People can survive without many things but air, water and foods. Foods are incredibly important for people`s life. But different culture had different eating habits and different prefer. Some of the reason is because of the weather, some of them is because of religion. Moreover, the eating habit cause also cause by special festivals peoples have.
Firstly, for those places like India and Thailand, weathers are hot and humid. For those places, spicy things like peppers and garlic are the major way for seasoning. Have you been to the India or Thailand restaurant? Did you remember the taste of curry? The feeling of special seasoning and pepper. After you eat the these cuisine, even in winter, you may sweat. If you always stay in a hot atmosphere, a relaxing sweating will be great. Also, the food is easy to be spoil in the humid weather. The spicy food can kill most kind of malicious bacteria , also the smell of those food can keep those insects away. Study shows nature odor of the pepper will keep insects like flies away. So the people who lives in India and Thailand may use those spicy food to keep food edible. And with the generations change, people gets used to the taste of spicy. For most of Indian and Thailand people, spicy taste has already become a childhood memory of them. The prefer of this taste will least for the rest of their life; Not only because of the habit from childhood, but also because the people will get addicted to peppers. Spicy food is kind of ordinary among the world, but some of the food from certain region is not as nice as tacos or curry. A Korean dish is made by living octopus. Even when you eating it, you still can feel the sucker on the octopus tentacle is trying to suck your tone. It is strange food for most of us, but it is delicious for some people in Korean. An other example named Kiviak. Kiviak is made by Eskimo people, is a way for them to get vitamin. Kiviak is a kind of raw meat, literally, a kind of bird meat. Eskimo people first hunt a seal, and than put “Appaliarsuk”, a kind of bird into the stomach of the seal body. Than they bury the body of seal into the frozen soil. After 2 to 3 years fermentation, Kiviak finally edible. But believe me you do not want eat a kind of decaying meat sauce with strange odor. But this is the culture of Eskimo people. They can not get enough vitamin from vegetable in that frozen land, they need to have this kind of things to ensure their health.
Secondly, religions is another vital part of food culture. The culture of Islam did not allow people of them to eat pork.It may cause trouble if you eat pork or force some Muslim believers to eat pork. The Qur'an ban them eat pork, because from that book, pork is not clean. So those believers created menus contains lamb meat, beef etc. Similarly believers of Buddhism in china thinks monk can not eat meat. Chinese monk think that, it is cruel to take other creature`s life away just for one`s appetite. But without meat, people still can make cuisine taste like meat. Research shows “textured soy protein”, the protein of soybean, will give people a feeling of eating meat. Chinese people are smart in food, they use tofu and special seasoning to make dishes. Some of them even get a name as “Dongpo meat” or “sweet and sour pork” something. But in fact, this kind of food is made of soy and dry bean curd. This kind of food is good for peoples health and also is allowed for believers of Buddhism. So we can see that people in certain religion may develop special kind of food.
Food not only develop by religion, but also tradition, different culture had different traditions, some of food is not offering for all years. During spring festivals --- a kind festival of like thanks giving day in the US, people usually eat sweet dumplings. They set in a round table, talk about things happened during the last year and their plan for the next year. People eat the sweet dumpling is not because it delicious or it is cheap, but the food is meaning together of the whole family. They eat it for entertainment and almost every family will eat it for that day. Like turkey in thanksgiving day of the America, people usually do not eat this kind of food for daily life. Also for “Mid-Autumn Festival” ,people eat moon cake for that day. This kind of cake is sweet and greasy, the price of most of them are cheap. Some of people hate to eat it, but they will still have it for that day. So this kind of traditional food is not famous only because it is delicious or cheap, they may have some special meaning or have some metaphor. For example, moon cake is means moon in the traditional Chinese culture. The sweet dumpling is means reunion of the whole family.
In all, people will have different kind of food by various reason, weather, region, religions, even festivals. The food for them is quite different, people in other culture may not accept the taste of dishes you like the most. Because they had their own food culture and yours may not suitable for them. So eating habit is a major way to differ a people, food has already become a kind of culture awareness. Even the people from certain areas grows up and live in a different country from homeland are likely to prefer the food from their homeland. But recently, with the mixture of multiple culture, people seems to adapt different culture`s food. Chinese food had already opened in many places such as the US. But i can tell the difference between the original Chinese dishes and the Chinese food in the US, because for the prefer of American people is still different with Chinese people. So with the change and negotiation in the flavor, people`s taste gradually become international, maybe this is an other meaning of culture mixture.
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