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so commonplace and the ways we satisfy it are so obvious.
4.) Stop to think about the things connected with eating that send messages: using a napkin, not using chopsticks, or holding silverware “backward” (knife in the right hand); being a vegetarian, not mixing meat and milk dishes, or not eating pork; liking very hot peppers or disliking grits; belching loudly, chewing with your mouth open, or eating with your fingers. All these behavioral traits say something, whether we intend them to or not.
5.) Thus, in addition to being habits of eating, they are messages, pieces of communication, like signal flags or Morse code, even when we are not trying to say anything. Eating turkey at Thanksgiving or not eating meat during Lent are other messages. Similarly, in some cultures, Dad carves the roast while Mom serves the vegetables. Such a division of labor is supposed to send the ancient message that males are hunters and women gatherers.
6.) Although we all must eat, in no society in the world do people eat everything that is edible. For instance, we in the United States (hopefully) never eat the family cat, but the Chinese think eating dogs is much nicer than having thousands of stray, hungry animals roaming the streets. What’s more, most people think that what they eat, and the way they eat it, is the normal, or correct, pattern, and that everyone else is at least a bit odd and maybe even worse. The English truly dislike the French for eating horses.
7.) Choices in foods are not random either. Cranberry sauce goes with turkey, horseradish with boiled beef, mustard with hot dogs, and caraway seeds with red cabbage. In this country, we think eating raw oysters is normal, but what do we think of people who eat raw shrimp?
8.) We learn our eating habits very early in life, and usually we associate those early experiences with some of the best feelings we ever had. Foods we learn to like in our early years probably will have a special meaning for us forever because they are associated with the people and things we love. Just as we associate the experience with the feelings that accompany it, we associate the food with those feelings, too.
9.) Throughout the world, people use food and eating to mark the seasons, to signal changes in status (such as growing up or getting married), to honor their gods, and to say something about themselves. Holidays are culinary and sometimes people even explain why they eat certain things on these occasions. Americans do that at Thanksgiving: We eat turkey, corn, succotash, and Indian pudding because the Pilgrims ate them at the first Thanksgiving. Jewish people provide such explanations at Passover, Christians during Lent
