Detail from:

Pieter Brueghel de Oude: The Battle between Carnival and Lent

Year: 1559

Collection: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

 

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Pillar Dutch Food Culture no. 1: Moralism

Each era has its own culinary moralists who base their principles on religious, medical and/or ethical ideas. Moralism is one of the main characteristics of Dutch foodculture.

This painting shows 'all you can eat' versus discipline. Pieter Brueghel visualized this struggle by two allegoric figures meeting each other. On the left an obese man and his companions celebrating carnival, on the right a thin woman and her pious followers. In Breughel's time the Roman Catholic church determined that the faithful had to fast about five months a year. . On fasting days all animal food, including butter, milk and cheese was forbidden, except fish.One could escape from this rule by paying the church a lot of money.

On non-fasting days the Dutch were allowed to eat as much as they wanted, but after the Reformation in the 16th century, the catholic fast was abolished and calvinistic principles of permanent soberness became dominant. Culinary and other physical pleasures were associated with devilish temptation. All exotic food and spices became suspect. A good meal was a pure meal, prepared with local ingredients and without thick sauces. And sugar became a symbol of the most evil of all ingredients.

Nowadays doctors warn us against unhealthy animal fat and (red) meat. To avoid punishment by eating too much of this, we buy cholesterol inhibitors and beta blockers..

At the end of the 19th century the influence of the church diminished and the foodindustry took over. Profit became more important than moral or religious principles.

Nowadays farmers are forced by supermarkets to produce as cheap as possible. As a reaction on the unlimited consumption of cheap and industrial food, a new moral is coming up that people encourages to choose for sustainable produced food, preferably from the season and the own region.