I always hear that the United States is a mixing bowl of different cultures and ethnicities. I was always told that the U.S. has become a place of diversity and inclusion where people from different cultures may live their lives happily without scrutiny. Those were the reasons why my mom decided to leave her home country of South Korea to live with my father and the reasons why she renounced her Korean citizenship and became a Naturalized U.S. citizen. The thing is, my family always gets bagged on for being different, always the center of ridicule. However, it's not for our looks or the way we act;, it's for what we eat.
It's agonizing, actually. The fact that I grew up eating this certain food, and in the long haul, according to societal terms, it's gross.
In Korea we eat a dish called tteokbokki, which is a spicy "stew" in a sense, with crushed red pepper spices, rice-cakes, and fish-cakes. I find it absolutely delicious, and quite wonderful, except but when everyone else notices what I'm eating, they call me out on it and describe how disgusting it looks.
Another dish that gets torn up, is kimchi. This dish is the most well-known dish in cultures outside of Korea. It's absolutely mouth-watering, and it makes my rice ten times better. Kimchi is cabbage that is mixed with vinegar, red pepper spices, and other condiments. The cabbage that kimchi is made with can either be fermented or not, it just depends on the person who makes it and how they like it. I always get antagonized for consuming this dish because it looks "weird" and smells awful. Well that's great that they may think that, but it's a delicacy in my culture, and who are they to rag on it?.
This is what I have to say. We don't have to like all the foods of the world,world; our taste buds are all different. It's not mandatory for us to like someone else's favorite food. We may not like the way it looks, the way it smells, or the way it tastes, but don't be the rude one and comment on it using second grade vocabulary and sound effects and comments that make people uncomfortable. I've heard things comments like, "Ewwwww, what the heck is that?," "What in the world are you eating?," and "That's so nasty, why do you like it?"
Those kinds of statements and actions are incredibly rude, and demeaning of somebody's cultural background. I It breaks my heart when someone makes fun of me for eating something I like.
Now I can understand if you find someone's eating habits a little more unique than others. For example, I know someone that who sprinkles salt on their pizza, and someone who enjoys eating their burgers with ranch dressing and honey mustard. Those things are commonly made fun of as well, but we all have our different ways of eating things. We should not belittle them and gruesomely comment on their eating habits. Let them be, and focus on yourselfyou.
The best thing you can do, if you don't like someone's particular dish, is not to comment on it at all. Making statements against someone's cultural delicacy is a sign of ethnocentrism. My question to those people is, How how is your food so much better than mine? Don't make yourself look like an ignorant fool and be extremely over the top with your statements about how much it "sucks." It just makes you look like a sophomoric jerk who obviously has no manners.
So next time you are offered some food from a different country, be kind and accept it;, trying it won't hurt you (unless you're allergic). You never know, you may just end up liking it. If you see someone eat something that you don't find very appetizing, be polite and don't say anything at all. In the words of James Beard, "Food is our common ground, a universal experience."
