Demographics and Culinary Identity 1

Running Head: Demographics and Culinary Identity

The Relationship between Demographics and Culinary Identity

Jenny Lim
Glen Allen High School

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Introduction
Food is irrefutably a vital part of human survival. It is the only source of energy for
humans to perform basic functions, such as breathing, keeping the body warm, and digesting.
Thus, it is ubiquitous to acknowledge food as a valuable means to survival; however, many
people are unaware of the underlying meaning of food as it reveals abundant information about a
person or a groups beliefs, backgrounds, cultural values, personalities, and knowledge. Founded
on the firm understanding of the importance of this underlying meaning of food, the emerging
interdisciplinary field of food studies attempts to emphasize the connection between food and
cultural and personal identities (Almerico, 2014). In addition to the physical nourishment it
provides, food has a more intricate value as the consumers psychological needs intertwine with
social factors to influence his or her food choices and eating habits. Therefore, the consumers
identity as well as the societys demographics have played a significant role in altering the
culinary culture of a country. This review aims to analyze the inseparable relationship between
unique characteristics of or significant changes to the demographics of a country and
transformations in its culinary culture.

Effect of Immigration on the Culinary Culture of the United States

Immigration has been identified as one of the most distinct aspects of and strong forces in
American history. Often referred to as the Melting Pot, the United States has owed its
foundation, political principles, and thriving economy to the massive number of immigrants who
have ceaselessly moved to different regions of America since the early seventeenth century.
Especially in major cities, such as New York City and Los Angeles, the transformation in the

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cultural values and dynamics is evident as a surplus of immigrants from diverse parts of the
world settles in these cities to seek more opportunities.
The alteration in the culinary culture due to the massive immigration is especially
conspicuous in the late twentieth century Los Angles. Tanachai Mark Padoongpatt has studied
the historical interplay between Thai food and Thai American identity in Los Angeles within the
context of the United States history in numerous areas. Examining subjects of immigration,
tourism, and multiculturalism, one of his works argues the pivotal role the unique American
history of immigration plays in the formation of American culinary culture present today
(Padoongpatt, 2011). Prior to the mass emergence of Thai immigrants in the United States, Thai
cuisine was not as common and popular as it is now. For example, homemaker Marie Wilson had
been enchanting her friends with Thai food since moving to Los Angeles from Thailand in
1960 before publishing Siamese Cookery, the first Thai cookbook in the United States (2011).
However, this unfamiliarity of new ethic food quickly terminated among white U.S. citizens in
post-1965 U.S. society with the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act, also known as the Immigration and
Nationality Act of 1965. Along with the amicable U.S. foreign policy with Thailand, Thai
immigration to the U.S. accelerated at a rate of increase larger than any other immigrant group
(2011). During this period, most Thai restaurants were small and temporary and served
exclusively Thai customers who craved the taste of their homeland. Although the presence of
Thai food in Los Angeles first began serving the Thai population only, Thai restaurateurs soon
discovered that their food also attracted a new group of customers whites. To illustrate the
culmination of the popularity of Thai food at the time, Surapol Mekpongsatorn, one of the first
restaurateurs to open a noodle shop during the early 1960s, was so successful that he made so
much cash he had to sleep on it under his bed (2011).

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The high demand for Thai food not only outlines the monetary success of Thai
immigrants but also the success in breaking racial barriers following the Hart-Cellar Act.
Especially in Los Angles, Thai immigrants faced white citizens absurd fear of the U.S.
becoming a third world country (2011). As a coping mechanism, the Thais used their cuisine to
negotiate race and ethnicity, lessening the racial tension. Many American culinary adventurers
indirectly assisted them by introducing Los Angelenos to the exotic flavors of Thai cuisine while
media, such as Los Angeles Times, covered the citys Thai restaurants extensively. In summary,
the rapid popularization of Thai food demonstrates how the unique American culinary culture
was defined by the history of immigration, as it influenced racial relationship positively as well.
Another example that epitomizes the diversification of food in the United States through
immigration is outlined by the popularity of chili queens in San Antonio, Texas, in the 1800s.
Although Mexicans lost political power after the revolt of 1836, they maintained their majority
population, which helped them to continue exerting Hispanic influence in the Southwestern
United States (Gabaccia & Pilcher, 2011). During this time, Mexicans highly sought chili queens,
which were street food vendors where rows of old Spanish women [sat] on their bancos and
baskets of tomales, carne con Chili, tortillas, etc., by their side (2011). Although they were only
favored by the Mexican population in the beginning, they later became a major tourist attraction
in the late 1880s to be described as bright, bewitching creatures [who] put themselves to much
trouble to please their too often rowdy customers (2011). However, although many journalists
praised the deliciousness of the food provided by the chili queens, progressive reformers
criticized them as a threat to urban hygiene. Thus, the battle between health officials and the
vendors ensued. At first, the vendors had an advantage as new waves of immigrants from Mexico
into the U.S. border in the early twentieth century, as well as their popularity among white

