Food Diary: Food’s Meaning In My Life

Every time we look at the people all around us, subconsciously we are registering how we are similar and different from each other. Through these distinctions, we begin to see how people distinguish themselves from one another. Some people love to see themselves aligning with the clear cultural norms that are displayed by individuals around them, whereas others like nothing less than being so different they make people uncomfortable. As an individual grows up, they begin to move from being shaped by their parents to shaping themselves.  However, an individual’s roots remain imperative to how someone looks at themselves, as well as others in their daily lives.

The whole idea of fashion is in the forefront of society’s culture. Trends develop over time from various causes on how to dress and people either jump on board with the current styles verbatim, or attempt to create their own personal spin on what is ‘in’ allowing them to feel connected to the overarching expectations of society while still retaining a sense of individuality. Fashion overflows to more than just how one dresses, it can be reflected in literature, architecture and the food people eat.

The way people display different fashions of things, such as speech, dress, and eat all are part of how they express who they are. Anthropologist Robin Fox explores this in his article Food and Eating: An Anthropological Perspective stating, “Every meal is a message, and where we eat is as important as what we eat in getting the message across” (Fox 5). When one considers the physical function that food has in any individual’s life, it is clear that in first world countries often times putting emphasis on in meals is a product of a luxurious mindset.

With college students nationwide (myself included) constantly complaining about the three meals a day they get prepared for them lacking in luster, food is something that people in well-off countries, like America, need to be more than just fuel for their bodies. This plenty is what empowers fashion to be such a strong factor in the development of personal identities as well as the collective identity of culture overall. Fox explores this idea further in his discussion of how “once foods become plentiful and varied, fashion takes over, and the lure of novelty - the trendy - is often disguised as concern for nutrition” (Fox 8). The “disguise” displays “with-it we are. Just as clothes indicate our trendiness, so does food” (Fox 8). Therefore how we use food becomes something that is a reflection of how we are as an individual and the identity that we ascribe to ourselves, and more importantly want others to see as us. This can ultimately become more important than the idea of food as fuel because of the knowledge we will be filled up so have liberty in the ways in which we refuel.

For me, I am engulfed in this lifestyle of food as being more than stomach filler. I know for me when I don’t eat for an extended period of time to let my tank feel empty, not only is what I eat more enjoyable to the taste, but refueling itself is an incredible experience leaving me in the commonly known state of “food-coma”. This is my story about how I took advantage of food-comas in a ritualized attempt to relax after a long week.

My first semester of my senior year was incredibly stressful. From captaining two sports teams to being in charge of my student government and most of all being under immense self-inflicted academic pressure after a hang-out heavy junior year, I had a lot of responsibilities to have success in what I was doing as well as allow for more success in the future. Needless to say every moment I had to relax was a wonderful happening. When the last day of my work week came around (Friday) it was an unfortunate combination of the day with the heaviest responsibilities and the day I wanted to let myself relax the most.

Topolinos Pizza. 18 inches of spiced, garlicy, sizzling, deliciousness that knew how to call my name like no other meal in my life. In about 10 – 12 minutes, the entire pizza would be half in my stomach, and half in my friends and it was only a matter of minutes before we were hit with a paralyzing food coma in which the feeling of ultimate apathy would sink in ensuring a Friday night without glamorous adventure. To capitalize on the post pizza recovery recharge, we would head to the local athletic club’s hot tub to await the return of enough energy to do something with our lives. In an average time of around an hour, the coma’s paralysis would wear off, and we would be charged enough to enjoy the rest of a very relaxing night.

Now, one may think that these Friday’s would not be the ones that would be bunny eared in my high school scrapbook, but they hold an incredibly special place in my heart. Using Topolino’s Pizza as a method of recharging my body was a transcendent occurrence that really recharged my mind body and soul. It became a deep expression of me and how I was feeling. At the particular time this ritual went down in my week was the primary object that allowed me to recharge enough to hit the next week as hard as I needed to in order to achieve success. Even more so, the timing of this weekly ritual in my life allowed me to remain sane. While continuing a schedule involving a lot more work than my peers as well as one that I questioned my ability to handle, these events allowed me to feel in a more balanced swing of things. This ritual was my aggressive response to the life’s stresses, and through my fasting, compulsive purge, and after affect I was brought peace.

My connection and loyalty to Topolino’s runs incredibly deep because of how it was the strongest agent in helping me recover from things in my life that was cutting at my knees. This idea of food being such a point of recovery for people is one of the reasons it transcends a daily practice into something with huge meaning. My personal expression with food now is something entirely different than it would have been if I hadn’t gone through this ritual. Meals themselves now hold the upmost importance only if they allow me to recharge physically and emotionally.

