because I was hungry, so there is the basic need of survival, but when you put more thought into it there really is more you can get out of it, it was not only tending to the needs of myself, but also my flatmates, I was feeding them too. Our flat meals which are supposed to happen 4 times a week most often lead to everyone in the flat sitting round in the lounge talking for longer than we should, dinner tonight lead to everyone talking, but only for the time it took to eat dinner – so cooking brings people together. Mince was the meat that had been bought as we are living within a budget, which is not very big, and thankfully nobody in my flat needs to be or is by choice on any special diet. More personally to me, cooking gives me a sense of achievement and reinforces that I am now independent. I am living independently and am required to cook for myself.

On special occasions food can be celebratory, and then often it is also cultural, tacos come from Mexico, so for me not a cultural food, but for others it could well be. Food giving a cultural identity, can be both good as it offers a sense of your upbringing and identity however as illustrated by Schlosser (2001), this is not always the case. Much of the American culture is based around food and this is killing the American people. Cooking also gives one something enjoyable to do.


References

Baines, J. (2006). Food for life. London: White Thompson.

Price, A. (2007). Woman still do most cooking and shopping. Retreived from September 30, 2011, from http://www.anythingbutwork.com/society/women-shopping.htm

Schlosser, E. (2001). The fast food nation; The dark side of the all American meal. New York, NY: Library of congress, Cataloguing in publication data.  

Posted 30/09/2011