The Connection Between Emotion and Food

Food and cooking are the most indispensable part of life. It plays an important role in every culture. Being civilized, people in this modern world take great pleasure in eating. The relationship between food and emotion helps the researchers to find out human behaviours. The people have evolved to love food, because it keeps us alive and able-bodied. It evokes emotions in humans and it is even considered that food itself is an emotion. People showing emotions like love, sensuality, anxiety, depression, lethargy, irritability, cravings etc., are the result of an imbalanced diet.

Food and Emotion are closely related to one another. Food is considered as the paramount importance in the life of a human being like shelter. It serves as the key to understand people’s emotions and mental states. Food imagery has been used in literature through the ages. Jane Mc Callum in her article Understanding Culture through Recipes remarked concisely: “A society’s culture we are told is reflected in its food pattern.”

Food and mood are basically considered as a two way lane, the food we choose to eat depends upon our mood. Food is the only thing that keeps human beings physically good and emotionally stable. Every organ in a human body produces some kind of emotions. The particular food leads to particular emotion. It is because each and every food attacks different organs in our body. For example, If a person eats a food or drink that affects liver, such as fried foods or alcohol, the emotions of irritation, rage, aggression or impatience will be more likely.

Food themselves cover a wide range of cultural meanings. It acts as an object for expressing the more abstract significance of social systems and cultural values. Immigrants often use food as a means of retaining their cultural identity. Both the authors give more importance to food as a signifier to express the emotions and feelings of the protagonists in their novels. Through the food imagery they try to define the characters’ true identities because in many ways food defines people and their culture. In a short note, both of them employ magical effect on the food. Both the novels explore clear relation with culture, food and emotion. Amy Bentley in her article American Gastro-Anomie claims that the study of food is a key to understanding cultures and societies and individuals’ lives within them because

Eating, after all, is much more than ingesting nutrients for biological survival: food plays a significant role in social relationships, is a highly symbolical element in religious and magical rites, aids in developing and maintaining cultural distinctions, and assumes enormous significance in shaping individual identities.

The food tradition of India can also be compared with the Mexican food tradition. Like Indian cuisine, Mexican cuisine encompasses all the distinct flavours of different cultures and influences to which it has been exposed since ancient times. The culinary traditions of both the countries are a reflection of their rich cultural heritage. Mexicans possess a vast and sophisticated culinary culture, with a great variety of regional dishes. These are numerous religious and non-religious occasions in Mexico that are accomplished by special foods.

Food works as a memory. Both the positive and negative memories are associated with food. In Esquivel’s “Like Water for Chocolate” food is symbolized as a signifier which shows the relationship with the family, Mexican tradition and gender through the protagonist, Tita. A young woman who is prohibited to marry the man whom she loves. The kitchen becomes her world and cooking becomes her daily routine after Nacha’s death. She incorporates recipes into the book in order to tell a story. The recipes given by her are not only the formulas, but those are memories and traditions being passed down from one generation to another.

The novel opens with an act of an onion being sliced while the narrator, who happens to be the grandniece of the protagonist, Tita. She starts to tell the story of how the women in her family are connected to food. The narrator then makes a connection with Tita’s life and her emotions, represented by the crying sound of a new born baby, and the food is represented by the act of slicing an onion. Throughout the novel, the readers can feel how the selection of a particular dish helps to define not only each female character, but also the Mexican national identity as a whole.

Tita falls in love with Pedro. At a house party, Pedro proposes to Tita in the dispensary. At this scene, the emotion of love is connected to the food.

When she first felt his hot gaze burning her skin. She turned her head, and her eyes met Pedro’s. It was then she understood how dough feels when it is plunged into boiling oil. The heat that invaded her body was so real she was afraid she would start to bubble - her face, her stomach, her heart, her breasts- like batter, and unable to endure his gaze she lowered her eyes.

Mama Elena forbids Tita to marry Pedro because it is their tradition that the youngest daughter of the family should take care of her parents until their death. So she makes an arrangement for Pedro and Rosaura’s marriage. Pedro agrees to marry Rosaura only to be close with Tita.

Elena prohibits Tita to cry over the marriage of Pedro and Rosaura. She orders Tita that she is going to be responsible for preparing of all the food for the wedding reception. Tita is totally shattered because the man whom she loves is going to marry her sister. While preparing the cake Tita cries and her tears fall into the batter. Nacha consoles her.

