Time dedicated to meals

From the necessary to the superfluous

From the beginning, man as indeed all living beings, has been concerned by four essential things in his life:

• ensure some sort of transcendance to his existence to feel at one with himself and nature. This has disappeared in our consumption society,
• provide for his subsistence (looking for or producing food),
• the perpetuation of the species (bear on new generations and protect himself from predators and enemies),
• provide for his well being.

The various civilizations that have existed in the history of man have all predominantly centered their organization on these nodal priorities, whatever the circumstances.

This has of course had consequences, sometimes positive ones, sometimes awfully tragic ones. Among the several kinds of progress, we can consider that the birth of agriculture has been the real starting point of what we call civilization. Among the disastrous evolutions, wars and warcraft are the worst examples.

Man has lived through periods of war and prosperity, discovering new means and techniques to improve his daly way of life. Suffice it to recall our history lessons and we remember the most ancient civilizations date back to 15 000 years, with Homo sapiens arriving 200 000 years ago. Obviously, mankind has lived through the ages without cars, electricity, without the Internet, type writers or sewing machines...

No doubt their life used to be harder than it is in our modern western societies, but plenty of people still know this primeval way of life, in the Amazonian forest for instance.

So the effects of the XX^th C continuing and being dramatically amplified in the XXI^st C represent a radical change in the history of humanity. It's true though that man has always had an inclination for the superfluous, through art or rich garments that prove the value and refinement of a civilization, the importance it gives to transcendance, a longing to feel at one with the universe. This eagerness for transcendance has been a motor and man's aim in life.

The upheaval brought about by the XX^th C and that had already started with the XIX^th C industrial revolution has implied a total reversal of values: the superfluous was becoming more and more unavoidable while transcendance was losing its importance.

In all civilizations, meals have always been a friendly moment of reunion and social cohesion. This becomes obvious when we realize how all civilizations have developed codes, rites and rules when it comes to having and sharing meals. Religions too have used such moments as times for sacred rites with sacrifices and taboos, sacred or forbidden foods, lents or libations... This shows the importance of eating as a particular moment, thus family meals are an occasion for the various generations to meet.

Consumption society has utterly destroyed all this! Our modern society has given us a new vision, a new way of life that suits our modern structures better: the large family house has been replaced by the small flats available in council housing buildings where ther's simply no room for such reunions. What's more, consumption society means we're incited to consume more and more, a single salary can't do so women get to work and no one is left to indulge time in cooking a real meal.

Consuption society has brought an answer of its own, with variants such as takeaways, ready-cooked dishes (appertiezd or frozen), home-delivered pizzas and of course slow food (mainly pizzas and burgers).

Thus the XX^th C is marked by a new relation between man and food: a meal becomes a waste of time, especially lunch which must be quickly done and eaten. Eating is no longer a pleasure or a friendly moment but a mere necessity that can be compared to filling the tank. The moments when we still take time to eat are those when food becomes an excuse and is not at the heart of the matter, as with business meals.

Our working time has evolved too with only a short time for lunch. Eating so quickly is not without any consequence on our health: ulcers, digestion troubles, extra weight, not to mention the bad quality of industrial food.

To put it in a nutshell, our modern consumption society has led men and women to work more and enjoy less leisure time, most of it being spent to buy services such as industrial food in order to spare time cooking while, come to think of it, the sytem is pure nonsense.

Дата добавления: 2015-05-07