Food, Culture, and Pride

The function of food goes beyond satisfying the hunger. The ramifications from the food consumption manifest in various forms. For instance, a recent study has found that binge eating disorder has surpassed anorexia and bulimia combined as the most common eating disorder. Therefore, food can serve as an agent that infringes pressure on people; it can also be utilized as a vehicle in which people seek a solace or pleasure.Besides the physical transformations that food has on people, it also engenders a sense of pride. When people go to restaurants they often ask, "What kind of restaurant are you going?" The most likely answer to the question would entail the country in which the food originated such as Chinese, Italian, Ethiopian, or what-have-you. The emphasis on the ethnic nature of the food highlights the authenticity and the ownage attached to the cuisine. One possible reason for the regional attachment to food could be that it embodies culture; food epitomizes one's culture. The fact that consuming food is one of the most prominent and salient "events" throughout the course of one's daily routine, it provides numerous opportunities for a particular food to introduce that culture to people. Therefore, due to the food's ability to percolate a certain culture to people, it could generate a fierce competition for the ownership of that food between nations. The age of globalism - the movement of ideas, materials, people, and culture - has amplified the urgency in the self-proclamation of the foodstuff as their own. In conjunction with the increase of the cultural fluidity around the world, each country is pressured to formulate a more formidable marketing strategy to maintain the authenticity of their food.A dispute over Kimchi between Korea and Japan illuminates on the idea that food functions as a proxy for one's culture (http://www.american.edu/TED/kimchi.htm). The words become interchangeable to some people because of the strong association between the two. When Japan claimed kimchi as their food at the 1996 olympic in Atlanta, Koreans were alarmed by such declaration. This event not only challenged Korea in economics, but more importantly it disparaged and invalidated Korean culture by claiming kimchi as their own condiment. This incident infuriated many Koreans because of its overt and conspicuous attack on Korean culture; according to the Japanese, kimchi belonged to them.When we talked about territorial disputes between Korea and Japan and Korea and China, one of the things at stake was nationalistic pride and self-identity. Food cannot be an exception in creating the need for maintaining one's pride and identity. As the dispute over kimchi has demonstrated, food is more than "this thing that goes in your mouth."In this sense, Jewel in the Palace masterfully utilizes food as one of the venues to disseminate Korean culture. Websites dedicated to this drama revealed that it provided a myriad of opportunities for different kinds of Korean food to be known throughout the world that otherwise have been buried under the immense popularity of kimchi. Hence, food functioned as a cultural ambassador.