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tourists led to the resurgence of cheap chili queens. Nevertheless, these chili stands
disappeared from the streets of San Antonio during World War II due to Mexican womens shift
from street vending to garment industry and politicians persistent effort to eradicate the
unsanitary street merchants (2011). The scrutiny of the fluctuating trend of chili queens in San
Antonio in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reveals a crucial alteration in its culinary
culture as well as a racial negotiation between Mexicans and whites. As the prevalence of street
vendors dwindled with the new emergence of political platforms that promised public health and
hygiene, the long-established aspect of culinary culture of San Antonio vanished despite the
Mexican immigrants attempt to revive it.
Lastly, the ubiquity of Chinese restaurants in the United States, even more than that of
fast food restaurants, proves the role of immigration in changing the food identity of a country.
The Hunt for General Tso, a TED Talk, offers fortune cookies as a primary example in portraying
the power of immigration in America (Lee, 2008). Like most of Chinese food in America, such
as beef with broccoli egg rolls, General Tsos Chicken, and chop suey, fortune cookies are not
even recognizable to Chinese. They originated from a small bakery in Japan, but ironically, it is
now the symbol of Chinese food in America. They arrived in the United States when the
Japanese immigrants introduced them to major cities, like Los Angeles and San Francisco.
However, during World War II when all the Japanese were sent to the internment camps, the
Chinese Americans took over the business to create what Americans now perceive as fortune
cookies. As Lee confirms, fortune cookies were invented by the Japanese, popularized by the
Chinese, but ultimately consumed by Americans. Historical occurrences in the United States,
including the booming Asian immigration and World War II, led to the addition of Chinese
cuisine to the American culinary culture. The creation of Chinese American dishes, which remain

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popular in the modern day America, would have been impossible without the amalgamation of
preexisting American and newly adapted Asian cultures fused together by immigration.

Effect of Migration on the Culinary Culture of Other Countries

Unlike the United States, immigration may not be a conspicuous characteristic attributed
to foreign countries, but changes in demographics, such as migration to another region within the
same country, continue to affect their respective culinary identities as well. Gabaccia and Pilcher,
leading scholars in the emerging field of international food history and migration studies,
examine the distinction between urban and rural food cultures in Southern Italy and Mexico, two
geographically disconnected countries. They discuss how street foods used to remain as a
cyclical occurrence in small rural towns, but the urbanization in the late eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, as hundreds of thousands of rural Italians migrated to larger cities, such as
Naples, for job opportunities led them to be ubiquitous in everyday life (2011). Until these waves
of migration to bigger cities in the late eighteenth century, even the culinary culture of bigger
cities were obscurely defined. For example, the cuisine of Naples displayed Spanish influences,
including pignata and minestra maritata, which is a marriage of meat and green that
resembled the Spanish olla podrida (2011). Therefore, Naples modern cooking traditions were
not established until the urbanization of Italy when the plebeian and aristocratic tastes of the
city and the countryside combined. The plebeian, or rural side of Naples urban culinary
culture was exhibited in the streets, where street vendors sold cheap fast foods in small
quantities. Because lazzaroni, working class that comprised majority of the citys population,
were unable to afford expensive costs of urban living, including fuel consumption in cooking,
they frequented street vendors to purchase their daily meals (2011). It is interesting to note that