On the day of their wedding, the cake is being served to the guests. Immediately after eating the cake everyone feels a kind of longingness and started crying and vomiting. Their emotions are described in the novel as:

The moment they took their first bite of the cake, everyone was flooded with a great wave of longing. Even Pedro usually so proper, was having trouble holding back his tears. Mama Elena, who hadn’t shed single tear over her husband’s death, was sobbing silently. But the weeping was just the first symptom of strange intoxication – an acute attack of pain and frustration – that seized the guests and scattered... those who didn’t joined the collective vomiting that was going all over the patio.

Even Mama Elena first goes into her bedroom and then to the memories of her Mulatto lover, Gertrudis’ father. “Only one person escaped: the cake had no effect on Tita”. Tita’s emotion of longing has been transferred to other people through the food that has been prepared by her. In the sense that while preparing the food her emotions are transferred into the food and then to the people who eat them. Finally Mama accuses Tita for intoxicating the wedding guests and for destroying Rosaura’s happiness.

The very next day, Pedro offers Tita a bouquet of roses to console her and he tries to bring her out from the depression and loneliness due to the unfortunate death of Nacha. Tita clasped the roses tightly immediately after entering into the kitchen. She does not want to throw the roses away. She reminds of a recipe that Nacha once taught her. She then prepares quail in rose petal sauce with her potential love and passion which nurtures Pedro. After eating the dish, Pedro becomes the passive recipient of her emotions and the food prepared by Tita becomes the active transmitter of passion. Actually the physical pleasure between Pedro and Tita is fulfilled through the consummation of the food. Everyone in the family could feel some sensual heat after eating the food except Rosaura. The food creates an aphrodisiac quality. Gertrudis could feel the intense heat pulsing through her limbs and she is the one mostly affected by the feelings. She is taken away by one of the revolutionary men named Juan.

Days passed. Rosaura gives birth to a son and Tita is the one who helped her in delivering the baby. Pedro goes to bring Dr. John to the house to nurse Rosaura. The narrator describes the baby’s head with brown sugar, “it was shaped like a cone of brown sugar because of the pressure his bones had been under for so many hours. But to Tita it seemed the most beautiful head she had ever seen”. The baby is wrapped in a towel and it is compared to taco, a Mexican dish is given as “Wrapped like a taco, the baby was sleeping peacefully”.

For instance on another occasion, on Roberto’s baptism Tita prepares turkey mole. As she loves the child very much, she carefully prepared the dish for the party. While preparing the dish Pedro stands near Tita in the kitchen. They both shared their feelings through their eyes. Everyone appreciates Tita for cooking such delicious mole.

She kept getting compliments on her skill as a cook, and everyone wanted to know what her secret was. It was really a shame that was answering this question, saying that her secret was to prepare the mole with a lot of love, Pedro happened to be nearby,... Everyone, oddly enough, was in a euphoric mood after eating the mole; it had made them unusually cheerful. They laughed and carried on as they never had before and wouldn’t again for a long time.

Then later in the novel Tita is taken to Dr. John’s house because she is deeply affected on hearing the death news of Roberto and behaves like a mad. So Tita’s mom ringed up John and asked him to take her to an asylum. But he takes her to his home. Tita feels herself free from the clutches of her mother. Once Chencha, the housemaid of the ranch visits Dr. Brown’s house to meet Tita. 'Soups can cure any illness, whether physical or mental – at least, that was Chencha’s firm belief, and Tita’s too'. With this logic, Chencha brings a steaming bowl of ox-tail soup to Tita. They eat, laugh and cherish the old memories, and Tita feels Nacha’s presence. The soup holds all the emotions of Chencha’s friendship and Nacha’s love, so powerfully that the experience of eating the soup brings back Nacha’s ghost

Oxtail soup! She couldn’t believe it. And behind John came Chencha, covered in tears. The embrace they exchanged for brief, because they didn’t want the soup get cold. With the first sip, Nacha appeared there at Tita’s side. Stroking her hair as she ate, she had done when she was little and was sick, kissing her forehead over and over. There were all the times with Nacha, the childhood games in the kitchen, the Christmas Rolls, the smells of boiled milk... Just like old times, when Nacha was still alive and they had so often made oxtail soup together. Chencha and Tita laughed relieving those moments, and they cried remembering the steps of the recipe.

Tita started crying after tasting the oxtail soup. John has wondered that Chencha’s oxtail soup have made Tita to weep and speak after six long months.

After sometimes, she returns to ranch to take care of Mama Elena who is sick.

Mama Elen died because of consuming the bottle of syrup of ipecac which is a strong emetic and it could be the cause for her death. In mean time, Rosaura and Pedro returns from San Francisco and settled in the ranch with their baby girl, Esperanza. John decides to marry Tita and she comes to her house to seek the permission of Pedro and Rosaura. Pedro feels jealous and says Tita not to marry John. Gertrudis visits the ranch with her troop of soldiers and finally she marries Juan.

