Sure, it sounds like sacrilege. Especially given that you’re reading this on an evidence-based nutrition blog. But I think acknowledging this key point about food, and how we as human beings interact with food, could help us all in thinking about how we tackle the global problems of malnutrition, increasing levels of obesity, and just plain old endemic weirdness around food.

At this point I should raise my hand and admit a slight bias here. My background isn’t actually science, but the humanities – with an extra dose of sociology and anthropology thrown into the mix. As a result, I’m always struck by the need to broaden our view of nutrition so that it’s more than just about the cellular and metabolic mechanics and all of the science (interesting though they are!).

Thinking about food as more than just fuel, or calories, but instead as a vehicle for memories and emotion, with strong social and cultural meanings, gives us a broader understanding of nutrition than a purely biomedical one.

Think about it.

If I ask you to give me one childhood memory, or tell me what makes Christmas special for you and your family, I’m 99.9% certain at least one of your memories would involve food or eating of some sort. For me, nostalgia is the smell of wood smoke, reminding me of holidays in Italy, and a particular restaurant we used to go to where I would always scoff the spaghetti amatriciana. And Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without a Christmas Eve fish dish and my beloved brussels sprouts.

Yet it’s exactly the meanings and connotations that food carries, that are often ignored when it comes to nutritional and public health advice.

Eating is, after all, often a social activity. We don’t eat nutrients, but meals. Often done in the company of others, how much we eat, and what we eat, can vary dramatically depending on the place, time, and occasion. For some, eating and cooking are the very definition of what make us human. After all, we’re the only species on the planet to cook our food, and some anthropologists even argue that eating is more important than sex. After all, strictly speaking you don’t have to shag every day, but you do have to eat and drink!

Food as identity

Anthropologists and sociologists basically have a field day when it comes to studying the symbolic meaning of food, and how what you eat or don’t eat can be an important part of identity for both individuals and communities.

How and what you eat has long been a fundamental part of many religions. Whether it’s not eating certain forbidden foods as with Judaism and pork, promoting an entire type of diet as with many vegetarian Buddhist sects, or prescribing rules and regulations around the preparation of food (such as the Islamic halal method of animal slaughter), religion has often co-opted food in its quest to provide a guide to living. Heck, what is communion if not one big fat metaphor tied up in wine and a wafer?

Gender, ethnicity, and class all impact on the food we eat, and the identities we create for ourselves. One only has to turn on the TV to see women getting overexcited about yogurt (aliens from space, were they to be immediately exposed to an hour of TV, would not be too far off the mark if they assumed fat free Greek yogurt was a key part of the female homo sapiens diet…). Similarly, certain foods are often inextricably used to signal socio-economic status. Lobster, caviar, and champagne are all loaded with connotations, but so too are traditionally ‘working class’ foods such as pasties and fish and chips.

Not knowing how to eat ‘properly’ is universally a sign of outsider status, whether that’s thanks to not knowing how to use certain implements (chopsticks vs. forks, forks vs. posh fish knifes etc) or a love of particularly pungent seasonings.

In high income countries, the quest for a perfect life now encompasses the quest for a perfect diet, with perfectly innocent food stuffs loaded with moral labels such as ‘good’ or ‘bad. (Yes ‘clean eating’ I’m looking at you!)

Can we ever bridge the gap?

In bridging the gap between the science, and why we actually eat the way we do, we need to also consider the impact upbringing, identity, and psychology all have.

We don’t eat just because our stomachs rumble and our blood glucose levels have dropped. But also out of habit, or sadness, or expectation. Advocates of mindful eating talk about 8 different types of hunger; including eye hunger (when you see something tasty), nose hunger (when you smell something tasty), and heart hunger (when we use food as a reward or to comfort ourselves).

This is a pretty damn useful framework, and key to understanding the main reason why diets so regularly fail. Intuitive eating advocates for learning to feel threatening emotions, and eating mindfully, which may be key to sustainably losing or maintaining weight if you tend to eat (or not eat) out of boredom, sadness or frustration. Diets, which are absolutely not based on feelings or intuitive cues, but instead force everyone to follow one-size-fits-all guidelines, fail to take in account these cultural and individual complexities and set people up to fail.

From a public health perspective, it feels foolish to ignore the sensorial and emotional aspects of food when advising people on what to eat. As many public health nutritionists know all too well, it’s pretty damn impossible to design effective interventions if the symbolic and cultural meanings that accompany food aren’t taken into account. In parts of India for example, many pregnant women are told that foods like papaya and pumpkin are too "hot" for the baby and should be avoided, contributing to diets lacking in several essential nutrients. Simply rocking up and telling people to eat 2,000 calories a day and get their 5-a-day is too simplistic in this scenario.

So while the science is key, I believe we’d all benefit from bringing people, and the beautiful irrationality of homo sapiens, a bit more into the mix when we talk about nutrition.

References

E. Vogel & A. Mol (2014). Enjoy your food: on losing weight and taking pleasure. Sociology of Health and Illness, 36 (2), 305-317. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12116

R. Fox. "Food and eating: an anthropological perspective." Social issues research centre (2003). Available from: http://www.sirc.org/publik/foxfood.pdf

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32033409

http://www.laurathomasphd.co.uk/london-centre-intuitive-eating/