Advanced civilizations were possible because there was a surplus of food, so not everyone had to farm all the time. Advanced civilizations are where cooking for survival changes to cuisine – cooking with awareness, for a purpose other than just to make food edible. It’s clear that people have been eating well – and cooking well – for centuries. The evidence isn’t only in old cookbooks, which are a fabulous paper trail of their own. It’s also in novels, art, poetry, and song. But what exactly people think defines good food – and good cooking – isn’t easy to tease out, because it’s always been bound up in broader cultural notions about what is familiar and what is exotic, what is healthful or harmful, what goes together and what doesn’t. And of course, it shifts over time. No cuisine is static. Innovations in technology, transportation, and agriculture, currents of trade and migration and urbanization – all of these factors shift cultural preferences over time.
It was fascinating for us to dive into the history of flavor, and to look for reflections of our own notions about it across time and space. One through-line is the sense that the art of cooking is an expression – and reflection – of a civilization itself. As Brillat-Savarin puts it, with typical pithiness, “Animals feed themselves; men eat; but only wise men know the art of eating.” The Dao De Jing asserts that “governing the country is in principle like cooking a small fish,” meaning that great care and attention are in both cases essential. Culinary skills were a fine qualification for ministerial appointment. His culinary skills brought him to the king’s attention, and in his first audience he transformed the greatest philosophical issues of governance into a menu of foods to be coveted. Among other things, Yi Yin likened the whole world to a kitchen in which one prepares food, and proper government to good cooking.
Just as in cooking it was necessary to understand flavours to blend them successfully; so in governing it was necessary to grasp people’s sufferings and aspirations in order to satisfy their needs. The cook has always been part levelheaded administrator. Forget for a moment their mouth-watering creations and think of cooks as rationing resources. Think of them counting out one artichoke for each guest. Think of them balancing the sweet and sour. Cooks use their eyes, ears, touch, and, especially, nose, teeth and tongue, to share. And the most balanced results become the most satisfying, those we agree are the most pleasing. We like fairness. Not just through the dishes, cooks conjure harmonious blends out of the social, cultural and physical worlds. But what, GlycoMode Wellness beyond notions of basic evenhandedness, has determined our views on what goes best with what? Of course, before it was possible to ship food easily from one place to another, what was cooked together was largely dictated by what grew together in a given region.
In the south of France there was lamb and wild thyme; in Thailand, GlycoMode Website seafood, lemongrass, and galangal; and in Mexico, corn, beans, and GlycoMode blood glucose support squash. Over time, these combinations became traditional; when people were transplanted to other countries, as travelers and immigrants, they reached for the combinations they’d grown up with, introducing their favorite ingredients even as they adapted to new ones. But cuisines are more than rote combinations. They gradually evolved overarching principles that attempted to impose structure on how to bring ingredients together in harmony. CAPAs in our own time, ideas about what constitutes good food have always been entwined with rules governing the health of the body. For example, Taoist theories dictated that foods should achieve a balance between yin and yang. Yin is cool, dark, moist, and associated with the feminine; hence yin foods -green vegetables and creatures that live in the water – are considered cooling. Yang is hot, GlycoMode Blood Sugar bright, dry, and associated with the masculine, and yang foods – fatty and spicy and piping-hot foods, for example – are considered heating.