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Bible, the book that more than any other has been the foundation of Western philosophy, God places the first couple in a garden paradise full of fruit-bearing trees. They are allowed to eat from every tree of the garden, except one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Across history and cultures, women have had a special relationship with the “gustatory code”; further, they have been linked to food, either as the source of it or as consumers and distributors of it. As sources, women are associated with the raw, the natural; as consumers, they are likened to the cooked, which, according to Lévi-Strauss, is cultural and not based in biology. Still, as distributors, they provide nourishment, which is most likely the function most associated with the female gender and which keeps them trapped in a contested correlation to the biological.
A woman’s body manufactures the milk with which she nurses her infant; indeed, her feeding function inspired Sigmund Freud to theorize that the infant’s connection to his mother during the “oral stage” is essential to his subsequent development. According to Freud, breastfeeding meets the infant’s physical and emotional needs and without it, an individual can very well suffer psychological problems throughout a lifetime.2
Moreover, as nurturers within a social mode, women have always been in charge of feeding the family, a function that transports them to the “cooked,” that is, the cultural. Their culinary activities have been fundamental not only to the survival of humanity, but also to the preservation of a system of cultural traditions, codified by food, that gives cohesiveness to the family and to the social nucleus. Therefore, women occupy a dually contested space in Lévi-Strauss’ dichotomy because they simultaneously inhabit both categories: the raw and the cooked. Is it surprising then that women’s relationship with food is perplexing, contentious, and dialectic?