Module 6: Food Choice and Social Norms

Social norms play a very important role in the types and quantities of food that people consume in different places and different cultures. In America, it is easy to observe the social norm of eating a high amount of beef, which is also mentioned often in the article. This differs from social norms in other parts of the world, such as India. I have a friend that was born in India and is vegetarian. She has never ate meat because that is just the way she and her entire family has been raised. She has explained to me that this is the social norm in India, largely due to their cultures and religions. Indian people tend to eat a very small amount of all types of meat, with beef being a very uncommon food and even highly frowned upon in their society. Because my friend has been raised in this way and is used to these food choices, she has no desire to eat meat and will likely always be a vegetarian.

Since the production and consumption of meat and especially beef has been shown to have such negative impacts on the environment and sometimes human health such as obesity, my friend’s food choices and the Indian social norm of consuming little meat seems to be a far superior type of consumption than the social norms we have in America to prevent obesity and certain environmental issues. Since the population of India is so high, having a social norm of high meat consumption like we have in America would likely be detrimental to their country, the environment, and their population’s health. Although this norm seems to be a better norm than here in America, India still has many societal issues that need improvement such as hunger. India has a large population of very poor people who are often malnourished. I believe India should continue their trend of consuming small amounts of meat, but they need to find a way to make this food more affordable and allow their poorer population to be properly fed.

My system diagram looks fairly complex, but it shows both the positive impacts of India’s food social norms, and the negative impacts of India’s high population. To simplify the diagram and make it easier understood, positive relationships are shown with the blue arrows, and negative relationships are shown with red arrows. It illustrates how their social norms improve their environmental impacts and are healthier for the people, yet their high population still hurts the environment and causes hungry people due to a lack of accessible food.food_diagram_acm5653

One thought on “Module 6: Food Choice and Social Norms

  1. Hi Avi, as you know my name is Gershom and my post can be found here http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/03/15/module-6-gershom-espinoza/. Your post is interesting in that as an American I can’t really imagine a country having a mostly vegan lifestyle yet India does. Though I knew social norms could influence people dietary habits I didn’t think it could play such a critical role in more or less dictating what was eaten. I had always assumed that people would eat whatever was convenient with cultural preferences being a second priority. Hopefully as people move into urban environments for better economic livelihood, they are able to afford the higher priced food that they need. I’m curious as to whether there is a difference between the high economic developed regions and low high economic regions in what a region produces and how much is consumed. For instance because higher economically standing people can “afford” more food does the region have to import more food leaving less surplus for poorer regions.

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