Tita is so excited and she prepares Beans with Chilli Tezcucana style for John and his Aunt Mary. She comes from Pennsylvania only for their marriage. Rosaura and Tita fall into an argument about growing up Esperanza. When she returns with a bad mood and finds that the beans are not done, despite the hours. Then she remembers Nacha’s words that:

Something strange was going on. Tita remembered that Nacha had always said that when people argue while preparing tamales, the tamales won’t get cooked. They can be heated day after day and still stay raw, because the tamales are angry. In a case like that you have to sing to them, which makes them happy; then they’ll cook.

Tita finds that the same thing has happened with the beans which had witnessed the argument between herself and Rosaura. To improve their mood, Tita plans to sing a song full of love. She closes her eyes begins to sing a waltz which brings the images from her first meeting with Pedro and the moments they spent together.

While Tita was singing the bean liquor was boiling madly. The beans allowed the liquid in which they were floating to penetrate them; they swelled until they were about to burst. When Tita opened her eyes and took a bean to test it, she saw that now the beans were doe perfectly.

From the above lines the author has inscribed a point that even the vegetables can feel the emotions of the persons who is cooking them. Aunt Mary appreciates Tita for preparing delicious meal with the beans. She feels so happy after eating them. When everything goes fine, Tita informs John that the marriage should be called off. She says that she has lost her virginity to Pedro. With eyes full of tears John leaves her house.

Years passed. Tita and Chencha are involved in preparing a special dish called Chillies in walnut sauce for the wedding ceremony. The readers may think that it is Pedro and Tita’s marriage but it is the marriage of Alex, John’s son and Esperanza. After tasting the food the reactions of the guests are like:

Her fellow diners were delighted. What a difference between this wedding and that unfortunate day when Pedro and Rosaura got married. Today, instead of feeling terrible longing and frustration, they felt quite different; tasting these chillies in nut sauce, they all experienced a sensation like the one Gertrudis had when she ate quails in rose petal sauce... Everyone else, including the ranch hands, was making mad passionate love, wherever they had happened to end up.

Tita prepares most of the food in the novel, and she uses food to express her emotions because she has no one to share her feelings. Tita gets great cooking skills from Nacha. Then she passes it to Esperanza. Esperanza then passes it to her daughter. Thus the wonderful recipes are taught to the next generation.

In the novel Like Water for Chocolate, various types of emotions are transferred through different kinds of recipes. The same idea is seen in Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is about a nine year old young girl, Rose who finds out her own unique capability of finding the emotions of the person through the food which has been prepared by them.

Consuming particular food objects is one primary way in which individuals can exercise control over the body, the mind and therefore over identity...it is the first and probably the main means of intervening in the body, the favoured instrument of control over the self.

The first time Rose notices her distinctive talent, on her ninth birthday. Her mother, Lane prepares a special Lemon cake for her. She senses the tremendous sadness of her mother when she bakes Rose a chocolate lemon cake. Rose cannot bear to eat the cake. She says that

I could absolutely taste the chocolate, but in drifts and traces, in an unfurling, or an opening, it seemed that my mouth was also filling with the taste of smallness, the sensation of shrinking, of upset, tasting a distance... and with each bite, I thought – mmm, so good, the best ever, yum – but in each bite: absence, hunger, spiralling, hollows.

This act of Rose puzzles her mother. Rose thinks a lot about the emotions in the food. Later she has begun to notice them in everything she eats and could identify even the origin of the ingredients used in the food. She turns to George, the friend of her brother Joseph. He tries to understand what is happening to her and the one who believes her completely. Like Joseph, George has a keen interest in science and agrees to do some research experiments on her ability. While Rose’s newfound ability fascinates George, he is unaware of her growing crush on him. He takes effort to find out the remedy for her problem. He made several experiments throughout the novel. Various incidents in the novel are an attempt of the author to make the readers realize the strong connection between food and emotion.

Once she faints in the school and taken to the nurse. She enquires about her health and Rose simply says

Food tastes bad. This was not entirely true – I’d eaten a good apple in my lunch. The recess milk carton was fine. But almost everything else – the cake, the chicken dinner the homemade brownie the craving in the peanut-butter sandwich-had left me with varying degrees of same scary feeling.

Whenever she eats something she can feel the emotions of the people who prepare them. She thinks that there is a hole in the food. She could even sense the water from where it has been taken from. When the nurse gives her a little paper cup of water. She feels that the water is supposedly taken from a mountain spring which had been resided in plastic for many weeks. Because of this reason the water is like liquid Lucite. The nurse finally says that Rose’s illness is because she may be an allergic to food or it must be an active imagination.

