How Food Connects Us
As cheesy as it sounds, food has been my love language since before I could remember. And no, this isn’t some quirky dating app profile, I promise. Food has become my soul connection, not only to my culture, but to my mom as well.
One of my earliest memories is being snuggled up next to my mom in her bed watching the Food Network. While other kids had lullabies and stories to help them drift off to sleep, I had the booming, battle-like music and Alton Brown’s intense commentary from Iron Chef America reruns. Over the years, I’ve grown accustomed to being my mom’s taste tester for whatever traditional food or experimental dish she decides to make. Her way of showing love was making food for others and it’s rubbed off on me over the years, but I can’t say I’m nearly as good as her (not even close). In the fourth grade, my mom made funnel cake for my entire class and for a high school French class assignment, she helped me make madeleines. I even brought a huge platter of homemade lumpia made by her for a winter holiday potluck at work not too long ago. When she visited me in college, she had siopao and sinigang to stock up on until the next time I saw her again.
For the first time in college, I realized how complex food history could truly be after attending a general body meeting about Chinese Peruvian culture where I learned about Chifa, Chinese Peruvian food. I’m often the type of person who wants to know the reason behind everything and I’ll spend hours searching until I get an answer and come out with more questions. I’ve had countless conversations with my friend and former college roommate Amy about the similarities between Filipino and Vietnamese food. Even though the spices we use are slightly different, there’s always something to compare and contrast.
While food history has been an interest of mine, it’s become vital for me to understand that much of it is intertwined with colonialism directly or from a snowball effect of it. Like other forms of history we learn, it’s much more than just facts. Food history tells the stories of struggle, survival, and migration while simultaneously telling the stories of community, love, and resilience.
Historically, there is a complex line of how food has changed overtime, much of the influences coming from imperialistic effects, but also out of resilient fight against those oppressive groups. Take the Philippines, for example. Spam and other canned goods like corned beef and hash are all processed foods I’ve grown up eating for breakfast with a side of over easy eggs and a bowl of rice. Filipinos have utilized these processed goods out of necessity due to the strong presence of United States imperialism and the outcomes of war in the country. Alongside these, though, I also remember eating it with a good bit of banana ketchup. Quite literally made with mashed up bananas dyed red, this invention was born out of war-stricken Philippines as a fight against imperialism.
Colonization’s Influence on Food
During the last half of my junior year of college, I ate a ton of bánh mì at a Vietnamese-owned restaurant right across campus. When you look into this Vietnamese sandwich, you can see the French colonial influence present within the culture. The bánh is a French baguette and the pâté spread on the bread was also introduced by French colonialism.
Processed food has become a source of most of our diets, out of convenience and also out of necessity. Prior to Western colonialism on Asian and Pacific Islander cultures, our cultures thrived off living off our land, making use of every part of the animal and every crop on our lands. Our ancestors ate based on seasons and made use of what they could, a reflection of the sustainable practices passed down to this day.
Throughout the Asian and Pacific Island countries impacted by U.S imperialism, there are common foods we can see brought over during military occupation. In American Samoa and Guam, Hawai’i, Japan, the Philippines, and other places, spam has become a staple for quick snacks and meals. More than not, whenever I had the time to cook and eat breakfast, I likely fried a couple pieces of spam with a side of an overeasy egg and a steaming bowl of rice. Sometimes the spam is replaced with corned beef or corned beef hash. Sometimes I have a small pile of banana ketchup mixed in with my rice or as a dipping sauce for the meat. This isn’t so unique to my individual experience, but a more lasting effect on different countries across Asia, Oceania, Melanesia, and Micronesia.
Sara Mar writes in article “A Colonizer’s Diet” about how spam and other highly processed food have become a staple in Pacific Islander diets because of military influence. Not only has it influenced the way Pacific Islanders eat, but foreign involvement has negatively impacted the economic state of these islands. Mar says it best: “To assume Pacific Islanders can simply transition back to eating local, healthy ingredients ignores the lasting impact of colonized diets.” The presence of processed food isn’t the only factor contributing to the rise of health conditions within these nations, the skyrocketing cost of fresh, healthy ingredients have become far out of reach due to the lack of affordable products in the food market within Pacific Islands and other regions in similar situations. Foreign control of their own communities becomes a struggle that altogether prolongs these health and financial issues.
