Our food is steeped in experience; we taste memories. Petrini goes into detail about the effect of broad cultural knowledge on the way we taste; personally, I think it would be a mistake to leave out individual, micro-cultural knowledge in this evaluation.

When I eat lasagna, much of the pleasure it gives me comes from its association with tiny, beautiful moments in my life: I’m smashing garlic with the flat side of a knife; my grandmother waves a wooden spatula around to the tune of Frank Sinatra; my sister laughs at her as she carefully lays out long, flat noodles in a grid. When I bite into roasted broccoli, I taste cool Colorado nights; one whiff of buttered biscuits takes me to sun-soaked Saturday mornings; basil is still my favorite herb, forever the smell of my mother’s hands. I couldn’t explain these things to you, or a million other memories that make up my strange, emotional food map, but you can relate because you have one too.

Take lemonade as an example: though not consciously, I think it’s fair to say that the most motivating factor when I choose to drink lemonade is not that it’s clean or natural or good for me or fairly produced. It’s that when I’ve had lemonade in the past, I’ve been spitting watermelon seeds with my distant cousins, or driving through eastern Massachusetts with my aunt—I’ve been, generally, happy.

And, though I don’t like to admit it, this happiness isn’t just associated with homemade tomato sauce and fresh herbs from my mother’s garden: McDonald’s cheeseburgers, for example, come with the giddy childhood joy of sharing a secret with my dad (“don’t tell mom” as we pull into the drive-thru, I order one and he orders three).

This is a real issue when thinking about food systems and how to change the way we eat. “Imitation food,” as Pollan calls it, is built into our infrastructure of positive associations. In the logical, knowledge part of my brain, I do know that Taco Bell was sued in 2011 for beef that was only 35% beef. I know that kind of food is terrible for me, and for the environment; I know it’s an empty way to fuel my body. But I can’t control the fact that that isn’t my most potent association with Taco Bell—when I think Taco Bell, I can’t help but feel midnight, post-concert laughter with my sister, or end-of-the-evening escapades with my friends.

I’m not saying I’m in support of fast food, not in any way. All of our readings this week came together to convey a message that I agree with completely: the relationship we have with food we grow or cook ourselves is richer, stronger, and somehow more intimate. Making pasta sauce from scratch with my Italian grandparents connects me to my food on cultural and personal and historical levels; growing and cooking food is an inherently human act.

But I do think it’s important to remember that the cultural, experiential value we attach to things like McDonald’s cheeseburgers is real and meaningful. In order to change the way we eat, we have to break through years of food experience. We have seriously complex relationships with our food, and understanding these relationships is integral to understanding our food system as a whole.