A famine food or poverty food is any inexpensive or readily available foodstuff used to nourish people in times of extreme poverty or starvation, as during a war, an economic depression or famine. Quite often, the food is thereafter strongly associated with the hardship under which it was eaten, and is therefore socially downplayed or rejected as a food source in times of relative plenty.
The characterization of a foodstuff as "famine" or "poverty" food is primarily social. Some foods, such as lobster and other crustaceans, are considered poverty food in some societies and luxury food in others, and these distinctions can change over time.
Foods associated with famine need not be nutritionally deficient, or unsavoury. Having been driven to consume them in large amounts and for long periods of time, however, people often remain averse to them long after the immediate need to eat them has subsided. That remains the case even if such foodstuffs might otherwise constitute a healthy part of a more comprehensive diet.
Read more about Famine Food: Examples of Famine Foods, Other Sources of Famine Food
Famous quotes containing the words famine and/or food:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“I really don’t think this war will end soon. We are completely aware of the difficulties, no food or fuel, the danger, but we want to be stronger than all that. With each child, we are fighting back with our love of life.”
—Tina Bajraktarebic (b. 1965)