The Psychology of Eating: From Healthy to Disordered Behavior

The Meaning of Food 77

of social worth” (p. 189). Early sociological writers such as Friedrich Engels
and Karl Marx regarded food as an essential component of human sub-
sistence and its absence as an illustration of inequality (see Mennell, Murcott,
and Van Otterloo, 1992). Food is a statement of social status and an illustra-
tion of social power. In parallel, food avoidance also serves to regain control
over the social world. When political prisoners need to make a social state-
ment, they may refuse to eat and initiate a hunger strike. For example,
Bobby Sands was a political prisoner in Northern Ireland in the 1980s who
refused food to illustrate his political point. He was voted a member of
Parliament by his local constituency just before he died. Similarly, the
suffragettes in the early twentieth century also turned to hunger strikes as
a form of political protest over gender inequalities. Lady Constance Lytton
(1869–1923) describes how she was imprisoned along with other protesters
in Liverpool for 14 days following a suffragette demonstration. In protest,
she started to scratch the words “Votes for women” on her body, went on
a hunger strike, and was promptly force-fed on eight occasions (Lytton, 1914).
She told the wardress, “We are sorry if it will give you trouble: we shall
give as little as possible: but our fast is against the government and we shall
fight them with our lives not hurting anyone else” (p. 260), and argued
that the “government had been petitioned in every other way” (p. 262). As
Gordon (2000) stated, “Historically the hunger strike has been employed
by the socially oppressed as a means of embarrassing or humiliating those
in control and ultimately extracting concessions from them” (p. 194). Orbach
(1986) has regarded eating disorders as a form of “hunger strike,” and
Wolf has stated that “in the public realm, food is status and honor” (p. 189).
The presence of food represents a social power, and the denial of food is
a powerful tool for regaining control over the political world.

Culture versus nature: The meaning of meat

Food, particularly meat, also signifies the relationship between people
and nature. For the majority meat is the cornerstone of a meal, and for
vegetarians it is the food to be avoided. Twigg (1983) stated that “meat
is the most highly praised of food. It is the centre around which a meal is
arranged. It stands in a sense for the very idea of food itself ” (p. 21). Following
a study of British family meals, Kerr and Charles (1986) wrote that
“meat was mentioned by the women more frequently than any other food
...Meat or fish as its substitute was usually viewed as an essential ingre-
dient of the main meal of the day” (p. 140). Similarly, Fiddes (1990) argued,