Comer, beber, cuerpo y cosmovisión, un viaje de ida y vuelta

Abstract

Eating and drinking are daily functions, that in order to occur imply the suspension of other activities and enable to concentrate in one’s thoughts in addition to the process of eating and drinking itself, but all within a social context. They have a deep impact on how we perceive the World and ourselves. Both are real and vivid representations of our contact with the environment: food and drink come from outside and are sensory, emotionally, materially and symbolically incorporated into our body. We sense their short and long-term effects in our body, for example through our breath, gut feelings, structural changes, and others. This is the main reason why the biocultural process of eating and nutrition is one of the principal venues used to construct the internal and external symbolic reality of persons and societies. In this paper we will analyze some examples of how Mexicans, in their Mesoamerican past and in the present, have built a World, half-way between matters that can be made objective and others which are product of our imagination, but which are also real for each person, in regards to food and drink, and have projected them into their World-view. We will show some examples of how daily sensations are interpreted symbolically, projected into culture, and finally how culture influences our body sensations, giving a new sense to a biological experience.