Of Metabolic Myth

Abstract

There are few areas of material culture from which people demand more authenticity, integrity and transparency than the techniques and materialities surrounding food. Foods materialise myths and imaginaries of nature and modernity, and entire regional economies and national cuisines rely on evolved and invented stories about where and how foodstuffs are prepared. At the same time, systems of provenance are challenging to establish, fakes common, and forgery rampant. Cultures and peoples the world over concern themselves with the genuineness of dishes and the pedigree of raw materials and preparations. Governance and policy structures attempt to snare those who wilfully or otherwise commit the deep offence of violating the economic sanctity or highly intimate significance of foods. Food processes are faked, adulterated, contaminated and stigmatised in ways that deeply revolt, pervert and reveal those things about which human beings care most deeply. The myths, materiality, media, systems and infrastructures of food are a metabolic imaginary that links seemingly simple alimentary processes to notions of truth-telling and authenticity. Our culinary techniques and performances of socialisation, story- telling and identity show, yet again, that “truth is a matter of the imagination”.