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one of the most loyal customers group of street vendors included the wealthy as well,
demonstrating that the significant demographic shift from rural to urban areas resulted in the
successful development of street foods that were enjoyed by all Italians. The development of
tavernas, which are modest eating and drinking establishments with an indoor kitchen serving
food through a window or doorway to customers who are outside on benches of the street,
attracted both locals and tourists as well, accumulating to the popularity of street foods (2011).
Likewise in Mexico, the formation and the consequent popularization of street foods
reveals the role demographic shifts played from the age of conquistadors in the 1500s to
urbanization. Unlike Naples culinary culture that combined rural and urban aspects, Mexicos
urban culinary culture was created from separate culinary traditions of two cultures: Hispanic
cities and indigenous countryside (2011). In the 1500s when the Spanish settled in South
America, their consumption of wheat bread, wine, olive oil, and livestock blended with the tastes
of the indigenous people, such as tortillas, beans, and chiles, despite the class division between
the two groups. Although public and communal dining was rare for a long time due to irregular
markets and religious festivals, the economic growth fueled by rural-urban migration in the
1800s led to the development of fondas, small enclosed spaces that offered Spanish-style meals
(2011). Just like Italys lazzaroni, who were unable to afford the expensive cost of urban living,
the poor in Mexico City took their meals in the streets. Fondas, pulqueras (places that had
resident enchilada makers prepare snacks for customers drinking the native beer pulque), and
almuerceras (places that served brunch mixing Spanish and indigenous foods) all culminated in
their popularity as the citys population multiplied with urbanization, and urban life revolved
around public plazas. As a microcosm of the Columbian Exchange, the development of public

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dining culture of Mexico City, as well as that of Naples, aligned with major demographic shifts
to leave a lasting influence on the culinary identity of their countries.

Minority Influence on the Culinary Culture of the United States

Although demographic shifts, like immigration and migration, play a key role in shaping
a countrys culinary culture as highlighted in previous sections, demographic makeup also has a
direct impact on the cuisine as well. In the United States, even before the inundation of
immigrants during the mid- and late-twentieth century, the long history of white dominance over
African Americans and Native Americans and their respective food cultures have maintained a
close relationship. Here, in discussing the minority impact on the U.S. culinary culture, it is
pivotal to note that there was a more reciprocal interaction among white majority, minority
groups, and food styles. In other words, although minority groups did alter the American food
culture, they were also transformed due to the white supremacy and the resulting white control
over foodways at the time.
Foodways refer to the intersection of food in culture, traditions, and history. Thus, they
are the cultural, social, and economic practices centering around the production and consumption
of food. During the 1930s, before the Civil Rights Movement began decades later, the social
order between whites and blacks was clearly defined. Especially in the Jim Crow South,
segregation was more conspicuous, and whites stayed at the top of the racial hierarchy by
controlling the southern foodway. For example, black women cooked daily meals in the white
households while black men barbecued for white social events, demonstrating that whites
derived their authority by defining when and where sensory intimacy was permitted (Bgin,
2011). As a result, even stereotypes of black cooks named mammies in white kitchens with a

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high turban and of stooped and grey-bearded uncles were omnipresent in the southern society
(2011). Because southerners had a legal means to segregation, they used food to emphasize racial
difference, as well as their social and racial superiority. In short, the necessity of black labor in
producing white southern food reveals whites success in reinforcing black inferiority during the
Jim Crow era.
However, as African Americans were once restrained by the white control of foodway in
the South, they were also able to reciprocally influence the American culinary culture during the
Great Migration. When millions of African Americans moved from the South to the North, they
played a monumental role in introducing southern cooking to the rest of the nation. During the
Great Depression, many African American migrant women opened up restaurants, which grew to
gain both white and black customers (2011). Soon, southern fried chicken became widely
popular among white northerners, and an advertisement like, partaking of choice poultry cooked
a la southern style, attracted a massive audience (2011). Additionally in the 1960s, black urban
food came to be known as soul food, which combined flavors of southern dishes, Caribbean
tastes, and processed food (2011). As this example illustrates, the southern culinary culture
became prominent by the African Americans movement towards the North, reshaping the overall
American cuisine.
Similarly, whites used foodways as tools for colonial control over Native Americans
during the late nineteenth century. The Blackfeet Indians, living in a reservation in Montana,
faced adversities as the bison population began to plummet in the fall of 1883. Because the bison
meat was their primary source of subsistence, the Indians were forced to succumb to the attempt
of the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) to subordinate Blackfeet land and labor (Wise, 2011). The
OIA tried to accomplish its goals by replacing the reservations decreasing bison population with

