从饮食文化透析中美文化差异(2)
4.1 Reducing Excessively Extravagant Occasions and Etiquette16
4.2 Blind Pursuit of Healthy Eating Not Advisable17
4.3 Attaching Importance to Food Safety Issues..19
5. Conclusion..21
Bibliography.22
Introduction
Food can provide the essential nutrition to sustain people’s life and growth when ingested. It is very important in the development of society and in the advancement of human beings. With the human progress, in addition to uptakes of nutrients, the content of food becomes various gradually and eating becomes a kind of culture. However, people in different countries are affected by different natural environment, historical background and national culture. Then national differences appear in the field of food culture. Although the differences in food culture derive from certain historical factors, their inheritance and progress are under cultural control.
With the constant advancement of economy, China and the United States have more contact with each other. The cross-cultural communication between the developing China and the developed United State is undoubtedly essential for both sides.
As a consequence, this thesis is mainly to analyze the dietary cultural discrepancy and some of my points of view on some problems faced by today’s Chinese diet cultures. It attempts to make people understand Chinese and American dietary cultures better. At the same time, people can deeply learn from each other in faith, philosophic thinking and thought patterns. It is quite important to the communication between the two countries and also is beneficial to the future development of Chinese diet culture.
2 Differences in Dietary Cultures between China and America
Because of the geographic distance, the United States and China are perse in dietary culture. Although every country and society must evolve in diet, diet culture is not the same and the positions of food in different cultures are also different. With a history of five thousand years, China was an influential and agriculture-oriented country with a large population in the past. China has enough food resources to supply its people. So, in China, food has a high position. However, the United States was born and bred by strict political and economic system. It enjoys a distinguished fame of the high level of its political and economic system. The Americans pay less attention to food. In American food culture, diet is just a minor part of people’s daily life.
For the impact of each cultural tradition, the dietary cultures in China and America have perse characteristics. The discrepancies in concepts, content, etiquette, dinnerware and nature lead to the unique food cultures of the two nations. The Characteristics enrich the study value of dietary culture. By studying the cultural discrepancy, we can find out a way to strengthen cross-cultural exchange. It is quite helpful to the communication of the Chinese and American cultures.
2.1 Differences in Diet Concept
Chinese diet and American diet are different in concept, nobody will deny that the Americans take a rational attitude towards diet. Regardless of the color, aroma, flavor and shape of food, nutrition must be assured. They focus on the intake of calories, vitamins, protein. Compared with Chinese diet, American diet is very simple, and they straightforwardly say they must eat them for nutrition.
2.1.1 The Concept of Diet in America
In western dietary culture, eating is like adding fuel to a biological machine, especially about the food’s nutrition composition, protein, vitamins, carbohydrates, fat and a great variety of inorganic elements. People focus more on the nutrition than the color, aroma and taste(Dang Binghua,2010:34). Even if the taste of food is monotonous, they still like these foods just because it is nutritious. It brings energy to American culture and pays more attention to dinnerware, the staple, the service, and the color and shape mix of raw materials. They do not care much about how luxurious it is. From San Francisco to New York, there is only one taste of steak. As dishes, it tastes flavorless. In a dish of “French Mutton Steak”,one side is potato mud, and muttonchops sits next to it, another side is some green peas plus a few tablets of tomato. It looks very delicious, but the entire flavor is also monotonous and dull.
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