Note: Please order at least a drink, tea, coffee, beer from the pub. Thank you.
Why are we talking about food within the realms of philosophy you ask; well, there’s more to it than meets the eye. Aside from the obvious that food, like air, keeps us alive, we are what we eat; what we consume and do not eat say a lot about who we are, how we live and therefore, how we affect our environments and other creatures around us.
The intent here is to use philosophy to cut through the morass of - mundane conceptions of food and at the same time, the heightened celebration of cooking in our current culture - to tackle the basic questions about food: What is it exactly? How do we know it is safe? What should we eat? How should food be distributed? Why are we so fascinated with food? Why do segments of our society have issues with food? What is good food? How do our food affect our world?
These are simple yet difficult questions because they involve philosophical questions about metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics that will hopefully help us better understand the complicating relationship we have with food.
Someone said this about food; when you are starving, you have only one problem, but when you have plenty of food, you have many problems.