An Investigation into Popular Culture: A Case Study of Traditional Food Classification

It goes without saying that food is quite significant which is felt by biologists, psychologists and more importantly by people. However, some societies including Iranians have always witnessed various incidents for thousand years due to its specific geographical and historical condition, shortage of food and even water on the one hand, and many natural disasters and attacks by alien tribes on the other hand. Therefore, they have so much and sometimes unique experience in issues related to food security, management and storage. The said experiences unfortunately keep being forgotten. In most Iranian regions, there are mountains with water and no soil or deserts with soil and no water. Moreover, plants grow and agricultural, garden, and animal products are produced only in some months of the year. On the other hand, dangerous pests such as locust, age, color, natural disasters such as drought, untimely cold weather, flood, hail, and worst of all social insecurities including attacks on Iran which is a record-holder in this regard have all led to collection of experience in such special conditions so as to be used in such unlucky days of shortage or drought. Iranians have innovated various solutions to the extent that they have been able to store the most perishable foods such as milk for one week to two years. This is also true for vegetable, meat and fresh fruits. The present paper is the preliminary stage of a great work about traditional methods of food storage and traditional ways of fighting drought which have been applied by our ancestors for thousands of years. The paper aims at recording the latest experiences of old villagers and stories they have heard or applied about drought and different methods of combating it, food storage techniques and diet management at times of shortage before its too late. One of the findings is drawing of the preliminary graph of food classification in Iranian culture.