Food appropriation. Why do you need to take it seriously?
Now we’re addressing cultural appropriation of food. How does it harm people and culture?
Last year, a Burrito cart named Kooks Burrito in Portland closed after its owners were accused of cultural appropriation and recipe stealing. The owners obtained burrito recipes for free from dozens of Mexican women during their trip to Mexico and they opened up own food cart not long after they came back from the trip. They were harshly criticized for food appropriation without giving any credit to the source of information. Consequently, they ended up closing the Burrito cart.
Cultural appropriation means taking or using thing from other culture without showing that you understand or respect it.
Indeed, cultural appropriation is a sensitive issue because it is related to the complex debates on race, identity, and commercialization. It is often an issue between white and people of colour, and how people stealing other ethnic group’s identity and make a profit from it like Kooks Burrito’s case. When it comes to food, calling out appropriation could be seen as being so picky, and some people might say ‘I just want to cook and eat food regardless of cultural background’. But food appropriation issue is worth considering because food often has strong ties with our warmest memories of love, home, and communities. We also need to think of the historical context of food and what’s at stake. Since food is a distinctive identity of a culture that is inherited over generations, food appropriation means stealing the identities of other cultures. Cultural appropriation of food harms the historical legacies of generations as well as equality, so I would like to say it is critical to a culture.
Food appropriation degrades other culture’s legacies, which has traditional value while inherited over the generations. Here is the example of kimchi as a legacy of Korean culture. In Dakota Kim’s “Why you should care about the Bon Appetit pho uproar”, she sheds new light on kimchi’s historical meaning to Korean. She mentions that kimchi has been playing a significant role in knitting communities together as people practiced the tradition of kimjang — making and sharing large quantities of kimchi in community unit. In Korean immigrant communities, the practice of kimjang made immigrant communities cohesive to resistant to all sort of hardships. Though kimchi has been shamed by others for its smell, Korean immigrants have kept the traditional food and it thrives now. In other words, kimchi has significant meaning to Koreans since its resilience represent identities of Koreans.
On the other hand, Serious Eats columnist J. Kenji López-Alt suggest a contentious recipe of vegan kimchi in his article “Vegan kimchi as good as the real thing”. His recipe is an offensive variation to Korean and his language in this article is disrespectful. López-Alt disdainfully describes kimchi by introducing its ingredient ‘semi-rotten seafood’ and its smell as ‘aroma of old garlic and repressed farts’. He could have used word ‘fermented’ instead of ‘semi-rotten’ and ‘repressed farts’. It is obviously degrading the value of kimchi because his diction reminds readers of disgusting feeling on kimchi. He also ignored the historical background between Korea and Japan whether he intended or not. Korean were oppressed during Japanese colonialization for decades, and there is still strong tension between them. Although Japanese culture has somewhat influenced Korean culture, his idea that replaces some ingredients of kimchi with Japanese miso is hardly acceptable for the historical background. His intention is suspious because there is already kimchi without animal product, actually using brined shrimp is just regional recipe, and Japanese miso has far different taste with Korean food. Someone might argue that food isn’t owned by anyone, whether anyone inside or outside of culture, and everyone has right to modify it; however, when an approach is disrespectful and ignore historical context, it hurts other cultures.
Furthermore, food appropriation harms cultures by making the hierarchy of food in people’s mind. Soleil Ho, in her brilliant article “Craving the other”, criticizes how biased some American chefs who cook other culture’s cuisine are when they use words such as ‘elevating’ or ‘refining’ for third-world cuisines. The underlying meaning of those words is that the third-world cuisines should be improved by western chefs to be acceptable, which is alike with Orientalism that is distorted notion that Asian and North African cultures are inferior to Western. Ironically, those chefs undervalue food and culture that they are taking advantage of. The idea is obviously problematic since it misguides public to have stereotypes on other food and cultures that they need to be improved. López-Alt’s idea of vegan kimchi recipe could be an example of the stereotype as well. Because he depicted kimchi as food that isn’t acceptable by itself and needs to be refined by him. Considering the fact that López-Alt is James Beard Award-nominated culinary writer and how much he is influential to the food scene, his prejudiced article is highly likely to lead people to make the hierarchy of food in their mind — kimchi is stinky and needs to be improved by western chef’s touch!
Once we categorize immigrant food as cheap eats, it would make the competition unfair and hurt human equality of immigrant who brought that food.
The hierarchy of food in people’s mind affect the price of dishes and it hurts equality. Immigrant food restaurant gets harder to compete with white chef due to the limitation of the price of dishes. To be specific, among the top ten ‘cheap eats’ in Manhattan listed on Yelp, nine restaurants are so-called ‘ethnic restaurants’ that sells foreign food brought by immigrants. It is the status quo of public’s thought on other culture’s food — immigrant food is not worth to pay much. New York University professor Krishnendu Ray asserts that Americans are willing to pay a high price for French food and much less for Chinese, Vietnamese, or Indian that are often defined as ethnic cuisine, and it could be proved by price of each dishes. It is so hypocritical that we crave for immigrant food to satisfy our appetite or desire to be a pioneer, but we implicitly regard immigrant food as inherently inferior. Food appropriation leads people to undervalue immigrant food as well as threaten immigrant’s restaurant business by making price limit. Food is eventually reflective of people and culture. For this reason, once we categorize immigrant food as cheap eats, it would make the competition unfair and hurt human equality of immigrant who brought that food.
In conclusion, food appropriation hurts other culture by degrading their legacies and makes people have a stereotype that immigrant food is inferior to Western food. Some might insist that food culture has been developed while culture is exchanged, and the appropriation is inevitable in cultural exchanging process. But considering people who suffer from appropriation, we should examine our language used for foreign food at least. For example, expressions such as ‘cheap eats’ and ‘elevated ethnic food’ doesn’t help to dissipate stereotype on foreign food at all. It is truly time to be more cautious as society gets more diverse.
