To answer your rhetorical question, it's due to the breakdown of a communally-organized economy into larger enterprises and hierarchies by the powerful. Capitalism is one such force. Many cultures developed communal food-making as part of daily life, particularly those that organized into bands of a a few hundred. You'd grind grain with your compatriots (sometimes with gender roles, though not bourgeois Christian gender roles), make fires, create good food, and have a very nice time socializing with your family and friends.
Communal public spaces and associated activities of these kinds have been excised fairly completely under capitalism. Sure, there are parks, but there's no communal cooking area for every 40-50 people around the city. You probably don't even know most of your neighbors. You might be very far from your family despite not really wanting to be, largely for economic reasons. The goals of your life have been oriented around independent living and achieving it through wage slavery, not spending time with the people physically near you.
Anyways I like your idea you should totally reinstitute communal food preparation with your neighbors. Get a big-ass pot and make chili, bring bread, make a salad, and everyone's happy.
Capitalism has taken it to an extreme, but I'm thinking of a communal, ritual kind of practice of preparing food together every day, which I think ran into conflict with peasants' need to consistently work the fields. I'm not aware of any feudal cultures where everyone's food was regularly prepared communally, but I'm happy to be corrected!
To answer your rhetorical question, it's due to the breakdown of a communally-organized economy into larger enterprises and hierarchies by the powerful. Capitalism is one such force. Many cultures developed communal food-making as part of daily life, particularly those that organized into bands of a a few hundred. You'd grind grain with your compatriots (sometimes with gender roles, though not bourgeois Christian gender roles), make fires, create good food, and have a very nice time socializing with your family and friends.
Communal public spaces and associated activities of these kinds have been excised fairly completely under capitalism. Sure, there are parks, but there's no communal cooking area for every 40-50 people around the city. You probably don't even know most of your neighbors. You might be very far from your family despite not really wanting to be, largely for economic reasons. The goals of your life have been oriented around independent living and achieving it through wage slavery, not spending time with the people physically near you.
Anyways I like your idea you should totally reinstitute communal food preparation with your neighbors. Get a big-ass pot and make chili, bring bread, make a salad, and everyone's happy.
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Capitalism has taken it to an extreme, but I'm thinking of a communal, ritual kind of practice of preparing food together every day, which I think ran into conflict with peasants' need to consistently work the fields. I'm not aware of any feudal cultures where everyone's food was regularly prepared communally, but I'm happy to be corrected!