Negative reactions to processed meat was something I didn’t necessarily experience until I got to middle school and early high school. Upper middle class kids were oddly brutal to anyone unlike them, making fun of spam and other processed meats they were unfamiliar with. Looking back, what exactly was different from the processed meat I ate and the pre-sliced meat and cheese they ate on white bread?
Trade and Migration
Not all of modern day Asian cuisines are influenced by colonization, though. As a Filipino with no Chinese roots, I overlooked the names of siopao, pancit canton, siomai, and the countless dishes with Chinese influence. When I realized Filipino siomai was indeed Chinese shumai, I thought more about siopao being a bao filled with meat and sauce.
Hopia, one of my favorite desserts, is a thick pastry filled with different pastes. I’m a big fan of ube paste and red bean paste, but there’s also savory versions like pork and garlic that I’m not so much of a fan of. Vietnamese bánh pía is a similar type of pastry that ranges from sweet to savory flavors. There was a phase in my life where I ate a durian-filled bánh pía everyday as a snack. Both originate from Chinese food influences and they’re often compared to mooncakes. You should’ve seen the face I made standing in the middle of my college apartment’s kitchen looking at the Pia food label that Amy bought for us to share. Realization after realization hit me the more Amy and I talked about our cultures’ cuisines. Today, while researching Filipino food history, I even discovered that my favorite dish kare-kare, a peanut butter based stew traditionally cooked with oxtail — my mom personally loves to make it with honeycomb tripe — is the Filipino version of curry created as pre-colonial Philippines began trading with India and other Southeast Asian countries. I mean, the name kare-kare, pronounced like kah-reh kah-reh even sounds like curry. South Asian and Southeast Asian trade and migration had influence on one another, showing through the amount of different Thai curries. Indian and Malay trade brought over different types of spices to Siam, the former name of Thailand, but didn’t necessarily bring over the word “curry” as we know the dishes today. The origin of where the word curry comes from is a long, extensive history in itself with influence from Portuguese and British settlers.
How do we See Traditional Dishes in the Diaspora Today?
In this age, we’re seeing a diverse amount of traditional Asian dishes revamped by Asians in the food industry, drawing inspiration from their homeland’s own cuisine and putting a spin on them. Oftentimes, new age chefs are accused of appropriation. While in many cases, those accusations end up being true one way or another, these forms of “appropriation” by Asian chefs have become a way to express the uniqueness of being Asian American with their craft.
It hasn’t been a long since “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” (CRS) othered Chinese food for their use of MSG. Some people today still swear that MSG, specifically in Chinese dishes, make them feel all sorts of symptoms while simultaneously snacking on processed bags of chips. CRS became a racist, sinophobic excuse to speak down on not only the food, but to take business away from Chinese people in the United States. Even more recently, dubbing COVID-19 as “Chinese virus” and the constant accusations that Chinese and Asian people in general were unhygienic and “would eat anything and everything”. Isn’t it strange that people will bash our food while simultaneously indulging in it?
Despite racist hate towards our food to this day, it hasn’t stopped Asians new and veterans of the food industry on using their platforms to uplift their cultures in meaningful ways. It even becomes a way for them to fight against an industry that’s been dominated by Western culture and techniques for centuries. An insightful article,“Redefining Identity, One Asian American Dish at a Time” written by Shaan Merchant speaks about the experiences of younger Asian chefs who’ve crafted their own take on their ethnic foods. Hetty Lui McKinnon, a Chinese Australian chef mentioned in Merchant’s article, is a vegetarian who’s put her own twist on dishes to focus on recreating the nostalgic flavors she seeks from foods she grew up eating while making them vegetarian-friendly. Similarly to McKinnon, Joanne Molinaro, dubbed as “Korean Vegan” has gained an audience for veganizing Korean food to fit her vegan lifestyle. Her account has connected with millions of people through her authentic storytimes surrounding her upbringing and current life. Molinaro’s TikTok has become a comfort channel I can scroll endlessly through, seeing her craft intertwine Korean heritage and veganism in respectful ways. Her debut cookbook The Korean Vegan Cookbook continues that love she shares through a screen onto paper. The cookbook not only contains a variety of pages dedicated to her vegan, plant-based recipes, but countless pictures and stories dedicated to her Korean family.
While we can love our relatives’ cooking, like the way I love my mom’s more than anyone else on this planet, we can see the beauty of tying these traditional recipes and making it our own. In a way, by making it our own, we continue the legacy of our ancestors. Food has always been a source of out-of-the-box creativity, just one of the many different ways our community has expressed themselves.
