Psychology of food

Yesterday, for lunch the kids had whale meat. Katsumoto told me that when we were kids, whale meat was very cheap and they ate it frequently for school lunch. Now they only serve it only once a year.

The Japanese whaling fleet has been in the international news recently. They are holding a couple of Greenpeace protesters on-board a Japanese whaling vessel while the fleet is harvesting a number of whales for "research". The Japanese are allowed a to catch a certain number of whales per International Law - although it doesn't make it less controversial. This has made me think more about how food plays a part in our identity and how we think.

It would be very interesting to do a study on food and psychology. What we eat, how we eat, and with whom we eat, I think, contributes greatly to how we think and act. I have only really started thinking about this since I came to Japan, although being raised a vegetarian in a conservative Christian church has colored the way I think about this.

In Japan, all students eat school lunch in their classrooms with their teachers. The students, however, are not given any choice about what they eat. All students are served the same thing as the other students. There is no ‘I don’t like this or that.’ Each student gets the same lunch. On top of this, student must eat everything off of their plate. No student may leave any amount of food on their plates when lunch is finished.

Kids do get around eating some things, but it is not always easy. At the beginning of lunch, a student offers a ‘thanks’ for the meal to the people who prepared it. It isn’t a prayer; it is really just a custom. When the ‘thanks’ is over students will often trade or give food away to other students, but they are not always successful. For example, the two girls who sit at my lunch table, Kaoka and Hikaru, both tried to pass off their whale meat at the beginning of lunch. Kaoka got one of the boys to take her portion, but Hikaru did not. Hikaru ate her portion even though she didn’t seem to want to.

There is no ‘have it your way’ mentality in Japan. I haven’t seen a Burger King here. (I don’t know if it would take off or die quickly.) There is no hold the pickles. There is no extra relish. Everything is served the same way. Only in the American food joints can you get extras or have certain things held from the plate. Katsumoto loves going to Costco with us, simply for the fact that he can get a hot dog with unlimited amounts of relish.

I am sure that food has an impact on the psychology of each person. In the US there is a greater individuality. In Japan, there is more concern for the society or group. When it comes to whale meat, it has an impact on their politics as well. It draws the kids in and makes them complicit with the Japanese fleet in the southern oceans.

I don’t know, maybe being vegetarian my whole life has really colored the way I see things.