Food. It’s a huge part of our day to day lives. Obviously, we need food to survive, but it also goes much deeper than that. For humans, food is a part of our personal and cultural identities. It tells us a lot more than just personal tastes. Food can be an important indicator of region, culture, social standing, and even religion! 

Yet, as writers, we often overlook this vital part of our fantasy civilizations. In fact, most of the time, we give little thought to what our characters will eat, and even less thought as to why they will eat what they do. So, let’s take a look at a few things that can influence our characters’ next meal:

Location:

This first one may seem a bit obvious, but it’s also very frequently overlooked.Unless your fantasy world is very scientifically advanced, your characters’ fresh food choices are going to be limited by what can be brought to their location within a few hours (meats and fish), or a few days (fruits and vegetables). Otherwise, you’re looking at preserved meats and dehydrated or canned fruits and vegetables.

Season:

If it’s the middle of winter, and there’s snow covering the ground, your character is not going to be eating fresh strawberries (again, unless they are in a society whose technology has advanced as far as artificial sunlight or magic is involved in agriculture). All plants have growing seasons, and any pre-electricity culture is going to rely on those growing seasons to influence their meals. If you aren’t sure what plants would be growing in that season, a quick check online will help you find that information. Just find a region with the same basic season patterns as your fantasy world, and you can find the crops that do well there and what their best growing seasons are.

Culture:

Culture differences bring very different foods. Just look at the differences between Mexican food and Chinese food, or the food in the Southern US and the food from the New England areas. Chances are, your character from Country A will eat vastly different foods than what the people in Country B eat, even if they have similar meats and vegetables available. Even the characters from the northern part of Country A will likely eat differently than those from the south of Country A.

Social Standing:

Different social classes eat different things. You likely won’t catch a lower class family eating caviar and filet mignon, just like you probably won’t find an upper class family eating hotdogs from the dollar store. Your fantasy world probably won’t be any different. The different classes have different tastes. Sometimes, there are even legal repercussions for eating things that are considered the “rights” of the upper class to eat, depending on how class-centric the society is.

Religion:

Some religions ban certain foods from being consumed, for various reasons. The animal/plant in question could be considered sacred, or it could be unclean, or perhaps the gods simply demand the sacrifice of never tasting butter or that weird looking fruit that everyone seems to enjoy. These bans could be simply a moral decision, or they could even be imposed by law, depending on how religion-centric the government is.

A few other influences could be things like allergies, contamination, economics, drought, or, of course, personal preferences. While it’s often an overlooked part of worldbuilding, it’s also a pretty fun one to play around with. Hopefully this guide gives you some food for thought (no pun intended!) as you build your fantasy realms.