In the first blog in our series, students of We Are What We Eat: A Cultural History Of Food In Eastern Europe, Russia, And Central Asia explain what food history is, and what it can tell us about the world.
The Globalization of Tex-Mex
“Tex-Mex” or Texas-Mexican cuisine is a cuisine that began in the United States and has become extremely popular within the states beyond Texas and other areas of the South-West where it originated, as well as globally. The food that is considered Tex-Mex or Cali-Mex in some cases has been transformed so significantly it doesn’t resemble the original dish it was intended to emulate at all, and in other cases, cuisine was simply made up and given a name that “sounded” Spanish. Today Tex-Mex can be seen throughout the world. In France, there’s a restaurant called “Indiana” that claims to offer Tex-Mex, and carries on many of these stereotyped dishes as well as using stereotypical images within their marketing and restaurant atmosphere.
In restaurants that claim ethnic-style cuisines, similar stereotyping is used. For example, in many Tex-Mex or American Mexican restaurants adobe-style houses and sombreros as well as stereotypical moustachioed men are a frequent collection of images for diners to “enjoy” while eating heavily Americanised dishes. The culture of these stereotype-heavy restaurants, prevalence of tequila drinks as well as massive amounts of food being served has created an image of Mexico and Mexicans for Americans (as heavy drinkers and over-consumers of laden foods,) interestingly, based off of a very American collection of foods. The idea of the acceptability of stereotypical images and stereotyping in restaurants is an interesting one. Why is it largely socially acceptable to keep these images that have largely been condemned as used in media still existing in restaurants, particularly in Mexican restaurants. What is it about eating a chicken hard-shell taco with the mildest hot sauce under a sombrero with mariachi music playing faintly that Americans, and a large portion of the rest of the world, love? Lastly, where is the line that tips over from a fun night out to seriously offensive reinforcement of negative stereotypes? It is important to be cognisant of the meaning behind foods and food culture, and what ideologies cuisine can carry, and examining the history of Tex-Mex and how modern Mexican food in America and abroad can perpetuate a false narrative about the culture it originally was attempting to emulate.
Global Food Technologies
When discussing food history, it can seem hard to focus on one point because every culture has its own recipes, ingredients, and cooking methods. However, when you dig deeper, you start to notice how much inspiration cultures take from each other, and how technology changed food over time. This idea of globalization of food is fundamental to understanding how food has changed over the years. For instance, before cultural integration, you would never find someone using chopsticks in the United States; now, you can find them at any local Chinese restaurant. As for ingredients, you can see in the video that Spanish conquistadors famously brought potatoes back from the americas, becoming one of the most popular foods throughout Europe and Asia.
However, cultural fusion is not the only affect of globalization. As technology changed, food changed along with it. As we know spices now, they are simple ingredients that help enhance our meals. This is a stark difference from the way that people would use spices before; preservation of spoiled meat!? Yes, as you can see in the attached video, the invention of the refrigerator ushered out a practice of covering raw or even rotten items in spices to keep them considered edible. Luckily, we now keep our meat safe in our fridges, and save our spices to make our meals taste better.
Rationing Then and Now
If you are interested in learning food history, but don’t know where to begin think about what you eat on a day to day basis and where the meal came from. Boom you are already a food historian. Now think about what your grandparents ate, think about the first ever mcdonalds or the rations during the war, every meal you eat, every bite you take is full of a long winding road of history. Now a days we dont worry about where our food came from or “rationing” but as the saying goes “history repeats itself”, remember back to when the first reports of covid hits the news channels. Most grocery stores would “ration” the amount of meat or toilet paper you were aloud to buy at one time. Now imagine this in the 1940’s, no technology, no fast food, no doordash, no real options, you ate what was available to you, you had no choices.
Now these two time periods could not be more different, but the rationing idea is the same. Although these two events happened decades apart, the history of rationing and the history of the food you eat everyday all ties back into one another. Rationing plays a huge part in not only regular human history but it plays a huge role in the idea of food history, it shapes what we eat and enjoy, it’s a show of hard times and a point of something major in history, so the next time you go to the grocery store or you go get fast food think about the ingredients and how far we have come.
Food as Morality
Food studies extends out to a surprising degree. Since foodways, a term that can be roughly understood as all of the beliefs, methods, and production of/around food, are so central to our lives, any serious study of food quickly extends past the plate or kitchen.
Food studies even reaches into serious social and ethical questions. For instance, morality. Here we can actually break down further to help understand the topic better! The first group is questions of self-morality. That is, what is okay to eat to you personally? Is there anything that you do not consume personally because of strong moral feelings? Obviously, you may not eat something simply because you do not like the taste or texture. But, if you think about it, morality also dictates what we consider okay to consume and what is taboo for us personally. Moving beyond the personal scale, food studies can also touch questions of group morality towards food. What is the first thing that comes to mind? Fasting perhaps? Religious prohibitions on eating certain foods? Or perhaps certain animals, like how cows are considered sacred in Hinduism? Morale opposition or celebration can even dictate what whole groups of people eat! Blurring this distinction is the question of cannibalism, where personal beliefs are influenced by group social attitudes towards it, while individuals also have strong personal moral feelings on the matter. Keep these ideas in your mind as you read the rest of this blog!
Food as morality is such a rich and layered topic because it touches every aspect of how we live, from the most personal decisions to broad social and cultural frameworks. Take, for example, the rise of plant-based diets—many people choose to cut out animal products not just for health reasons but because they feel a moral obligation to reduce animal suffering or environmental harm. On the flip side, others might feel a strong cultural or family tie to certain foods, making it difficult to remove them from their diet, even if they grapple with the ethical implications. And then there are more extreme moral debates, like the ethics of lab-grown meat or genetically modified organisms (GMOs)—both of which raise questions about our relationship to nature, technology, and what we value in the foods we consume. Whether it’s an individual decision or a societal movement, food and morality are deeply intertwined, shaping not just what we eat, but why we eat it.
