Study of food gaining serious ground

You are what you eat. We all know that. But did you know that what you eat can also indicate your shopping choices, your social class, your politics, the suburb you live in and even your dating status.

For instance, are you standing in the supermarket queue nursing a ready-made, microwaveable meal for one? Yep, you're single and working long hours.

Will you drink a dozen cans of VB with your meal or will you choose a nice tipple of pinot noir? If you're doing the former, you're a man from the country wearing a plaid shirt and gumboots. If you're doing the latter, the wine appreciator is a woman from the city with a designer handbag and expensive shoes.

And do you know the scientific name for your favourite kind of giant green olive? So you must be a dedicated foodie who can afford the time and cash to indulge in gourmet delights. Or maybe you just have a fetish about olives.

Okay, those are fairly big generalisations, but there's no doubt that the way a culture eats indicates a lot about the way they live and who they are.

For centuries, food has been so much more than what we eat to keep us alive. As one pundit says "it shapes our understanding of ourselves and gives meaning and direction to our culture".

Yet interestingly, until relatively recently, not that many people were proclaiming this proudly as they put on the Sunday roast, fired up the barbecue or, latterly, made their way to the Asian foodhall. But now food has become an increasingly popular subject for serious study, and in particular by sociologists and anthropologists.

"Food is a wonderful lens through which we can see a whole lot of processes taking place in our society," says associate professor Hugh Campbell, director of the Centre for Study of Agriculture, Food and Environment at Otago University which has just started teaching a course in the sociology of food during its annual summer school.

"It's very fashionable at the moment," says Ian Carter, professor of sociology at the University of Auckland. "There's masses of stuff being published on the subject."

And what a rapidly ripening field it is. There are dozens of books being published on the subject and a university, dedicated to the study of food, has opened in Italy. The University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo is the only one of its kind in the world. "We will not be training chefs," project director Vittorio Manganelli has said. "There will be no pans. The curriculum will be more humanistic and cultural. The students will learn how food is grown, how it is processed. They will go on to work as food writers or managers, perhaps as expert buyers."

The sociology of food covers everything from micro (your personal methods of cooking and eating) to the macro (broad themes affecting every human and our environment such as globalisation, capitalism, market economies, and consumption practices, to the social history of food.)

There are several fascinating debates going on - discourses on the contradictions of our modern relationships with food, as in we love celebrity chefs but no one cooks at home anymore, convenience versus culinarism and natural or organic versus technological food. "The choice of food," says Finnish researcher Dr Johanna Makela, "has become a form of political and moral statement making."

Why food is being taken so much more seriously as a topic for tertiary study is due in part to feminist thinking, says Professor Carter. "Subjects that used to be regarded as trivial, such as women's work, if you like, are now being taken seriously for the first time."

Campbell also believes that in the past 20 years food has become far more political. "One of the megatrends in this area is that we've gone from a safe and comfortable relationship with food, where we didn't mind so much where everything we ate came from, to a more problematic one," he explains.

"For example, you get 'invisible foods', in that where they come from is essentially invisible. Say you have some generic canned tomatoes - they could have come from anywhere, some child could have keeled over in the field picking them, but all we see is the advertising on the side of the can."

Food scares - campylobacter, salmonella and genetic engineering of plants and livestock - have also had an impact. "People used to have a high level of trust but in the past 20 years or so we've seen that change significantly. And every time there's a food scare the level of distrust ratchets up one more notch."

Also, Campbell says "there's been a revolution in dietary consciousness - people want organic food, or they want high carb, low fat or gluten free. There's a lot more thought going into what we eat.

"On one hand we have what you might call nutritionally-poor, energy-rich foods - they're very cheap and nice to eat but not particularly good for you - [and] on the other hand we also have more fads and fashion in foods and what we call 'food literacy' is growing."

All of which explains why people are taking the study of culinary culture more seriously. But why should the rest of us, blithely chowing down on fish'n'chips and stuffed olives, even care? It tastes nice but who can be bothered learning the history and reasoning behind it?

"I think generally the best reason [for caring about the sociology of food] is that, as the world becomes more globalised and our sense of identity more fractured, food is one way of telling people who they are and where they fit into the world," says Campbell. '

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

* Double-black espresso - tidy, discriminating, potentially a bit anal and you're probably a man who's trying to prove how tough you are.

* Fresh pasta from the supermarket - a domestic manager from the North Shore who's trying to be a bit fancy this evening.

* A microwaveable, healthy, 99 per cent fat free Meal For One - you really should try internet dating.

* Organic tempeh roll - clearly a hippie. Possibly a vegetarian, too. You live in Titirangi.

* Home-strained soy milk for your baby - clearly a mega-hippie with too much time on your hands. You're a sculptor and you live next door to Mr Tempeh Roll.

* Extra wasabi - a 16-year-old skateboarder who's watched too much Jackass.

* Sushi for lunch - cute, diet-conscious, fashion-conscious woman who works in a central city office.

* Fish'n'chips - this really depends where you buy them from. But if you won't buy them from anywhere but one of those fancy fisheries, it's possible you live in Parnell and possess too much money and not enough sense.

* Five-minute noodles - an Asian student.

* Pinot noir - you're always keen to try the latest thing in fashionable wines. You may reside in one of the central city suburbs of Wellington.

* McDonald's cheeseburger - you're 12-years-old, it's after school and you're hanging on Queen St. Look out, here comes your bus.

* Lamb chops - a traditionalist from the South Island.

* Asparagus rolls, prawn cocktails and lamingtons - you're a hipster from the Grey Lynn-Kingsland area who likes the idea of ironic-retro foods. Or else you're the hipster's granny.

* Lasagne - a happy family of four where the mother works part time.

* Spaghetti or baked beans on toast - a 20-something who's flatting. Most likely male.

* Read the labels on packets at the supermarket - you're studying the sociology of food or you've been taking notes from The Evil Diet Witch on TV.

* Homemade gourmet sausages from the butchery or meat section - you're an affluent 30-something who likes the idea of cooking something fancy but can't be bothered. You might buy a mesclun salad as well and the only thing you'll actually put together is the dressing.

FOOD FACTS

* During the Renaissance in Europe, artichokes were more expensive than pork or beef, but on the whole the lower class diet consisted mainly of fruit and vegetables. The biggest luxury, however, was new and fashionable boiled pasta. A man's wealth could be assessed by the number of times a week he and his family dined on lasagne.

* The fork first appeared in Europe during the Middle Ages as a single-pronged wooden utensil and was used for eating lasagne.

* In 15th-century France diners used mensa - rounded disks of bread - as plates.

* Legend has it that the croissant originated in Budapest in the 17th century during a Turkish siege of the city. Bakers who were working late heard the Turks trying to tunnel into the city and raised the alarm. As a reward they were allowed to bake pastries in a crescent shape, as seen on the Ottoman flag.

* Haute cuisine, literally "high cooking" in French, started in Napoleonic France, as a refinement of traditional French cookery. It involved a reorganisation of kitchens and included a series of head chefs and under-chefs.

* When margarine was first commercially produced in the United States in 1875 it was seen as unnatural and even demonic. The US butter lobby was particularly hostile and brought in legislation to prevent margarine being mistaken for butter and required it to be coloured bright pink and white in some states.