Psychologically speaking, this makes sense too. With pizza being something that historically had been used for celebration in my childhood it is no surprise I found immense comfort in it once again. Psychologist Anneli Rufus comments on this phenomenon in her article on eating psychology. She states:

“There's also how the brain links emotion, memory, and sensory stimuli. Popsicles nibbled to break childhood fevers, pizza when your track team won, coconut on your honeymoon: The brain associates good experiences with specific flavors, fragrances and textures, coding them as harbingers of happiness. Henceforth, even when you neither have a fever nor have won a race, eating Popsicles still brings the rush of relief and pizza feels like a reward”. (Rufus 1)

            As a part of my identity shaped from very early on was the idea of celebration or “good time” food. With those connections between positive emotion and certain tastes comes an ability to use food as a consistent friend that comforts you any time you seek it out.

Upon reflection, there was a deeper connection going on as well with the type of restaurant Topolino’s was and my own lifestyle at that point. If you venture through Denver and check out different coffee shops and cafes, it isn’t too difficult to see a correlation between the places size, atmosphere, and if it is a chain or not and the customers in them. You are much more likely to see hipsters, or other people that are in subcultures that are far from corporate, in these smaller shops. On the other side of things, seeing men and women in business attire in a Starbucks is incredibly common. This completely parallels those individuals place in society, where the corporate men and women with more money as well as a more uniform lifestyle are attracted to coffee shops that have that same set up. Think about the music in these places. Starbucks is more likely to play acoustic music, like a John Mayer type artist, that people recognize. A unique coffee shop will play music of all sorts with music that most people have not heard of, or that is a widely accepted hipster band like Iron & Wine or Bon Iver.  For a hipster, going to a place with tattooed baristas in a building that used to be an auto shop fits who they feel to be as an individual.

Topolino’s did this for me, where at the time I went there the most I was living a very alternative lifestyle than my peers where I was intensely focused on my roles on student government, academics, and family life and very much not on the typical high school social experience. Because of this I felt more comfortable at a place like Topolino’s, where there is only one in the world, it can hold at most 15 people, and the people that work there are working very hard to scrape by.   

Although uniformity in customers can have high correlation like in coffee shops, the spread of age, gender, overall appearance, and educational backgrounds can vary immensely in one small eatery. In an article written by Northeastern’s professor Jack Levin, he discusses how a restaurant can tell a lot about the area that it is in as far as socio-economic levels, ethnicity, and age of inhabitants. He argues that you can completely map out the demographics of Boston by simply looking at the type of restaurants are most in certain neighborhoods. Eating habits at different life stages can illustrate the socio-economic demographic that an individual is in, much like how the types of restaurants in different sections of Boston map out demographics. Everyone enjoys eating out, but the luxurious nature of it often limits possibilities of where to go.

In terms of socialization, the way in which an individual is socialized affects what they connect with and enjoy. If a Mexican immigrant moves to the US, they are still going to feel the best when they can eat authentic Mexican food, not classic diner food, even though America is their new home. This is why demographically one can see the correlation with what restaurants are around. People of

Overall, the shaping of an individual’s identity through eating is a tricky thing to map out. Whether its psychological connections from childhood, how they express themselves, or how they feel they fit into society, food is a vital player in illustrating who an individual is. For me Topolino’s Pizza was huge in expressing my identity that stemmed from being cultured into having pizza ritually connected to certain positive emotions.

In our society as a whole food is one of the most important vessels of how we distinguish ourselves from one another. Whether we latch ourselves onto certain trends, like heading to Starbucks, or pave our own paths under the same social umbrella, like going to an overpriced hipster coffee shop, we are constantly expressing who we are through what we consume. Through these daily ingestions we not only grow into who we are as individuals, but also collectively as a society and how we support what we eat reflecting what we are.

Works Cited

Fox, Robin. "Food and Eating: An Anthropological Perspective." Social Issues Research Centre. n. page. Print. <http://www.sirc.org/publik/foxfood.pdf>.

Levin, Jack. "The Sociology of Boston’s Restaurants: Where Diversity and Good Food Meet." American Sociology Association: Footnotes. 36.5 (2008): n. page. Web. 18 Apr. 2012. <http://www.asanet.org/footnotes/mayjun08/rest.html>.

Rufus, Anneli. "Explaining the Psychology of Comfort Food." Gilt Taste. 21 Jun 2011: online. Print. <http://www.gilttaste.com/stories/622-explaining-the-psychology-of-comfort-food>.