Food Adventuring In Culture

In articles titled “Why everyone should stop calling immigrant food ethnic” by Lavanya Ramanathan and “Stop thinking and just eat: when ‘food adventuring’ trivializes cultures” by Ashlie Stevens, different perspectives on the role of food adventuring in cultural appropriation are offered. In her article, Ashlie advocates food adventuring and believes it is an ideal way to facilitate cultural appropriation. On the contrary, Lavanya’s article is highly critical of cultural appropriation and she emphasises on omission of the word ‘Ethnic food’ and encourages people to appreciate food as it is. Even though Ashlie’s work is written in simple language, she fails to convey her stand clearly because of the flaws in structuring of the passage. Similarly, Lavanya’s article portrays her stand clearly but is unable to reach the readers due to the use of complex words, intricate examples and analogies. Both Lavanya’s article and Ashlie’s article appear to be equally weak as they fail to understand the potential readers, to have an efficient style of writing and to provide credible evidence to substantiate their claims.

Although Ashlie’s article is written in vernacular language, readers still find it difficult to understand and relate to it. It’s mainly the changing stands of the writer which confuses the readers. For instance, she initially states, “it comes down to recognizing that our attitude towards food from different cultures can in turn inform our attitude about said cultures”