Food for thought: A study of food consumption in postmodern US culture

Food for thought: A study of food consumption in postmodern US culture

                 Liveaway foods’, ‘Galaxy Nutritional foods’, ‘Slow food’, ‘True food’, ‘Supernatural food’, ‘Green food’. All these examples are a good indication that in contemporary food con￾sumption, a high value is placed not on the physical attributes of meals and the process of eating them but on the symbolic meanings associated with food. Therefore, food can be seen as a cultural category representative of postmodernism, and examining food con￾sumption using a postmodern perspective. In consumer behavior, we discern three basic approaches to studying food consumption practices. One is quantitative modeling of grocery shopping and product preferences. Typically these studies focus on how consumers make choices between product or brand alternatives in retail environments. A second approach examines food as a means of studying something else, as ‘background’ data to propose generic conceptual and theoretical frameworks that can be equally applied to other product categories. The third stream of research, explores food consumption from a social-symbolic perspective, especially in ritual settings and on special occasions.

           The academic search for meanings imbedded in food that has been reported in the consumer behavior discipline reveals three levels of symbolic framing of food. Symbols seem to be attached to particular foods, their manufacturing and preparation methods, and eating patterns of consumers. The first level of symbolizing is the most straightforward on the surface. It occurs when certain foods are strongly associated with well-articulated and collectively shared meanings and images. Thus, a hamburger is symbolically teenager food (Levy, 1981) and fondue is a fun meal (Heisley and Levy, 1991). On the second level, attention is directed toward ways of manufacturing food. On the third level, identified symbols link together food properties, eating patterns, and food values and rationalize consumer behavior. This is the most comprehensive level of symbolizing that incorporates multiple functions of foods, their perceived attributes, and the meanings generated on the first two levels.

           In the context of postmodern globalization, Appadurai (1996) talks about simultaneous homogenization and heterogenization of cultural experiences. The age of postmodernism also becomes the age of spectacle for providing an environment that artistically combines high art and mundane consumption.On the surface, postmodern hyperrealities may seem to embrace Levi-Strauss’s structural approach to viewing culture in terms of binary opposites; in a deeper sense, postmodern perspective emphasizes the fluid nature of the symbolic opposites that are never constant and are always in a switching mode.