The Impact of Eating Behaviors on our Health

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Eating behaviour is a complex behaviour that involves a vast array of factors which has a great impact on the way we choose our meals. Food choice, like an other behaviour, is influenced by several interrelated factors. While hunger seems to drive our ways of food consumption, there are things outside of our own bodies that influence our food choices and the way in which we eat. The way we eat is controlled by and is a reflection of our society and cultures. I explore this idea through a food diary I created over a few weeks and the observations made by several anthropologists that I have studied. The way in which we choose our foods can stem from events that occur during early childhood. When I lived in Jamaica as a child, I was only fed 'Jamaican style' cuisine. This involved lots of rice with peas, chicken, jerked pork, etc. However, I remember that my parents would take my brothers and I out to restaurants a few times a year as a treat. Our favourite place was a specific Chinese restaurant in a tourist area nearby our house. The food was prepared by Chinese workers and we got to experience what we believed was authentic Chinese cuisine. Another place in which we would enjoy was KFC. KFC represented an exotic 'Other' which allowed us to experience a different kind of social space. According to Finkelstein, this is known as an 'America place'. It is world-famous American food. Food consumption can be a social event where it is done solely for the experience. Interactions in restaurants are conditioned by existing manners and customs. Dining out allows us to act in imitation of others, in accord with images, in responses to fashions, out of habit, without need for thought or self-scrutiny. The result is that the styles of... ... middle of paper ... ...fect white women but women of all races. An example of this would be in the case of Tenisha Williamson documented by Susan Bordo. Tenisha is an African American female who suffers from anorexia and has described her struggle on 'Colours of Ana', a website specifically devoted to the stories of non-white women dealing with eating and body image problems (Bordo 2009: 265). Like her, I felt like I was a traitor to my race for not being larger but I wanted to fit into the thin crowd of the modelling industry. This sparked binge eating habits at times and body image problems. Overall, our bodies are a battle ground in which we fight off or surrender to society's projection of what beauty is. We eat for either nutrition, to socialize, to control our bodies or to explore worldly cuisines. The way I ate is highly influenced by the way in which society flows around me.

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