XIII Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2021

In 1949 The Hungarian George Mikes declared that: “On the Continent people have good food; in England they have good table manners.” In 1977 he observed that English food had improved, but their table manners became worse.

There are many beliefs, that British people consider good food as a privilege or that they have passionate love of food, which are not right. British people have no proper regional cookery; families no longer eat together, instead of joint meals they choose eating junk food in front of a TV or computer. People’s diet mostly consists of salty or sweet snacks like crisps, pizza or nuggets. Even those who are interested in good food, tend to have neither time nor energy to shop for and cook fresh ingredients that other nations would regard as a proper manner.

These criticisms are largely justified. But they are not the whole truth. The same goes for the opposite extreme - the current “Cool Britannia” fashion for proclaiming that English cooking has in recent years improved out of all recognition, that nowadays London is the gastronomic capital of the world, that British have become a nation of gourmets and ‘foodies’, and so on.

Talking about the quality of English food, it should be noted that it is neither as awful as its detractors make us believe, nor as amazing as its recent champions have claimed. It is somewhere in between. Some of it is very good, some is quite inedible.

Every culture has its own distinctive food rules - both general rules about attitudes towards food and cooking, and specific rules about who may eat what, how much, when, where, with whom and in what manner - and one can learn a lot about a culture by studying its food rules.

The relationship between English people and food is like a sort of uneasy, uncommitted cohabitation. There are moments of affection or even a passion, but on the whole it is fair to say that English don’t have deep-seated, inborn love of food that is to be found among their European neighbors, and indeed in most other cultures. Food is just not given the same high priority in English life as it is elsewhere.

In many other cultures, people who enjoy cooking, care about food and love talking about it, are called ‘foodies’. Keen interest in food is the norm for English people. But foodieness is somewhat more acceptable among females, but it is still noticeable, still remarked upon - and in some circles regarded as pretentious. No one wishes to be seen as too deeply fascinated by food. Most of the English people are proud to say that they ‘eat to live, rather than live to eat’.