Jane Karanja.
Introduction.
As competition between tourism destinations increases, local culture is becoming an increasingly important source of new products and activities to attract and amuse tourists. Food Culture has a particularly important role to play in this, not only because food is central to the tourist experience, but also because food tourism has become an important source of identity formation in postmodern societies. More and more, ‘we are what we eat’, not just in the physical sense, but also because we identify with certain types of cuisine that we encounter on holiday.
As tourists become more mobile, so does the food they eat. The comfortable association of certain foods with certain regions is being challenged by the growing mobility of food, culinary styles and the increasing de-differentiation of dishes and cuisines. Far from producing an homogenized food tourism landscape, the tension between globalization and localization is producing ever more variations. Tourists themselves are contributing to food culture mobility, by creating a demand for foods they have encountered abroad in their own countries.
More recently, the serving and consumption of food has become a global industry, of which tourism is an important part. In common with other services and ‘experiences’ offered to (post)modern consumers, a distinct system of production, distribution and presentation has emerged that can be characterized as one of the ‘cultural industries’. In the cultural industry of food culture the value chain is being extended to include a wide range of economic activities, many of which are related to tourism.
Food has been used as a means of forging and supporting identities, principally because what we eat and the way we eat are such basic aspects of our culture. Eating habits are parochial behaviours that are learned and culturally bound:
-Some Catholics still avoid meat on Friday, as an act of contrition, and so often eat fish on this day. Japanese love raw fish. Chinese eat dogs and monkeys. Muslims and Jews do not eat pork. Hindus do not eat beef. French eat frogs, snails, horses and raw meat. Arabs eat camel meat and drink camel milk. Aborigines eat earth grubs. Greeks drink sheep’s milk. Some African tribes eat insects, drink blood. Yanamamo Indians of South America eat fresh uncooked lice and fried insects. Such differences are the source of much of the diversity upon which tourism thrives.
One of the basic reasons for this is the strong relationship between certain localities and certain types of food. As Hughes (1995:114) points out there is a ‘notion of a natural relationship between a region’s land, its climatic conditions and the character of food it produces. It is this geographical diversity which provides for the regional distinctiveness in culinary traditions and the evolution of a characteristic heritage’. This link between location and food has been used in a number of ways in tourism, including promotional efforts based on distinctive or ‘typical’ regional or national foods. Food can also be used as a means for guiding tourists around regions or countries.
