Food (including drink) is one of the most basic needs we have. Along with clothes and shelter, as well as safety and security, it is non-negotiable. And yet it usually doesn’t play a big role in fantasy literature. Often it’s “travel bread”, the occasional chunk of cheese, and whatever animal had the misfortune to end its life in the pot. Usually in the form of “stew”, which, even without the benefit of magic, rarely takes more than ten minutes to prepare. Have these authors ever tried to cook a meal from scratch? Or do they buy their sustenance at the nearest tavern (or possibly in the frozen foods aisle)?
This lack of attention to food has always surprised me, but maybe it’s nothing but the subconscious wish to return to presumably simpler times, when food only satisfied physiological and not emotional needs. Times when food was just sustenance. When it wasn’t distraction, reward, or escape. When it wasn’t a cause of guilt and obsession or a vehicle for shame as well as shaming. But really, who knows whether those simpler times really ever were so simple?
Be that as it may, food is an important and often under-utilized component of world-building. In the real world as well as in imaginary worlds, your meals say a lot about you and your environment.
The Macro Level
Which foods are available in a certain area will depend on the prevailing climate and local ecosystems. Different regions will support different plants and animals, and therefore different staple foods as well as different ways of procuring and preparing them. Crops and livestock (or the lack thereof) not only give an indication of the local conditions, they also say something about the society: Is it an agrarian one? A hunter-gatherer one? A combination? Are there farmers or herders? Are people settled or nomadic? Organized around bigger or smaller communities? Subsistence farms? Community farms? Villages? Cities? And where and how do different lifestyles intersect, coincide, or conflict?
Food can serve as a way of broaching these questions without dumping information on the reader. Since we all associate particular foods with particular conditions and cultures, a simple meal will convey a lot of information by implication.
Food production and consumption shape a culture and form a big part of it. Are there any rituals around food, e. g. harvest festivals, or special meals on special days? If so, are they secular or religious? Yes, even religion can be tied to food.
And how do people relate to food? Are communal meals the glue that hold families and communities together? Is the day organized around a certain number of meals? Who is responsible for procuring and cooking food? Is food plentiful or scarce? Is it available continuously, or does it have to be stored and preserved for leaner times? Who controls the supply? Who works the land? Who owns the land? Does anyone own the land? If it’s an agrarian society, is there subsistence farming, or is there specialization, and maybe stratification of society? This opens up much wider issues: If there’s specialization, there has to be trade. How is that organized, and how does it tie into the larger economy? Is it a barter or a money economy? And so on.
And to think that it all starts with food.
The Micro Level
Since fantasy worlds tend to be low-tech, all of these processes take time and resources (or magic, but I’ll leave that for another post). And, especially in quest-type fantasy, food is usually not conveniently available, which means that the characters will realistically spend a substantial part of their day procuring and/or preparing it. This opens up another opportunity.
Just like in “real life”, our characters’ food-related preferences and attitudes can reveal a lot about them. Do they share the food preferences of the culture they live in? Are they eager or reluctant to try unfamiliar things? Are they adventurous eaters? Gourmets? Gourmands? Do they avoid certain foods, and if so, why? Giving our characters idiosyncrasies around food makes them more relatable as human (or non-human) beings. If a reader agrees with a character that potatoes are vile, she’ll feel validated in her opinion. If, on the other hand, the reader disagrees, he’ll still have a brief flare of emotion. A tiny spark of tension.
Such reactions may well be subconscious, but the point is that by having preferences, opinions, and attitudes, characters spark emotions in the reader. As authors, that’s what we’re after. We want to get and keep the reader emotionally engaged. And the more such avenues for engagement we open up, the more layered and three-dimensional our characters become.
If we’ve done our job well, the characters will seem real to the reader; people (or beings) whom they’re emotionally involved with, whom they can relate to, care about, and root for. And that, in turn, makes for an engaging, satisfying story that, if you’re lucky, sells well enough that it’ll put food on your own table.