Factors Influencing Food Habits and Culture

Eating food is essential for all of us, it keep us alive and also gives us enjoyment at the same time. Food can be defined as any substance that can be metabolized by an animal to give energy and build tissue. (ilearn) In ancient time, when people feel hungry, they eat. However, as human history keep developing and evolving, we have a higher standard on choosing food that we like to eat nowadays. In this paper, we are going to evaluate factors that are influencing our food habits and food culture. Those factors can be divided into two main categories, internal factors (individual preference and values) and external factors (geographical, religion, social, economic and political). Internal …show more content…

Psychologists say that people will act how others act, which means majority of people do not like to act so different from others because others might think he or she was weird. For example, culturally and morally eating dogs and cats are not allowed, so people would not eat them. Besides social influence, family influence is a key factor too. People who come from a vegetarian family, tends to become a vegetarian when he or she grows up. In America, The overall national costs related to obsity reach $117 billion. (Marcia, 2007) Fast food culture is one of a mainstream food habit. There are many fast food restaurants around the country. This causes majority of Americans tends to eat more fast food than people in other country, which causes obesity also. However, when people started to aware of the problem of obesity, fast food is becoming less and less popularity in America. For a country, economy is the most important element. For food habit, economy is also an important factor that will influence the food habit and food culture. In poor country, people tend to eat cheaper food or stay home to eat. Since they are poor, they might not be able to keep a balance diet, eating enough vegetables and fruits. In contrast, people in rich country tend to eat out more and they will have more budgets to eat better and healthier food. Also, when a country is doing good, meaning that the economy is recovering, people in that country tend to