by Dwight Furrow
Does food express emotion? At first glance, most people might quickly answer yes. Good food fills us with joy, bad food is disgusting, and Grandma’s apple pie warms and comforts us. However, these reactions confuse causation with expression. We can see the confusion more clearly if we look at how music can cause emotion. A poorly performed song might make us feel sad but is not expressing sadness. Similarly, I might feel exhilarated listening to Samuel Barber’s serene yet sorrowful Adagio, but the work does not express exhilaration. Bad food might disgust us, but it isn’t expressing disgust, just as great food causes pleasure but doesn’t express it. Expression involves more than causing an effect; it requires communication, revelation, or the conveyance of meaning. Causation is related to expression, but they are not synonymous.
Philosophers have long been skeptical that food can express emotion. Elizabeth Telfer, in her seminal work Food for Thought, argues that while emotions can motivate the preparation of food, food itself cannot express deeply felt emotions. She writes, “…good food can elate us, invigorate us, startle us, excite us, cheer us with a kind of warmth and joy, but cannot shake us fundamentally in that way in which the symptoms are tears or a sensation almost of fear.” Similarly, Frank Sibley, a leading figure in 20th Century aesthetics, argued that flavors and perfumes, unlike major art forms, lack expressive connections to emotions such as love, hate, grief, or joy. According to Sibley, foods’ aesthetic qualities do not have the depth to engage with complex emotional narratives.
This philosophical skepticism seems at odds with everyday experience. Doesn’t Grandma’s apple pie express love? Doesn’t a Thanksgiving turkey communicate gratitude? Doesn’t macaroni and cheese sometimes convey comfort and security? Are philosophers missing something? Science suggests they might be. Research shows systematic connections between food and emotion. The brain’s olfactory bulb, which processes smells, is closely linked to the hippocampus and amygdala, regions governing memory and emotion. There is substantial evidence that the environment in which food is consumed plays a role in memory encoding, making settings and rituals especially evocative. Read more »