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government-issued beef cattle and constructing agency slaughterhouses, which are buildings
borne from the administrations obsession with producing clean meat (2011). Because the
Blackfeet Indians engaged in troubling traditions of making beef and then ate raw meat, the
OIA established government slaughterhouses to purge their predacious past by instituting order
and regulation in the meat production and consumption processes. In Wises words, Control
over food dictates meanings to life itself, so the Indians were forced to work in the
slaughterhouses in order to simply survive. Thus, the OIA was successful in subjugating the
Indians under their control and exploiting their labor in Montanas livestock industry (2011). Just
like how Caucasians maintained racial supremacy over African Americans in the 1930s by
controlling the southern foodway, the white government accomplished its goals of assimilating
Indians and gaining colonial control by regulating the Indian foodway.

Conclusion
This paper looked into the effect of demographic shifts and makeups on the culinary
culture of a country. Scrutinizing immigration patterns in the United States and rural-urban
migration in Italy and Mexico, it contrasts transformations of culinary cultures in their respective
countries in order to isolate population shifts as the prominent factor that influenced food
cultures. In both Mexico and Italy, migration to larger cities during urbanization in hopes of
obtaining jobs precipitated in the ubiquity of street foods, which everyone - regardless of age,
socioeconomic status, and locality - enjoyed. The combination of cooking traditions of
indigenous countryside and Hispanic cities drove to the establishment of fondos in Mexico that
allowed quick, easy consumption of street food while the rural and urban culinary amalgamation
led to the formation of tavernas that served simple pizza and pasta in Italy. In both cases,

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urbanization, which led to a massive population shift, was responsible for the new element in
their food identities. In the United States, its diverse immigration patterns shaped mass
popularization of Asian, Mexican, and Italian food and ameliorated racial relationships. The
popularization of ethnic foods among whites undermined racial tension by focusing on culture,
rather than on physical features and biological makeup. Today, immigration still continues to
occur at a high rate. With evolving transportation and technology, a significant portion of
population from many countries immigrates to other countries or migrates within their countries.
From the examples analyzed in previous sections, immigration/migration improved relationships
between different cultures and made exotic and quickly consumable food available to
everyone.
Furthermore, American culinary culture and food in general have proven to be an
efficient tool in maintaining social order and control over minority groups in the United States.
Both African Americans and Native Americans were dominated by Caucasians through the loss
of control over their foodways. While the Blackfeet Indians renounced their traditions of bison
hunting and resorted to eating clean meat produced from the OIA slaughterhouses, African
Americans cooked in white households to develop white southern food.
Demographic shifts and population makeups thus confirm to be one of the most powerful
agents of change in a countrys culinary identity. Given that food is not just a necessity for
survival, it should be carefully analyzed as the mirror of a countrys identity.

References
Almerico, G. M. (2014). Food and identity: Food studies, cultural, and personal identity. Journal
of International Business and Cultural Studies, 8, 1-7. Retrieved from

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http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/141797.pdf
Bgin, C. (2011). Partaking of choice poultry cooked a la southern style. Radical History
Review, (110), 127. doi:10.1215/01636545-2010-029
Gabaccia, D. R., & Pilcher, J. M. (2011). "Chili Queens" and Checkered Tablecloths. Radical
History Review, (110), 109. doi:10.1215/01636545-2010-028
Lee, J. (2008, December). The Hunt for General Tso. [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_8_lee_looks_for_general_tso#t-163931
Padoongpatt, T. M. (2011). Too Hot to Handle. Radical History Review, (110), 83.
doi:10.1215/01636545-2010-027
Wise, M. (2011). Colonial Beef and the Blackfeet Reservation Slaughterhouse, 1879 - 1895.
Radical History Review, (110), 59. doi:10.1215/01636545-2010-026