Food code as food tradition symbolising

Food is an integral part of everyday life. This phenomenon reminds reality: the meal unites the material and the spiritual, nature and culture. The food tradition of ethnos is formed during centuries and as a result includes different elements and their names: 1) products and dishes; 2) kitchen utensils and tools; 3) ways of cooking; 4) rituals of a meal; 5) the functions of different components of tradition. At the language level food tradition forms a number of semantic fields. At the semiotic level it generates one of the culture codes. It is a food (gastronomic, culinary) code. It occurs when elements of food tradition, getting secondary meaning, become symbols. This code is conceptual because its elements can correspond with different material embodiment of the meaning - objective and verbal. The elements of both levels enter the kernel of the food code. The periphery is represented by elements, relevant for one of the levels. The functional load of elements is various. There is a disputable question about criteria of this load in this article. The prospect of the research is to research the relative density of food code elements.

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