2007.06.25

いただきます: Food is Not Merely Fuel

Posted in Food at 9:43 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel

I know a number of people who seem to view food as being little more than fuel; it is something to be endured, a necessity of survival, but it certainly is not something that can possibly be enjoyed. I suspect you know some of them too:

  • The shoveler, who finishes each meal in 3 minutes flat and rushes off
  • The ketchuper, who slathers so much ketchup on everything as to drown out all other flavours
  • The hot-saucer, who cannot even tolerate the taste of ketchup, and thus uses copious amounts hot sauce so as to eradicate flavour altogether
  • The take-outer, who never cooks anything if it can be avoided

There also seem to be an ever-increasing number of people who eat while sitting in front of the television. While I admit to being guilty of eating lunch in front of my computer from time to time, every day I try to eat at least one meal (usually supper) in my dining room or at least at the breakfast bar. This is my time to slow down, relax, and enjoy the food I’m eating. Yes, enjoy.

Perhaps it helps that I also enjoy cooking, and take the time to cook something for supper most days. I live alone, so there are almost always leftovers for those days when I don’t have a lot of time to cook.

What surprises me most about this wholesale devaluation of food in North American society is how widespread it seems to be. As a whole, people just don’t take time for food any more, and many people seem to not enjoy food at all.

Perhaps not by coincidence, anglo-saxon North American culture is lacking in a customary phrase spoken before a meal.

The French say, “bon appétit.” The Germans, “guten appetit.” The Italians, “buon appetito.” It’s not just a Western thing either; in Japanese, it is customary to say, “いただきます (itadakimasu)” before eating. In English, we sometimes say “enjoy your meal”, but it carries no real cutlural weight compared to the equivalent phrases in other languages.

From a historical perspective, the saying of grace before a meal would have taken the place of such a phrase, but there are now many English-speaking North Americans who do not practice Christianity in any of its forms, and so grace is not said. We have nothing to take its place.

You might be wondering why the lack of such a phrase in English is a problem. There are two reasons:

  1. Speaking such a phrase before the meal becomes a ritual of a sort. It forces us to slow down for a moment, and consciously acknowledge the meal we are about to eat. And acknowledging the meal automatically gives it some value.
  2. The words have more meaning when others are present. Part of the purpose of saying the words is to wish others a good meal. Eating with others makes it a lot more likely that the meal will be eaten slowly and enjoyed, not just gobbled down.

The more I ponder this, the more I think I should start using one of the phrases before meals. It is high time that food returned to its former status as more than mere sustenance.