Спор за яденето? Хранително поведение в бикултурни бракове и семейства
Quarrel about Food? Food Habits in Bi-cultural Marriages and Families

Summary/Abstract: Marriages between people with different cultural or ethnic backgrounds are by no means a novelty; but as a consequence of global culture contact, mass tourism, work migration and expulsion bi-cultural or binational marriages have become a mass phe¬nomenon. In West European countries some 15 to 20% of all marriages are binational. The paper investigates the everyday problems in binational marriages and families in the realm of food in view of the fact that tastes as well as food habits and manners are shaped very early in life and are deep-rooted. In the space of the kitchen and the dining-room, two endo kitchens meet and the families have to develop practices and strategies of handling these differences because they can jeopardize the marriage. The extant studies show that family meal can become a battleground when the dif¬ferences in tastes and food habits are too large, as e.g. in European-Asian families. The article discusses the factors influencing the practices and strategies, namely the place of residence of the family, the gender roles, the prestige of the cuisine of the marriage partners, social class, the role of children, the cultural dimension of food and cuisine, the closeness or distance of cuisines, food taboos, and the relationship between food and identity in a foreign environment. The necessity for each family to create a ‚family style’ out of the differences in tastes and food habits leads to the emergence of a small number of strategies of culinary coexistence such as complete culinary segregation of the partners due to incompatibility of tastes, the predominance of the food of one partner, the negotiation of compromises which do justice to both sides, the mixing and hybridisation of food and food habits, or the choice of a ‘third cuisine’, often ‘international cuisine’. The increased availability of foreign foodstuff in ethnic food stores certainly alleviates some problems, but food remains a touchy issue in many binational marriages and families, because the acceptance or rejection of the partner’s food is often interpreted as an acceptance or rejection of his or her country, culture, and person.

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