Can What You Eat Predict Success?

A new online quiz linking food preferences to social class got me thinking

Hailing from the Deep South means food has always been at the forefront of my culture. Growing up there was always a quiet competition going on to see who was going to get to feed you.

Elderly female parishioners kept a sharp eye on the post-church service lunch spread to see whose macaroni dish got the most attention. My grandfather never had less than a full country ham, fresh biscuits, and a chocolate cake made from scratch on hand - a spread that was ready to be whipped out and added to should friends, neighbors, or family happen to drop by. When my father accepted the role as a new senior pastor at a large church in South Carolina, they welcomed us to town by hosting a “pounding.”

It’s an old-fashioned tradition stemming from times when preachers were barely paid enough to survive, and so in lieu of an actual salary, the church would regularly host poundings where members would bring non-perishable goods in order to meet the family’s basic needs. If memory serves me correctly (I was sixteen at the time), we received 17 bottles of ketchup, 24 boxes of popcorn, and enough toilet paper to last us a year - among many other things. But in addition to the pantry items there was a caravan of homemade meals that arrived on the hour every hour for at least the first two weeks after we moved in. It was clear we had a talented crew of cooks at our new church early on (which we have benefited from tremendously over his now two decades in the position).

I’ve never really felt like I belonged anywhere. For a long time I thought that was because we moved around a good bit in my childhood. I was born in Alabama, moved to rural Kentucky at six, moved closer into Louisville at 11, and then to South Carolina at sixteen - where I stayed only 3.5 years before heading to Nashville for college. But as I aged I realized that didn’t really account for my lack of belonging, at least not altogether. While we were moving, we were always in the South - it’s not like I was getting extreme cultural whiplash.