What are you eating? | Teen Ink

What are you eating?

June 7, 2010
By Anonymous

Sometimes, we hear about foreign culture’s delicacies and are sometimes disturbed about the fact that what they eat it just plain disgusting. But before we say that, we rarely think about our own cultural food and how other people may look down upon them. We choose to think that everyone else is wrong and only ourselves is right. That is cultural ignorance. It starts out with just wrong outlooks on different cultural foods but it leads up to other people’s religion, culture, and appearance.

When people mention how people in China may eat cats and dogs, we tend to think about how poor those kittens are and jump to conclusions about the Chinese. But in fact, there is nothing wrong about eating cats and dogs if you think about it from their point of view. It is just another thing that they might eat and to the Chinese, they might eat it as how we would eat beef for instance. If we actually take time to think about it, we may seem that way to other cultures. Again, in America, we tend to eat beef. It seems to be completely normal but some people in India don’t like the fact that we eat cows. We choose to eat cow and some cultures disapprove of it but we still do it. Also, some people don’t eat pork because it is against their religion.But then we also choose to be culturally ignorant and look down on other cultures.

I tend to eat something that people may question. If I tell them that I have eaten a duck or eel before, they look at me like: How do you eat that? The answer is simple, it tastes good. I feel the same way about cheese. To me, cheese is not the most appetizing thing. I am not use to the smell, texture, and the taste of cheese. I would choose not to eat it most of the time. But some people eat cheese as a delicacy and think it is really delicious. I think cheese isn’t that great but some people can eat it straight from the can. When my family makes a plate of steamed eel, I will eat it with joy while some people watch with amazement. We chose to sometimes not think about other people’s point of view and become culturally ignorant. You think that your culture is right but everyone thinks that which causes clashes in people’s thoughts about other cultures. We think that the food we eat is normal while other culture’s food is not. But that’s because we have never thought beyond the line and what others may be thinking the next time one of us eats some blue cheese.


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