Do you have food prejudices?
If you think about it, we all have foods that we think or feel negative about, and would not eat at all, or only reluctantly. What is often behind this food prejudice?
1. Childhood eating trauma
Often a negative reaction to a type of food can stem from unpleasant childhood experiences with that food. For example, many people have an aversion to types of vegetables like spinach, broccoli, or squash, perhaps because their parents forced them to eat large amounts of them, or forced them to eat them against their will.
Additionally, a food or dish may be associated with a specific traumatic or painful event, such as drowning as a child, or it may have been served when something negative and painful happened.
In parts of the world where food shortages are common, people can develop an aversion to foods that they have repeatedly been forced to eat due to a lack of affordable alternatives.
2. Negative associations
Sometimes food biases can stem from negative visual, semantic, historical, social, personal, or other associations linked to a food or dish. For example, some people who did not grow up near the sea find it difficult to eat shrimp, prawns and other delicacies because they can visually remind them of unpleasant creatures such as caterpillars.
Sometimes foods are also associated with social or historical stigma. In many places, for example, there are foods that are called ‘food for the poor’. Only later did these foods, including pizza and meatballs, rise from this designation to the league of the world’s favorite foods.
3. Unfamiliarity
We often react negatively to foods that we have not yet encountered, or that we encountered late in life. Often they do not belong in our circle of comfort foods, with which we have developed a strong positive emotional bond.
For example, many people living in Europe or America will not be able to enjoy cooked plantain the first time they try it, just as many Africans may need time before adopting radish, black bread, or types of cheese.
In addition, we can feel that our taste circuit is already connected for life. We may not be willing to interrupt or modify this pattern of tastes.
4.Social prejudice
The most disturbing form of food bias is when it is rooted in prejudice towards a specific group of people. How many times do we hear phrases like ‘these people are like this and like that because they eat this and that’.
There are many people who extend their negative view of an ethnic group or other social group to foods that these peoples appreciate as delicacies, such as snails, frog legs, sheep, sheep’s heads, lobsters, cassava leaves, dog meat, insects , caterpillars, as well as methods of eating, such as finger foods.
Of course, choosing to eat certain foods or not is a purely personal choice. It is only unfortunate when our food prejudices betray a more dangerous prejudice towards other human beings, other cultures or other ways of life.
Here’s a short exercise to test your food biases:
1. Make a list of all the foods you clearly hate, dislike, or reluctantly eat.
2. For each food or dish, write a sentence about what comes to mind when you think of, smell, or see the dish or food.
3. Decide if it is due to childhood eating trauma, negative social, visual, or historical associations, or if the food bias is related to deeper biases. Or it may have another reason that is not discussed here.
4. Write a sentence about what you think would help change the food prejudice and if this step is necessary.
