Am I what I eat? - revised

While I feel an affiliation with certain types of food, I've never felt that it deeply connects me to my identity. I've never felt the sense of belonging that was experienced by the black Muslim community toward Soul Food in the Rouse and Hoskins article. The identification expressed by this community transcends cookie-cutter definitions of "race", "gender", "ethnicity", or "class". Soul Food is like a blanket lifestyle choice within which all of these dimensions express themselves. For example, women play their own role within the preparation and distribution of soul food, so their relationship with Soul Food is different than it is for men. Meanwhile, soul food is an association shared by the family unit, the community, and the greater black Muslim ethnic and religious unit.

There are plenty of foods that I feel an affiliation to, insofar as they correspond with my identity. Usually this affiliation ties a food item to my family, my childhood, my friends and even my generation and class. Some foods I feel slightly drawn towards because they are marketed to appeal to my identity, like female-targeted Luna bars. Kraft Macaroni and cheese and spaghetti are foods I identify with more strongly, perhaps because I identify with them on several levels: they are foods of my generation, they are foods stereotypically consumed by people in my socioeconomic circumstance and they are foods of my childhood. These layers of identification overlap, with 'class' and 'generation' often mixing together and 'childhood' often leading toward one or the other.

It's easier for me to feel distant from those foods that do not fit who I am than it is to feel a strong association with foods that fit me like a glove. I enjoy Kraft Mac and Cheese, but "gourmet" Mac and Cheese feels pretentious and silly. I feel uncomfortable at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, but at ease eating cheese fries at a brewery.

My distaste for classy foods leads me back to the age-old idiom, "you are what you eat". Do we culturally define the meanings of our food, and then eat accordingly? In what ways do we define our food, and in what ways does our food define us? The commodification of taste, as discussed by Haden, adds yet another dimension to our ability to identify with food.

The idea of finding comfort in commodities traces back to ideas of identity from Rouse and Hoskins. Commodified food can wear a mask of generational and class identification, obscuring the underlying reasons for taste preferences. Beer manages to overlap layers of identification, much the way Soul Food does. But it does so under the influence of heavy advertising. Thus, beer is the epitome of a meeting point between trivialized taste and American identity.

Many of my (mostly male) friends drink Natural Ice when they can't afford better beer, even though they can taste the deficiency - it's imagery they're seeking, not flavor. Natural Corona, another cheap beer, contains "the unparalleled flavor of relaxation". You may not have known this, but "nothing else lets the conversation flow so easily between friends." Check out the Natural Light website for "nattyism" commercials, each of which manage to cram sex, manliness, the "chill" factor, the party scene and typecast college students into 1 minute.

For many of my (male) friends, holding a beer at a party is a form of self-representation, the darker and stronger the better. They almost unanimously declare a taste preference, but I beg to differ. Perhaps they've slowly developed a palate for bitter beer, but only as a matter of choice, because they believe in everything it symbolizes. Sophisticated and distinguished, those who can appreciate a fine balance of hops and malt clearly have discovered "how beer is meant to taste", according to the Pilsner Urquell website. Thus, the image of beer manifests itself on their tongue, bringing together the rich history of beer and its recent commercialization.