Food - The Replica Of One’s Psyche

Abstract

The fields of food studies have broadened to incorporate human gastronomy, culinary history, and the arts and humanities. In literature, food may represent many different things, such as power or social status, emotion, religion, culture, identity, family or relationships, gender, sexuality, wealth, and group identity. Food perception and consumption can be influenced by emotions. Emotions are intricately linked to choices in food, and the cultural ritual of eating, as well as to other emotional and physical repercussions. Emotional eating is a food habit that can be used as a projection of different coping mechanisms for emotions. Additionally, consuming more food under the emotional and psychological stress may be hazardous to one’s health. Studies have shown that both good and negative emotions can have an impact on how much food is consumed and women are more prone to develop eating disorders. In Margaret Atwood’s novel The Edible Woman, we find that the Protagonist develops food aversion because of an unhappy relationship with her fiancé and it worsens her bodily condition as she is one of the victims in a patriarchal society. This paper aims to change the people’s mindset of considering food just as a source of energy and to make them accept that food represents them and their emotions by employing psychological theories.