THE MEANING OF ALIMENTATION IN FAMILY: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL VIEW

Abstract

Hunger is a natural need that must be satisfied through the ingestion of food in order to ensure the production and reproduction of human existence. However, if appeasing hunger is a natural and universal action, alimentation practices are also universal. They are not natural, but are situated in the scope of culture, that is to say, in the field of symbolic systems. Around commensality, each society designs a complex system of dietetic rules based on common sense, religious precepts and medical knowledge, which creates interdictions to exclude foods that are symbolically classified as harmful or dangerous to health from its menu. Anthropological studies have shown the diversity of alimentary practices, which do not constitute a solitary act, but are social activities including the production, processing and consumption of food and how societies construct their own representations, thus defining their identity in relation to other societies through their eating habits. This study examines how the low-income population articulates symbolic elements from various sources in order to organize dietetic rules that eventually become cultural indicators through which food is categorized as appropriate or harmful for consumption. Food is a category that establishes boundaries between the identity of the poor population, who faces difficulty to promote alimentation, and the identity of those whose culinary is rich and varied and that of the very poor, who starve.