Many questions come to mind with respect to how, and what, and when, people eat and drink. Human beings still project their reality in the environment through biological characteristics-the ability to see, smell, taste, move, jump, etc.-but some in unnatural ways. Not only do we help vision with glasses and hearing with aid devices, but even taste and smell are helped through the appropriate chemistry, in order to buffer some odor and enhance others. From odorless garlic to tofu smelling of pork chops, everything is within the possibility of biochemistry. At the extreme, nutrition is altogether removed from the context of nature. This is the case not just with people who are fed artificially, through tubes, pills, or special concoctions.
What does this have to do with literacy? How is it influenced, if at all, by the increased illiteracy of the new condition of human activity? The answers are far from being trivial. An editorialist from Germany, a country of solid, if not necessarily refined, eating instincts, went to great lengths to explain the alienation of nourishment in our age. The final scene he described is comic and sad at the same time. Some artificially obtained nutritive substance, molded in the shape of fish, is fried and served to a video- literate who eats the food while watching a videotape about fishing. The ersatz experience of tele-viewing is probably disconnected from the experience of river, trees, sunshine, and fish biting the hook, not to mention the taste of fresh fish. Dwindling stocks of fish is one reason why we can no longer afford the nourishment that results from direct involvement with nature. Not everyone can or wants to be a hunter, a fisherman, or a farmer. The romanticism of literacy, and of the utopian ideologies it helps express, would lead some to believe that this is possible, even desirable. But maybe not, since the new scale of humankind does not go unnoticed, even by those still clinging to the continuity and permanency embodied in literacy.
Values, rules, and expectations such as health considerations, efficiency, and taste are embodied in programs and procedures for which machines are built, new substances designed, and waste reprocessed. It might make some people shiver, but about 50% of a person's average caloric intake is the result of artificial synthesis and genetic engineering. Louis de Funés (in a 1976 French film directed by Claude Zidi) almost wound up as part of the food processed at Tricatel, a new factory that produces tasteless food based on the rules and looks of French cuisine, which the factory effectively undermines. The comedian, performing as a food inspector, has to decide what the real thing is and what is the fake. Competing with this burlesque, a national program, Awakening of Taste, under the aegis of the Minister of Culture, was set up to encourage French students in primary schools to rediscover the true national cuisine. That such a program parallels the effort of the Académie Française to maintain the purity and integrity of the language is a convenient argument concerning the interdependence of the ideal of literacy and that of haute cuisine.
The movie satirizes the human being's relation to food and technology. Eating something reminiscent of a fish, whether farmed or synthetically produced, while having video nostalgia for fishing is not an exception. In the mental gardens we plant each spring, when magazines and television shows present images of the beautiful tomatoes we might enjoy in a few months, there is a virtual space for every practical experience we gave up in order to satisfy our desire for more at the lowest price. The tomato in the civilization of illiteracy, hydroponic or garden grown, ripens faster, is perfect in form, and tastes almost like we think it should.
Irony and science fiction aside, we are indeed engineering proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals. They are designed to optimally maintain the human being and enhance his or her performance. This can be seen as a new phase in the process of transferring knowledge pertinent to nourishment from the encompassing and dominating medium of literacy to the many partial literacies- chemical, biological, genetic-of the civilization of illiteracy. Having in mind the image of where we currently stand and the direction in which we are heading, we can trace human self-constitution with the practical experience of food.
Language and nourishment
The relation between what people eat, how they prepare their food, how they serve and how they eat it, is accounted for in language, especially in its literate use, in many ways. Experiences of our continuous constitution through work, personal life, habits, defense, and aggression are expressed through language and other manifestations of our nature and culture. The same holds true for such peculiarities as the way people eat, entertain, dress, make love, and play. Language, as one among many expressive means, is a medium for representation, but also for diversifying experiences. It supports the research of new realms of existence, and participates in the maintenance of the integrity of human interdependencies as they develop in work, leisure, and meditation.
When the question "Why are there fewer alcoholics in China, Korea, Japan, and India?" was asked, answers were sought in culture. Reformulated as "Why can't Asians tolerate alcohol?" the question shifted the focus from what we do or do not do- the filters of exclusion or preference-to biology. Environmental, cultural, social, psychological, and cognitive characteristics can be acknowledged once the biological substratum is brought to light. Many people of Asian origin display an intolerance to alcohol that is due to a metabolism peculiar to their race. The intolerance to alcohol is associated with the lack of a catalytic enzyme, which under normal circumstances does not affect the functioning of the body. Only when alcohol is consumed do unpleasant symptoms appear: the face becomes flushed, skin temperature rises, the pulse quickens. Europeans, black Africans, and North American Indians are not affected in the same way. But they are subject to other genetically determined food sensitivities. For example, lactose intolerance is highest in Blacks.
The example given above tells us that the projection of biological characteristics into the universe of people's existence results in the image of differences among various groups of people and among individuals. People noticed these peculiarities before science existed in order to explain them. Relating the effect to a cause-a certain food or drink-people incorporate this relation into their body of experiences. Established connections become rules that are intended to ensure optimal individual and group functioning. Rules pertaining to food and ways of eating were eventually encoded and transmitted through literate means.
In short, patterns of work and life are affected. They point to various levels at which human practical experiences and the experience of nourishment are interconditioned. A first level regards nourishment and our biological endowment. A second level is nourishment and the environment-what we can afford from the world surrounding us. A third level is nourishment and self-consciousness-what best suits our life and work. Over time the interdependency changes. And at moments when the scale of mankind reaches a threshold, it is drastically redefined-as in our times, for instance.