FOOD HABITS OF TAMILS/PART:26[conclusion]

                                                                         ((Compiled by: Kandiah Thillaivinayagalingam))

When you think about traditional foods,do you think about hunter-gatherers of long ago? They did everything by hand and from scratch. Or do you think about the pioneers living out on the prairie or edge of the forest who began to cultivate and produce their own food after finding a homestead and settling in one place?These are indeed some examples of the ways traditional foods were produced,harvested,prepared and eaten.In fact,Traditional foods are those eaten by people over the longer course of civilization and which have supported health – cultivated, produced, and harvested from the earth and out of nature – foods which are wholly unaltered and organic, and contain the highest levels of nutrition or are nutrient-dense and

have been eaten for millennia & in many cases traditional foods are also those found in your local community.By contrast,the way we eat today is vastly different.We have grown so accustomed to food being produced the way it is, we often don’t think beyond the package or the can. Since the advent of mechanization and processing techniques developed during the time around the Industrial Revolution,our food has become increasingly removed and modified from its natural state.The effect these processes have had on our health has been profound.To the average person,the notion of eating healthy or nutritious food has

been been translated into something which powerful companies are now able to employ effective marketing strategies by which to sell products.Notice how you will rarely see an ad on television or in a magazine for a whole,organic food.Ads are persuasive and successful tools that sell products – but they rarely sell health. The good news is, you do have a choice.With a little information, you can become empowered to take charge of your own health instead of letting an advertisement tell you what’s healthy. One of the best ways to take control of your own health is to eliminate processed foods from your diet and start eating traditional foods.

Further more,Food, cooking, and eating habits play a central role in every

culture.Eating is never a purely biological activity since the consumption of food, whether it is simply or elaborately prepared, is always imbued with meaning, which is understood and communicated in various symbolic ways.Preparing food for consumption, and eating socially, are activities that are conducted for purposes other than mere nutrition.The symbolic meaning of food sometimes has little to do with the food itself, as in the use of rice to shower newly-weds in Tamil and other certain cultures,and eating socially has less to do with nutrition than with communication and relationships.Food has also played an important part in religion, helping to define the separateness of one creed from another by means of dietary taboos. 

PART :27 WILL FOLLOW .....