(no subject)
Wai Chung Lam (wlam@fas.harvard.edu)
Thu, 12 Apr 2001 16:02:23 -0400 (EDT)
Hi Chile-heads,
I'm a college student writing an anthropology paper on Spicy food for a
class called "Food and Culture". I want to address the issues of
1. why human being would have adopted chili peppers (or anything
spicy) as a type of food given its pungency.
2. what so special about chili/spicy food that make some people so
crazy about it.
3. how people in different cultures view spicy food. Do people treat
it with awe, as something "sacred"? or is it just like a normal diet? and
do people in different classes eat different types of spicy food? are
there things like upper-class spicy food and lower-class spicy food?
I'm originally from Hong Kong, a place where spicy food isn't too common a
dish. So I'm really interested in why some people in different cultures
will like spicy food so much.
I'd really appreciate it if you can take a little bit of your time to
share with me your thoughts on spicy food by answering some simple
questions below. Any information or opinions that you can provide will be
truly appreciated and very valuable to my paper!
1. What's your ethnicity?
2. Where are you from? Did you spend most part of your life there? If not,
where?
3. Do you like spicy food?
4. Why do you like/dislike spicy food?
5. How did you develop your taste in spicy food?
6. How would you describe spicy food?
7. What is your favorite spicy dish(es)?
8. Do you observe any roles/functions that spicy food play in your
culture or your society, e.g. does it represent/symbolize anything? Do you
only eat spicy food, or eat certain type of spicy food, at certain
occasions? Are there any myths/tales about spicy food in your culture? Do
people in different classes eat different types of spicy food? etc
9. Do you have any idea why your culture would have started eating
spicy food?
10. Please feel free to give any of your thoughts on anything about
spicy food.
Thank you so much for your help!
Hopefully, I can start a discussion on this topic in this mailing list as
well!
Judy Lam
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