Changing Tastes. Food Culture and the Processes of Industrialization

Folklore, April, 2005 by Ralf Meyer

Changing Tastes. Food Culture and the Processes of Industrialization. Edited by Patricia Lysaght with Christine Burckhardt-Seebass. Proceedings of the 14th Conference of the International Commission for Ethnological Food Research, Basel and Vevey, Switzerland, 30 September-6 October 2002. Basel and Dublin: Verlag der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft fur Volkskunde and The Department of Irish Folklore, 2004. 332 pp. CHF49.90/32.00 [euro] (pbk). ISBN 3-908122-84-8

This attractively-produced volume presents fascinating food-research results by twenty-five authors from fifteen countries, concerning aspects of food industrialisation from the nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century. Five out of twenty-six contributions are in German and the rest are in English, with a summary at the end of each text in the respective other language. The papers are arranged under six broad headings: "Changing Taste and Industrialization," Dialectics of Industralized Food," "Makers and Mediators of New Tastes in Food," "Food, Aesthetics," "Experience and Life-Style," and "The Food Market, Gender and Identity."

In his introductory keynote paper, Professor Tanner from the University of Zurich poses the question whether cooking should be seen as an art or a science. He highlights an important insight--evident also in several other papers in the volume--that the relationship between the forces of tradition and modernisation would appear to be more often complimentary than antagonistic, thus enabling innovations in food culture to take place and changes to be brought about in modern times. In this way he provides a theoretical framework for the volume and shows connections to other fields of study also, such as biology and chemistry. His depiction of the influence of industrialisation within the individual household calls to mind the time and motion studies of F. W. Taylor.

In response to the conference theme, most contributors focus on change in food habits as a result of industrialisation, but in different ways. A number of authors from Middle and Eastern Europe and from the Baltic area focus on causes for, and effects of, changes in tastes within populations. The impact of the emerging sugar-beet industry in Hungary and Latvia in the nineteenth century, for example, was to make sugar more affordable and sweet foods more common in the respective populations as a whole.

A number of papers focus on the impact of cookery books on national or regional cuisines, and show that while these books can be instruments of change, they can also serve as a record of the shifts in taste that had already taken place when they were written.

The industrial canning or preservation of food, as one very important element in the development of the food industry, is dealt with in a number of papers. This development is also reflected in the cover illustration that depicts an artistic window display of canned food in a Berlin department store in 1910. Home preservation of food using steam-pressure cookers and canning jars mirrored industrial developments and enabled families to have a greater variety of foods out of season.

Tradition is an important factor in food industrialisation and authors from a variety of European countries demonstrate how the food industry makes use of tradition for marketing purposes. While the meaning of dishes is clearly important to people and significantly influences their desire for them, one author shows how foodstuffs without a history or heritage can also be successfully marketed. These products are marketed under the brand-name Quorn, and consist of industrially produced, entirely meat-free foodstuffs made with mycoprotein from fungi and have the taste and flavour of a range of meat products. Branded as a healthy alternative to meat, this product has been favourably received internationally.

The final contributions in the book, based on empirical studies, deal with young people's eating habits in the light of industrial and traditional foods. A contribution from Croatia explores which dishes, especially traditional Croatian ones, teenagers know and prefer, while a German paper looks at the function of meals and teenagers' differing behaviour during home-based meals and those consumed with their peers when out-and-about.

The volume includes an extensive introduction by the editor, Professor Patricia Lysaght, a welcoming address by Professor Walter Leimgruber of the University of Basel, delivered at the commencement of the conference, and reflections on the conference as an international scholarly event by Professor Christine Burckhardt-Seebass. An overview of all previous conferences, their themes and proceedings, bears witness to the active nature of the International Commission for Ethnological Food Research

This stimulating volume, with its excellent variety of illustrations, is important not only for ethnologists and folklorists, but also for anyone interested in the influences of industrialisation on European food culture and on that of the USA.