I’ve been to whole pig roasts in Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. Roast pork is delicious! There’s places in Maryland that will rent you all the equipment you need when you buy the pig.
But, down in Louisiana, you can get roast alligator.
Having taken the test, I think that the claims of racial insensitivity are weak, but if course others are free to disagree.
First off, the majority of the questions definitely cannot be tied down to any specific culture. Americans are at least as likely to eat bloody steak as anyone else, and that was one of the questions. Ditto jam.
Second off, disgust is culturally insensitive. The researchers are trying to find out what makes other people disgusted, and plenty of people in the world are disgusted by certain food from other cultures that they did not grow up with, whether it’s raw fish or soft cheese. Why is that, and what specifically that triggers people’s (un-PC) disgust? Well, wouldn’t it be interesting if someone could do a study on it? But how could they do it if they had to pretend like “raw fish” wasn’t something that people could be disgusted by?
If you’ve ever done the Implicit Association Test to find out what hidden biases you might harbor, you might have had to press a button in response to images of black people, perhaps in connection to violence or fear. Are the creators of such a test racist for including such prompts?
I didn’t know the US had an aversion to tofu but it wouldn’t surprise me if you told me that Americans are afraid that vegetables masquerading as meat is somehow a challenge to their freedom or masculinity.
I don’t have an aversion to it, but I have been known to have an allergy to soy in some forms, so that might explain some people’s aversion.
People tend to have a natural aversion to anything they’re not familiar with. I’m not saying all people are averse to all things new, but it’s human nature to be wary of, if not turned off by, the idea of eating something you’ve never eaten before.
I’m not sure I’d categorize every such reaction as cultural bias, e.g. some people don’t like eating slimy things, even slimy things that are part of “their” culture, so it stands to reason they wouldn’t like slimy things from other cultures, either.
This is 100% a thing. See right wing histrionics about “soy boys” and shit. It’s ridiculous.
40 years ago the only tofu I could eat in NZ was a bland cardboard tasting lump, I’m not surprised if the people who were only introduced to it then developed an aversion to it and have never tried it again.
It wasn’t until I moved to Japan that I discovered all the varieties of tofu and the magic that it could be that I really started enjoying it.
My daughter in law is Italian (grew up in Rome) and doesn’t like tomatoes or Parmesan cheese.
So it is more about what you were introduced to as a child rather than culture per se, though that is definitely a part.
I don’t get it.
I do not want to be served an entire fish, head and all. If I was I would politely decline to eat it or ask if someone could please remove the head for me, preferably in the kitchen.
That says nothing about my view of Haitians or any other culture, it says I don’t want to see an entire fish on my plate.
Same thing for sushi, raw fish does not appeal to me at all. It means I hate raw fish not the culture that does enjoy it.
We are about as Polish as you can get, all my grandparents and great grandparents from both sides were born in Poland.
My dad used to eat pig brains, czarina (duck blood soup), kiszka (blood sausage), pickled pigs feet, and beet soup among other stuff that turned my stomach.
Asking if blood soup is disgusting is somehow offense to the culture that does enjoy it?
My dad understood those things weren’t everyone’s cup of tea but I doubt he was offended when someone said ewww that’s disgusting. It was.
And who am I offending if you mention head cheese and I say nope no no way ick eww…
So much of the food we love is a result of habit.
And so many of our food aversions are a result of a lack of adventure.
That is the very question the article is exploring and the author is trying to get at. He’s noting that race plays a role in how people feel about different kinds of foods. 
As I’ve said SEVERAL times.
I don’t think you read the article and are spewing nonsense here.
The framing of the article is not excluding other cultures, it’s talking about his own and how people have reacted to the kind of food that is normal in his culture.
Is it? How come we might find, say, casu marzu gross, but an Italian person might find it delicious.
Lots of people aren’t disgusted by it - such as Japanese people who grow up eating sushi… So yeah, there is a cultural component to “disgust”.
