The Kit Kat gap, Contapoints, food appropriation, Cosey Fanni Tutti, who would win in a battle between OG Google and current Google, unfriending a Facebook anti-vax friend.
I think about food appropriation ALL OF THE TIME. To the point where I'm cautious to even share recipes given to me personally by people who I lived and cooked with in a country that I resided in for two years. In some's view, probably as a colonist.
I do think it boils down to money. Who gets to make it and who gets told to stay in their lane. Messaging competitive advantage has always been about differentiating your product from previous or similar ones, so it's very tempting to head down the path of "here's how I improved congee (and why you should buy/cook/click on mine instead of someone else's)." Add to that the double standard that many POC chefs have vocalized about the constraints on experimentation and restaurant pricing.
But the good news is, that makes food appropriation at least partially irrelevant for home cooks. You try something in a restaurant and want to try to recreate it for your family or friends? You want to wander around specialized grocers and try foods you've never heard of? Seems fine. There's a related argument that restaurant choice, cookbook purchases and impressions are home cook dollars to be spent carefully which is where it gets more complicated. How many recipes in a standard 75-100 recipe cookbook that use non-western ingredients (defined as???) make it appropriation? 1 recipe, 10 recipes?
on food appropriation: hey, man, i like the food i like. i'm gonna continue to perfect my chili crisp recipe and put it on absolutely everything. but there's something to be said about white food writers "improving" ethnic food—there was some interesting conversation around this last year during bon appetit's great racial reckoning. like, why can't ethnic food be serious or highbrow when done by its own people? there was also a fascinating "am i the asshole?" reddit thing that featured this issue.
as for the who gets the vax or not—anyone who has legitimate medical reasons for not getting the vaccine has no need to be so defensive, so you go ahead and not-all-men that because it's suss as all get out. (i have recently learned that a cousin is antimask and antivax—"i want to strengthen my immune system!" as if that's not what the vaccine does. he is a chiropractor, and i feel like the profession has eaten his brain and am very disappointed. but that's neither here nor there.)
I think about food appropriation ALL OF THE TIME. To the point where I'm cautious to even share recipes given to me personally by people who I lived and cooked with in a country that I resided in for two years. In some's view, probably as a colonist.
I do think it boils down to money. Who gets to make it and who gets told to stay in their lane. Messaging competitive advantage has always been about differentiating your product from previous or similar ones, so it's very tempting to head down the path of "here's how I improved congee (and why you should buy/cook/click on mine instead of someone else's)." Add to that the double standard that many POC chefs have vocalized about the constraints on experimentation and restaurant pricing.
But the good news is, that makes food appropriation at least partially irrelevant for home cooks. You try something in a restaurant and want to try to recreate it for your family or friends? You want to wander around specialized grocers and try foods you've never heard of? Seems fine. There's a related argument that restaurant choice, cookbook purchases and impressions are home cook dollars to be spent carefully which is where it gets more complicated. How many recipes in a standard 75-100 recipe cookbook that use non-western ingredients (defined as???) make it appropriation? 1 recipe, 10 recipes?
Jumping in to defend the World Book Encylopedia!
on food appropriation: hey, man, i like the food i like. i'm gonna continue to perfect my chili crisp recipe and put it on absolutely everything. but there's something to be said about white food writers "improving" ethnic food—there was some interesting conversation around this last year during bon appetit's great racial reckoning. like, why can't ethnic food be serious or highbrow when done by its own people? there was also a fascinating "am i the asshole?" reddit thing that featured this issue.
as for the who gets the vax or not—anyone who has legitimate medical reasons for not getting the vaccine has no need to be so defensive, so you go ahead and not-all-men that because it's suss as all get out. (i have recently learned that a cousin is antimask and antivax—"i want to strengthen my immune system!" as if that's not what the vaccine does. he is a chiropractor, and i feel like the profession has eaten his brain and am very disappointed. but that's neither here nor there.)