bbc.com
By Megha Mohan
BBC Trending
3 March 2017
Are food bloggers fuelling racist stereotypes?
"Food media is predominantly generated by white people for white people, so when the subject veers toward anything outside of the Western canon, it's not uncommon to see things generalised, exotified, or misrepresented. "
Filipino-American Celeste Noche, who is a food and travel photographer, shared her thoughts on the "exotified" depiction of certain recipes within the blogging and gourmet community on the podcast The Racist Sandwich.
"I think microaggressions in social media are reflective of food media as a whole in that appropriation," Noche tells BBC Trending, "These microaggressions can be as simple as a lack of research."
Whether it's taking photos of dishes with chopsticks sticking straight up into rice or noodles (which can be seen as offensive in some Asian cultures)", she says, "or dramatisation in the props used to style ethnic foods (why are Asian dishes so often styled on bamboo mats or banana leaves with chopsticks?)".
Noche added that established food blogs like that of Andrew Zimmern also fed into stereotypes.
"(His) recipe for Filipino short ribs is styled with chopsticks even though Filipinos traditionally eat with spoons and forks or their hands".
Zimmern has not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.
Similarly the food site Bon Appetit received some criticism for publishing a video last year about noodles claiming "Pho is the new Ramen." Several commenters attacked the video for the "simplification of Asian culture" as "pho is from Vietnam and ramen from Japan".
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