Culture Of Food Essay

Food is an energizer, food is culture, food is sharing and it can be an expression of love. Literature uses food in many different ways because it is something that any reader can connect with immediately. Everyone knows different cultures have different foods, so authors can put their heroes in situations where they eat odd foods to express a drastic cultural change. Authors can build trust between their hero and other characters by having them share food, just as they can easily build tension by using food as deception. Since even heroes need food plot points arise around the lack of food while on grand journeys, which can lead to new adventures, mistakes or new friends. Tolkien, Rowling, Lewis and many others use food expertly to express …show more content…
What she did have were Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans, Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, Chocolate Frogs, Pumpkin Pasties, Cauldron Cakes, Liquorice Wands and a number of other strange things Harry had never seen in his life. “ (107-108). Being that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is aimed towards children it makes sense that Rowling utilized snacks and junk food to truly showcase the cultural difference through food. Obviously by that point in the story the reader has already noticed the wizarding world is quite different, brooms, magic walls, flying and just magic everywhere, but the food on the train just exemplified the difference, just as pad thai and poutine show the exceptional difference in cultural foods. But, not all the food was magical in the wizarding world, often the food was fairly “human”, but the presentation of it is what creates the contrast between the Dursley's and Hogwarts. Where at Dursley's there was an obvious hierarchy with Harry at the bottom, at Hogwarts the food is wondrously spread through magic so all the wizards could feast equally, not only showing the culture, but the sheer excellence and riches of Hogwarts and the wizarding world. In J.R.R.