{"id":6942,"date":"2017-06-30T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2017-06-30T13:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gastronomyatbu.com\/?p=6942"},"modified":"2018-03-28T17:49:11","modified_gmt":"2018-03-28T21:49:11","slug":"rethinking-food-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/2017\/06\/30\/rethinking-food-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking Food Language"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gastronomy student Sarah Wu shares her thoughts on rethinking food language in the next of our summer blog series, Perspective from Anthropology of Food.<\/em><\/p>\n

My first months in the Gastronomy program at Boston University have been nothing short of eye-opening. I\u2019ve been challenged to rethink what I know about food, the industry, and the people behind it. In particular, one subject has been discussed in multiple classes, including Anthropology of Food\u2014the language of food. I\u2019m not talking about the usage of terms such as antipasto or the difference between a macaroon and a macaron (though it is one of my pet peeves when people can\u2019t tell the difference)\u2014I\u2019m talking about re-evaluating the way we use words such as \u201cauthentic,\u201d \u201coriginal,\u201d and \u201ctraditional.\u201d A lot of things we say about food are strictly opinion\u2014something is too sweet, salty, sour, bitter, rare, or overcooked. However, the respective meanings of the three aforementioned words are even more difficult to pin down. If something is sweet, we can agree that there are degrees of sweetness (too sweet, not sweet enough, etc.), but with words like authentic, can something be semi-authentic? I think not.<\/span><\/p>\n