Bananas: A Matter of Taste, and Family |
| Print | |
| Written by Lauren Cheal |
| Tuesday, 30 June 2009 00:00 |
|
I have a friend, let’s call her Andrea, who hates -- nay -- despises bananas. She hates the look of them, the sound people make while eating them, when they turn all brown and disgusting, and the smell of them. During one particularly painful seminar last year, another classmate of ours pulled out and started eating a banana in Andrea’s presence and the look of disgust on her face caused several of us to audibly snicker. What is it about food that divides friends and neighbors alike? Tell someone that you don’t like chocolate and they will instantly look at you sideways with a kind of Tell someone that you are vegetarian (or, far more severely, vegan) and they will inevitably make some comment either about their own animal-eating habits or their love for cheese (I really do love cheese). The choice to eat certain foods (and particularly to adopt a lifestyle of vegetarianism or veganism) often connotes other lifestyle or even political choices. I should declare my own point on the spectrum here. I am not a vegetarian. There, I said it. I eat vegetarian much of the time, but the choice has little to do with animal rights. I believe that eating vegetarian helps me live a healthier lifestyle, and I don’t particularly enjoy the thought of eating meat. I don’t care if other people eat meat, I don’t care how they eat it and I don’t care if my soup happens to be made with chicken stock. And as much as food choices can divide friends and loved ones, they also serve to unite us. If you like some foreign cuisine or unusual spice, and you find a like-minded individual somewhere, the bond that can be formed between the two of you is quite remarkable (it is much like the bond formed by myself and anyone who can quote the movie Waiting for Guffman — a simple, unspoken moment in which both parties acknowledge that we both have been enlightened by Catherine O’Hara’s performance of “Midnight at the Oasis”). The bonds that occur because of food are likewise specific, personal and lasting. When we are trying out a potential relationship, where do we go? Restaurants. We negotiate our food tastes and try to introduce our partners to the foods we love. Both men and women express their feelings for each other through food, either by attempting to cook an elaborate gourmet meal for the other person, or by paying someone else to do the same (both are perfectly acceptable in my book). My guess is that the simultaneously divisive and unifying power of food comes from its primacy in our day-to-day lives. It is our fuel, one of our most basic needs and also one of the ways we reward ourselves. Big promotion? Let’s go for dinner. Long day at work? Let’s go for drinks. There is I think this is particularly important for the post-university, pre-family stage of life when we create a new kind of family group. Some call it the “urban family” -- the family we choose in an independent life as adults. For my family, food was always (and continues to be) a great part of how we come together. The dinner table is the place we check in and find out how everyone is doing. It is no surprise that when my sisters and I head home at Christmas, we congregate around the kitchen and watch/help my mom (she might argue we hinder her) make some of our old favourite meals. The importance of food in our lives probably comes back to the very basic need for family and social relationships. It is no wonder that we become so concerned when someone who we think is a part of our group, our temporary family, challenges one of the food beliefs we hold dear. It is an attack on the bonds that we create as young adults and on the values we become accountable to. Maybe this is a particularly sensitive time in life, when we must declare who we are and the live a life that backs that up. “I despise bananas” is a proclamation about the type of person we want to be. It is worth remembering this when we encounter a near-human who claims to not like cheese. I mean, sure, there are some gross ones out there, but for the most part, cheese is a wonderful thing…um…what was I saying? Oh yes. Tolerance of food preferences is more than just that. It is a tolerance of people who make up our families. So if someone tells you that they are a vegetarian, an anti-chocolatist or a banana-hater, remember that they should still be welcome in your new family…after all, every family has a black sheep.
Bookmark
Email this
Comments (1)
 |
confused pity that suggests you might not be fully human (this is a burden my own sister lives with every single day).
Subscribe to this comment's feed
