The Musée des Maisons Comtoises has chosen to look at what we put on our plates. Seemingly insignificant, the fact of "eating" or feeding oneself is nowadays a matter of choices, compromises, prescriptions, injunctions, conventions, etc. How do we position ourselves when faced with these choices?
The exhibition begins with a question: What kind of eater are you?
The visitor must choose one of the four profiles proposed, each profile corresponding to a part of the exhibition:
- The "gourmet" eater considers that eating is one of the great pleasures of life, frequently talks about cooking and pays great attention to the quality of the products he or she consumes.
- The "rational" eater considers himself to be a manager of his health and longevity, and believes that by following the advice of doctors, he will be able to avoid or delay certain illnesses and remain in good shape until an advanced age.
- The social and sociable Eater, attached to the traditional rules of eating and conviviality, is happy to sit down at the table to share lunch with colleagues and dinner with family and friends, hates to skip a meal and to be forced to eat too quickly
- The "naturophile" eater thinks that it is absolutely necessary to protect himself and the environment against pollution, he eats mainly organic or natural products.
Through four different approaches: the pleasure of eating; health through food; eating, a social act; and sustainable food, the exhibition aims to decipher our eating habits. The food of the Franche-Comté region will also be examined from these different angles.
The exhibition features the museum's collections, crockery, storage pots and recipe books. All these objects show us how much our relationship with food has changed over the past century. Advances in medicine and nutrition, the end of food shortages and the development of new preservation techniques have profoundly changed the contents of our plates.
