Evaluate the Factors That Influence Food Habits and Culture

Cheng Huang

#1 Essay

HTM 421-02

Evaluate the factors that influence food habits and culture.

Introduction: Generally food habits and culture are determined by geographical position, social development and individual background. Those factors not only influence food habits but also influence eating habits. The variety of food habits and eating habits make the world different. People’s food habits act as a way for them to identify themselves. There are many factors that influence food habits.

First of all, geographical factors are important for food habits and culture. Specifically, the most important factor of geography is regional climate. Different climates have different food habits and cultures because different temperature and precipitation make different food. Different regions with different climates have different agricultural products. Therefore, Climate influences food habits and culture by different weather with different temperature, precipitation and sunshine. For example, in some warm places with a large amount of precipitation, usually there are three or four crop cycles per year. (lisabeth hughes, 2011) However, in some cold places with less precipitation, the growing time will be short and crop cultivation is limited to one cycle.

Therefore, food in warm places are more various than in cold places. Eating habit is also easily influenced by climate and weather. In different season, people will choose different foods to adapt different seasons and environments. For example, San Francisco may not so common because the winter and summer of San Francisco are not obviously different. However in my hometown Wuhan, it is very common that people in different seasons will choose different foods to adapt to the environment. For example, people in my hometown will choose hotpot during winter because they feel warm in a cold weather. Therefore, geographical factors are very important to affect food habits and culture.

Secondly, the social development of a country or a region is important to affect food habits and culture. With the rapid development of the society, both food habits and eating habits are being affected by social changes (Bellisle, 2012). For example, most people usually like making foods by themselves and they are willing to spend a lot of time to making foods and eating foods many years ago because they have time to enjoy every meal. With the rapid social development, most people buying foods outside or from someone else and don’t want to make food by them because people want to save time to work or to do something else. Current society with rapid development gives people less and less time to make food except restaurants. People don’t have time to prepare materials of food, making foods and washing dishes.