Not necessarily, no. Some do, some find new things from other cultures incredibly interesting and tend to want to learn more. I like to spend time down in the part of town where there are lots of immigrants, because I know I’m gonna learn something new or get the chance to try a new kind of food. People being different from me isn’t something I’m generally averse to, it’s something I cherish, in fact. I love the idea that people live their lives in different ways than I do, because it reminds me of how complex and interesting humanity actually is. Just how many ways we can come up with to live our lives on this little blue rock blows my mind.
I think the point is this: the author is a Haitian American. So already they have to deal with a lot of comments and attitudes, a fair chunk of them from people who would be horrified at any suggestion they were in any way racist, that explicitly or implicitly cast them as not really or fully American, or at best an exotic strain of American.
And then they come across an online viral quiz that takes one of their favourite childhood dishes and seems to say “hey, look at this disgusting thing that only weirdos would eat”.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think that’s what the quiz was trying to do. I suspect it was trying to assess how people react to food that actually looks like the dead animal it is, as opposed to sanitised, plastic-wrapped, featureless blocks in supermarket cold cabinets.
But I’m not going to tell the author they were wrong or overreacting, especially when their comment was so mild: they said the question felt “pointed”, and gave them “a little bit of pause”.
Except, that’s not what the question said, it’s certainly not the way I took any of the questions.
I do not want an entire fish, especially the head, on my plate. That does not mean I think anyone that does is weird especially Haitians.
I can’t stomach peas, lima beans, green beans, or any type of bean, they make me nauseous just thinking about them, my wife loves that stuff, I certainly don’t think she is a weirdo or anyone else that enjoys food I can’t stand.
I used to love watching Bizarre Food with Andrew Zimmern, most of the food made me squirm and look away sometimes but I never thought any of the people that ate those things were weird, it’s their culture and the food they enjoy. I wish I had a taste for a lot of food that I just don’t care for because it all looks really good.
I know. That’s why I used the word “seems”.
OK? But it’s how the author took it — or at least wondered briefly if they should take it that way.
I think there may have been a misunderstanding. I was saying that people’s disgust may be “insensitive” to other cultures. As in, someone who has no experience with Chinese food (or soft European cheeses, or whatever) may be disgusted by that food, even if this seems like they’re being “culturally insensitive.”
I’m saying even if it seems hurtful that someone else doesn’t like the whole fish fish you love from your culture, it doesn’t mean that disgust isn’t real, and it’s still worth studying. We shouldn’t expect the study to try and hide those cultural factors.
My food disgust is low. That is an odd set of questions
No, that is exactly what I’ve been saying to @aeiou this whole time, because that is the point of the article, specifically how it relates to race.
Never said that.
And I never said you did. I was never arguing with you. I was explaining my first comment, which was not directed at you personally. I feel like wires have been crossed in this thread.
I was responding to the ideas put fourth in the original article, that
or
or the notion, from the title of the post, that such a study is is “culturally insensitive.”
I’m simply saying that’s the nature of disgust, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t study it.
Fair enough.
My sense of food adventurism came from having a mother who was a bad cook. My father and I yearned to find stuff with flavor. We both learned how to cook to overcome that issue. About the only thing I am averse to is street food where local sanitation is questionable.
I don’t think so. But it is strange to note the difference between human contaminants and hygiene someone else already noted in the categories.
And, though the test makers asked about being served a whole fish (for the fish disgust portion of the pie) they didn’t (iirc, I took the test a few days ago) ask about being served a wad of beef or pork offal in an intestinal casing, or a mass of ground up beef from numerous cows being plonked down on a bun. For those questions it seemed to be mostly about level of done ness.
So it definitely seems like the test questions expose a cultural bias of the test makers, as is so often the case. And totally valid to point out.
This is a good guide. I love street food. Anything. But if I’m going to eat it, I have to see it come out of the cooker–deep fryer, griddle, whatever–or be unpackaged, peeled, etc., in front of me.
