Different Dietary Habits Came from Different Environments

Dayuan Zhao
WRIT-1133-27 MWF 12-2
Prof. Eric Leake
04/15/12

Different Dietary Habits Came from Different Environments

According to “Breaking Bread with a Spread’ in a San Francisco County Jail” written by Sandra Cate and the article “The Cultural Politics of Eating in Shenzhen” written by Mary Ann O’Donnell, I recognize that some differences in eating habit are came from different environments.
First, in ""Breaking Bread with a Spread” in a San Francisco County Jail” Cate uses different way to show us the prisoners’ eating habit. Because the food’s type is very limited in the jailhouse, the prisoners cannot eat some tasty foods in their daily life, the most common thing they eat is potato. The dinner time is four P.M., so they always feel hungry in the midnight. According to those reasons, prisoners always use oven to cook something they save from their dinners. They will not eat midnight snack with themselves, they like to “spread” with other people. I think this is a good point to understand the relationship and culture in the jail.
In the second article “The Cultural Politics of Eating in Shenzhen” written by Mary Ann O’Donnell,” she talks about two different groups of Shenzhen’s citizen’s eating habits. One of them is old Shenzhener, they spend their whole life to build their families, they like to eat food in the outside restaurant, and the specific food they like to eat is fish, because fish can make them clever. The other group of Shenzhen’s citizen is who want to survive in this city. Almost of them are young nonnative people, they want to live a good life and take some advantages from this city; they like to eat in a higher grade restaurant.
In my opinion, there are no rights or wrongs about every eating habit; the reason why they are all existing is because of different environments. You cannot say nonnative Shenzhener’ eating habit is worse than old, the only reason is their development process have so many differences. So I think, different environments can bring up different dietary habits.