Local and International Trends in Hospitality and Gastronomy

FOOD AND CULTURE: SOME REMARKS FOR HOSPITALITY

Tamás Régi¹

Kodolányi János University, Budapest, Hungary Tourism Department

Introduction

One of the main conditions in the practice of hospitality is the sharing of food. From ancient times up until today’s commercial hospitality hosts mostly offer food for their guests (Füreder and Rátz 2016). Regardless of cultural background or social context, food intermediates between individuals and groups. The function of this practice is not necessarily related to hunger or nutrition. The food in hospitality rather symbolizes a relationship between the two parties (Kátay 2016), and it is better to see as a form of social contract. Looking at the origin of this pact would bring us back to the beginning of human food exchange and lead us up to today when the practice of food sharing and hospitality was extended by sharing images of food on the internet. In this paper I make some comments on the relationship between food and culture and between the symbols of food in hospitality.


Image 1. Producing and sharing food in ancient Egypt: Food was often the base of the pact between humans and deities





¹ Associate Professor, [e-mail]
Image 2. Sharing the image of the food online is also just the latest form of symbolizing food in our culture