Ninth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Folk systems of nutrition and medicine are important influences on dietary choices. Cultural traditions include a variety of foods that are consumed because they are believed to provide specific benefits for culturally-defined health concerns. These special foods can be classified as “tonics,” a folk category and widely used constituent of traditional and folk nutritional and medicinal systems around the world. These tonic foods have an important culinary role not only because of their role in traditional cuisine, but because they reveal culturally salient fears and concerns over health. Some foods may take on faddish popularity as “good” or protective and actually cause detrimental effects because they are consumed to excess or in place of healthier nutritional practices. Understanding what role tonics play in folk nutrition is important in interpreting food choices and understanding healthy and unhealthy nutritional practices. This paper presents a brief conceptual framework for tonics with examples of different categories of tonic foods, then demonstrates prescriptive eating examples from regional folk cuisines from the Southern U.S.