Culture and What You Eat

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There are many areas of cultural diversity in the world; religion, food, and acceptable behavior. In all of these areas there are people in other cultures that view each of them as different or wrong. A lot of the time when someone of a different culture views a custom as wrong it is because of the individuals own ethnocentrism. With this paper I hope to explain why it is ok to try new things and how other people do things is not wrong just because it is different then what you are use to. I grew up being told that insects are gross and that you don’t put things in your mouth that are not food. Ants, frog legs, dogs, and cats were among those things that you didn’t eat. As I got older and progressed in my history classes I learned that there are many things done in other cultures that are not done in the United States. Does that make them wrong? No, it does not make it wrong it just means that we need to educate ourselves and try to practice cultural relativism. Trying to understand someone’s culture and beliefs on their own terms only makes you more diverse and able to understand each culture and why it is important to that specific group. In the Symbolic Interactionist Perspective some foods are eaten because they have religious meanings (Christian- bread and wine as flesh and blood of Jesus), some are eaten because they are believed to have beneficial health or healing properties (Chinese medicine based on yin (cooling- fevers) and yang (heating- colds). In the Functionalism Perspective in this perspective they focus first on the satisfaction or dissatisfaction they get from eating, and second focus on the necessity of eating. Finally they think about how in order to sustain life of one you have to eat another. What you eat p 2 In the Conflict Theory some foods are eaten because of their availability or abundance (Japanese and seafood

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