A Rich Psychological Meal

Review of Leon Rappoport, How We Eat: Appetite, Culture, and the Psychology of Food. Toronto, Ontario: ECW Press, 2003. Paperback, ISBN 1550225634, 224 pp., $15.95.

Eating is the primal communal human ex-

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perience. From the original placental connection through nurturing nursing to breaking bread and the ultimate ritualized spiritual communion, how, what, and why we eat constitutes an essential component of what it means to be human. It is the reflective experience of this reality of our existence that serves as the focus of Leon Rappoport’s volume. He presents the perpetual dialectic between autonomy and dependency with respect to food that each of us has attempted to traverse in our own development. No matter how much we want to be independent, we are eternally dependent upon food. It is the umbilicus of our consciousness of self in a natural world of eating and being eaten.

I feel that Rappoport clearly points out the need for a psychological analysis of how we eat. The “hook” for this reader was already in the Introduction when Rappoport shares his very own journey between the starvation of the Holocaust survivor and the asceticism of the Zen practitioner, which coalesces in the focused attention of the psychological experience of “no food.” The meanings of this experience transcend the usual and point to the essential human existential drama of eat/no eat. One by chance, one by choice.

Rappoport takes an interdisciplinary tour of food by looking at historical, anthropological, sociological, philosophical, psychological, and metaphysical perspectives. Such a broad range provides a most interesting perspective. Rappoport tells us, “It took me another few years to realize that, where the meanings of food are concerned, the absence of a central thesis is the central thesis.” This becomes a central point of the book. In the absence of meaning, we construct meaning. This leads to the enculturation of food and, via geographical isolation, the almost literal perception of the speciation of food as representations of culture. Culture viewed as absolutely categorical to such an extent that we eventually end up with the view that “What ‘we’ eat is good, what ‘they’ eat is bad.” This, of course, results in the eventual relativistic assessment of food values.

Having established in the Introduction that the field of psychology has essentially overlooked food, Rappoport goes on to explore its interstices with human experience. He offers a psychological perspective on how we eat as a major organizing theme. In Chapter 1, “From Myths to MacAttacks,” he points out, “It is precisely because so many of our common eating behaviors appear to be irrational that the social and psychological meanings of food are so powerful.” For example, the popularity of fast foods among the urban poor is explained as a reaction to the barrenness of life: “…when people are leading boring, unhappy lives, they are not interested in healthy foods but prefer anything that is stimulating, cheap, and convenient.” This is a demonstration of how Rappoport uses the psychohistorical approach of taking the obvious and exploring the hidden as well as taking the hidden and making it the obvious. For example, “…children today not only do not eat what their parents ate when they were children but also eat food items that did not exist when their parents were children.” Does this “disconnect” have an impact on our continuity of cultural experience? Such are the questions that come to mind as one reads How We Eat.

In Chapter 2, “You Are What You Eat,” the genderization of food is discussed. Food is an indicator of gender identity: there are feminine foods such as rice, cake, and tea compared to masculine foods such as meat, potatoes, and coffee. This is, of course, all attributable to the psychological principle of conditioned associations, as Rappoport ably points out. There is also an interesting discussion of the “morality” of food. “‘Ours’ is right and superior and smells good; ‘theirs’ is wrong and inferior and smells bad, no matter whom ‘they’ are.” This attitude generates the basis for many ethnic slurs in our culture. All of which substantiate the “fact” that “You are what you eat.”

Clinically the best chapter is “Feeding Frenzies” (Chapter 3), which offers an up-to-date overview of the psychopathology of eating disorders and their psychological underpinnings, especially as related to the original question of independence/dependence on food. Rappoport presents a compassionate and compelling case for taking a biopsychosocial approach to the current increase in reported cases of eating disorders as a societal response to industrial modernity. He says we have changed our view of our body from “something given to us” to an “object we possess.” This then gets warped in the trappings of low self-esteem and frustrations over insecurities during early feeding incidents. Rappoport also introduces, in addition to this psy-

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choanalytic analysis, a contemporary feminist analysis of the situation as it relates to young women’s rejections of the societal demands of the adult female role expectations as they enter puberty and the option of “dieting” as a means of control and asserting independence becomes possible.

In, “The McDonaldization of Taste” (Chapter 4), the social and emotional exchange value of food is explored, frequently from a Marxist perspective. “Food ideologies influence how we think, and try to persuade us how we ought to think, about” food. Rappoport contends that we no longer have direct contact with our food, that is, an “immediate food experience”; rather, we have a “mediated food experience.” We do not directly taste; rather we contextually taste. Whether it is good or not good depends. The three main ideologies presented for analysis are hedonism, nutritionalism, and spiritualism. Rappoport notes that hedonism promises pleasure, nutritionalism promises health based on the modernity of science, and spiritualism promises a metaphysical or moral state of grace. Since all three play contrasting but essential roles in the determination of what and how we eat, Rappoport here helps the reader to embrace the built-in conundrum of human existence by pointing out that the original function of eating is for survival. Ironically, he points out that humans are the only species that engages in ritual fasting and ritual feasting. We flirt with the extremes – a dance of dependence-independence, no doubt.

Another context, the social/political is exemplified by the following: “McDonaldization is the process whereby all or most other social values become subordinated to efficiency, convenience, and immediate gratification of artificial needs. All this, of course, follows from the entrepreneurial profit motive, and never mind the traditional values that get pushed to the wall.”

Psychohistorians will enjoy the chapter that explores the history of food, “From the Raw to the Cooked to the Haute Cuisine” (Chapter 5). Herein he explores the theories of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Claude Levi-Strauss, while examining the development of the open-air food market. How does it satisfy our needs for feelings of security, pleasure, and the primitive connection between the raw and the cooked? I was especially intrigued by the class distinctions pointed out by Levi-Strauss with regard to why the rich “roast” and the poor “boil.” The rich can afford to waste.

There is insufficient space to mention all the topics I enjoyed. Rappoport discusses the development of table manners, food vocabulary, military rations, “nutraceuticals,” champagne slippers, and even the “Twinkie Defense.” He makes wonderful use of Freud’s defense mechanisms to elaborate on the relationships between food and sex and food and aggression.

By the last chapter we have been amply prepared for the answer to the big existential question about food. Rappoport says, “I am suggesting that the critical self-awareness about food relates in fundamental ways to central issues of personal meaning in the life course of any person.” Self-awareness is crucial: “Without eating there is no being.” So one must deal with food. How We Eat ends with a psychological flair that entices the reader to reflect on self and food, now and forever.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this book. I recommend it for general audiences as well as for those with more professional concerns, including chiefs and restaurateurs. Psychologists, psychohistorians, clinicians, and students both graduate and undergraduate will also benefit. For the scholar, it will be challenging to follow up on many of the research results discussed since there are no formal references. There is a list of general sources that will prove helpful as a place to begin.

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