‘A taste of otherness: eating and thinking globally’

This essay sets out to explore a number of social issues related to present day food culture in the UK and the role translation has played in enhancing the shift that has occurred in the concept of foreignness as portrayed in texts related to cookery, especially over the past fifty years. In particular, it will examine the way in which, in culinary contexts, ‘the continent’ has shifted from mainly connoting France, to include Italy, which was to eventually become the nation’s ‘preferred’ food culture. How other food cultures are presented to UK readers, both visually and verbally, will be examined through selected cookery books and food magazines in the light of two features: how culinary ‘otherness’ is introduced through translation and how British identity is brought to terms with new incoming distinctiveness. The essay will also reflect upon the contradiction of present day food culture in the UK and especially the tension between the idea of the ‘healthy eating’ of others portrayed in the media, and the ‘junk eating’ reality of the UK.