Once everyone sit for their dinner. Rose looks upset. Lane hugs her and asks her to eat. She just pulls her plate and says that “Food is full of feelings”. Everyone except Joseph gets bedlam at her behaviour.

When George is informed about her problem he takes effort to find out what is happening with her. She is provided with some foods. George takes a paper and writes the list of the foods on one column and all her responses on the right. “Half hollow, I said, about my mom’s leftover tuna casserole. Awful I said, swallowing a mouthful of my father’s butterscotch pudding from a mix, left in a bowl”.

The very next weekend George and Joseph take Rose to a bakery at a place called Beverly for an experiment. George asks Rose to take the chocolate chips first. At once she bites them she could tell even about what are the ingredients used and where do they get from and finds the cookie is an angry one i.e. the baker was angry while preparing the cookies. She says that:

By then, almost a week in, I could sort through the assault of layers a little more quickly. The chocolate chips were from factory, so they had that same slight metallic, absent taste to them, and the butter had been pulled from cows in pens, so richness was not as full. The eggs were tinged with a hint of far away and plastic. All of those parts hummed in the distance, and then the baker, who’d mixed the batter and formed the dough, was angry. A tight anger, in the cookie itself.

George enquires about the mood of a man who has made the cookies. He replies that he was in no mood while preparing them. Actually the man hates his job and does not even like cookies. Because of this reason he becomes angry while preparing them. It is transmitted through the cookies he has made. George then asks Rose to taste the oatmeal and sandwich. She replies that the oatmeal seems to be rushed and the sandwich tastes a kind of yelling. She says

I bit into the oatmeal. Same levels- now the oats, well dried, but not so well watered then the raisins, half tasteless, made from parched grapes, picked by thirsty workers, then the baker, rushed. The whole cookie was so rushed, like I had to eat it fast or it would, somehow, eat me.

After tasting the sandwich she finds that “It was a homemade ham-and-cheese-and-mustard sandwich on white bread...sandwich as a whole, I tasted a kind of yelling, almost. Like the sandwich itself was yelling at me, yelling love me, live me, really loud”. The young man at the counter tells them that the sandwich was prepared by his girlfriend. George questions him whether he loved her or not? He just shrugs his shoulders and asks him what do you mean by love? Through his reply they understand that he does not love his girlfriend the way she probably wants him too.

George wonders how a nine year old girl could sense these things only by tasting them. Whatever she says is true. He tells Joseph that “She’s like a magic food psychic or something”. Then George and Rose compare the notes that they had taken and verify that she can perceive the emotions even the cook themselves do not understand. They also find out that foods which are chopped and sliced transmit less emotion than the baked foods. Rose feels worried about her problem. But George encourages her with positive words and says she may be “grow into it”.

Rose hates her ability of finding emotions in the food she eats. She just wants to move out of the sense of tasting people’s emotions through their foods. Once she faints after eating her mother’s pie and Lane takes her to the hospital immediately. The doctors feel a bit difficult to diagnose her. She is served with a noodle soup in the hospital. “They’d served me a hospital bowl of noodle soup, which tasted of resentment, fine and full...I ate each of the salt crackers, tucked in their ridged plastic wrapping, factory-made in East Hanover, New Jersey”. As her new sense of tasting ability has grown, she could even sense from where the salt in the soup had been produced. Later on the doctor gives her a cherry lollipop. She could immediately say how it was prepared and from where it has been bought. But she could not feel any emotion of a person in it. “The doctor handed me a cherry lollipop, popped out from a factory in Louisiana where, once flavoured, the hot sugar cooled on a metal table of small circles and then got stamped onto a white cardboard rod. Not a single hint of a person in it”. Lane pats her shoulders and asks her to be calm and not to worry about anything.

Years passed. Rose learns to tolerate with the burden of her tasting ability. She has started eating factory made foods so that she could reduce her tasting problem. She is at the age of twelve. Once they all sit for a dinner of roast beef and potatoes. She gets such an emotion of guilt and romance but Lane seems to be happier while eating. Rose could sense that her mother has an affair with someone.

Rose tries to spend time with her father and fond of knowing that he has any ‘special skills’. He keeps mum but tells her that he has a fear of going to hospitals. Even when his both the children were born he did not enter into the hospital. Lane’s best friend, Sharlene took care of her. Then the scene shifts to Joseph who disappears often from home. Rose suspects him.

