Both food and the rituals and practices associated with its preparation, presentation, and consumption have consistently played a core role in developing, defining, and sustaining cultural identity. Not only are certain cooking styles and individual dishes emblematic of particular cultures, but the history, traditions, and rituals associated with the preparation, presentation, and consumption of those distinctive dishes serve to instill in members what it means to be part of a certain cultural

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... roup. Culture consists of both explicit and tacit forms of knowledge, and the successful transfer of both types of knowledge is critical for the sustainment of a culture from one generation to the next. Through the sharing of distinctive, food-related experiences, older members of a culture transfer some defining characteristics of that culture with younger members, who internalize those experiences and expand their own tacit knowledge of what it means to be a member of that culture. The SECI model, originally developed by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) to examine how knowledge is shared and created within corporations, is used here to illuminate how four different types of knowledge transfer have been employed by three distinct cultures to define and sustain their respective cultures through food and food-related rituals.