Once Eliza takes Rose to have lunch with her other friends and Sherrie is one among them. When others leave the place, Rose and Sherrie start their discussion. Their interaction finally made Sherrie to be close with Rose. After she comes to know that Rose has the sense of finding emotions, she takes Rose to her house. She bakes up a pan of brownies on the spot and handed it to Rose. Rose without delay says that “Ugh, I said, muffled, grabbing a glass for water. You are massively depressed”. Sherrie just lays her head on the counter and starts crying. She agrees that what Rose says is absolutely true. But she does not explain the reason to her.

Rose finally finds her mother’s varying emotions for Larry through the food she prepares. She thinks that it is something strange that a twelve year old little girl could identify such emotions of the people. She also identifies the truth from her father that her grandfather had the same sensory power and he too faced many difficulties because of this.

Joseph’s continual disappearance and his weird behaviour diverted her to think about him more than her gustatory problem. Few years later, Rose decides to use her superpower for useful purposes. She spends her money on meals and starts travelling to different parts of the city as a food psychic. At the end of the novel, Rose comes to know that her father could sense whether people in a room are happy or unhappy just by entering into it. She then realises that this sensory disorder runs in their family. Taste also refers to the individual disposition.

While comparing these two novels, the readers could clearly understand that both the authors try to explain their point of view in a same manner but with different aspects. In Like Water for Chocolate the protagonist acts as a transmitter of emotions but in The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake the protagonist acts as a receiver of emotions. In a sense that both the authors handle a same theme that their protagonists could identify the emotions through the food either it may prepared by them or prepared by someone else. They also show how food and women form an integral part of the family and society at large. Laura gives more importance to her own culture and tradition in the novel than Aimee Bender. For example, in Like Water for Chocolate an incident of sausage making which is considered as a tradition among Mexicans and it is described in the novel as

On Mama Elena’s ranch sausage making was a real ritual. The day before, they started peeling garlic, cleaning chillies and grinding spices. All the women in her family had to participate: Mama Elena; her daughters, Gertrudis, Rosaura and Tita; Nacha, the cook; and Chencha, the maid.

Many writers used food as a part of their novel but these authors have taken it as a genre to describe their theme strongly. While Laura focuses only on the protagonist till the end of the novel but Aimee shifts the focus and she is reluctant to commit a single protagonist throughout the novel. In the second part she gives importance to Joseph, his sudden disappearances and his transformation into a chair etc... Ariel Gonzalez of the Miami Herald, a newspaper in South Florida notes that

Lemon Cake’s premise is similar to that of Like Water for Chocolate, but she is nevertheless positive about it: Bender has guts. She doesn’t mind opening herself up to a charge of derivativeness. Her characters and the language that vivifies them make the risk worthwhile.

Laura has divided the novel into twelve chapters and each of them is denoted as a “monthly instalment”. All the chapters begin with a recipe and it involves the preparation methods too. It can also be considered as a cookbook for the readers. She has also given some minor recipes or tips throughout the narrative. But Aimee has divided her novel only into four chapters. It does not give details about the preparation of the recipes like Laura’s novel. But it explains how people are emotionally differing from one another. Each part is given importance. The protagonist is not only the centre of attention but also her brother shares an equal part of the story.

Laura has imported many characters than Aimee to make her point more obvious to the readers. From the main characters to the cameos is given importance in her novel. Aimee has used only six or seven characters throughout the novel. The entire story revolves around these persons. She does not complicate her narrative by using lot many characters.

In both the novels, the protagonists have acquired their special skill by birth itself. Tita in Like Water for Chocolate proves this when she was in her mother’s womb. Eventhough Rose in The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake has acquired it by birth, she herself could identify it only at the age of nine. Laura has embellished her protagonist with all the qualities of a heroine. But Aimee has portrayed her protagonist as a child who is just twelve years old who could identify her mother’s affair through the food she cooks.

Tita, who was born and brought up by Nacha and the kitchen, has the power to transmit her emotions to others by the food she prepares. As she has no one by her side to share her feelings, she shares everything indirectly through her food. Aimee has reversed it in her novel that Rose has not the power to transmit the emotions like Tita instead she could easily grasp the emotions of the people who have made the food and if it packed foods she could even guess the ingredients and the place of the industry.

According to the belief that the food being prepared with happiness and love tastes delicious than preparing it with anger or hatred. Both the authors have explained this belief that an emotion of a person definitely gets transmitted through the food. But they have manifested it in their own unique style. Laura describes it as, the people whoever eats the food prepared by Tita tend to experience the same feeling as Tita. But Aimee focuses only on the experiences of Rose who immediately able to find the emotions of the people who have made it. She does not depict her protagonist to experience the similar feeling of the cook after eating the dish. Though Aimee’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake somehow resembles in theme like Laura’s Like Water for chocolate, her narration, characterization and settings are completely different from that of Laura.