Please Pass The Caterpillar Stuffing

New Educational Video Fosters Cultural Understanding By Revealing Roots Of Food Preferences And Taboos

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Instead of turkey and mashed potatoes, imagine filling your holiday plate with fried spiders and rattlesnake. Sound yucky? Welcome to the world of food preferences, where what is considered delicious–and disgusting–is more a matter of culture than most people think.

"People feel very strongly about what they will and won’t eat," said Dane Archer, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has produced a new educational video about food entitled A World of Food: Tastes and Taboos in Different Cultures.

"Westerners cringe at the thought of Asian cultures that eat dog meat, because dogs are sacred in our culture," said Archer. "But Hindus feel the same way about cows. Food preferences and taboos are so emotional that they’re a powerful way to teach tolerance."

People tend to regard their own diet as sensible and the diets of other cultures as bizarre or irrational, which makes food a useful tool in teaching about cultural diversity and respect, he said.

Archer’s engaging 35-minute video features informative and sometimes funny interviews about food with people from different cultures. The video describes religious prohibitions against certain foods and presents a seven-rung food ladder, or "hierarchy of eligible foods," that ranks what is considered edible, delicious, and disgusting in various cultures. Viewers learn that all cultures, including American culture, consume foods that people in other cultures see as highly debatable, inherently disgusting, or simply too bizarre to eat at all.

"Many staples of the American diet, from hamburgers to Jell-O, are repulsive to non-Westerners," said Archer. "Once people appreciate that, it’s easier to regard other cultural food choices with less suspicion."

As described in the video, the traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce caused misery for a Filipina who had recently emigrated to the United States. The woman’s desire to be a polite guest conflicted with the horror she felt about the food she was served. After managing to consume her portion, she had to excuse herself to the bathroom, where she became physically ill.

Western viewers may recoil at descriptions in the video of tacos made with cow eyeballs, meals that feature an animal’s entire head, and "chocolate meat" (pork cooked with pig’s blood and intestines), but they’ll likely be surprised by interviews in which a young man of Mexican heritage describes what he considers the vile combination of celery and peanut butter, followers of Islam marvel at the prevalence of pork in the American diet, and a Hindu man describes the humiliation he felt upon learning that the Jell-O he enjoys is made with gelatin from cows.

Archer, who has produced a series of videotapes about nonverbal communication, said he tackled the subject of food prejudice as a way to address the recurring subthemes of cultural differences and misunderstandings that emerged in his work on communication.

"The key to the system is understanding that wherever you are on the food ladder, chances are you consider the lower rungs morally disgusting," explained Archer. "And wherever you are on the ladder, someone is viewing your choices with disgust, too. Understanding that hierarchy helps break down all those ethnocentric assumptions that ‘our way is the right way.’"

Or, as a Hindu woman in the video put it: "Every Hindu is taught to respect everyone’s culture, because we are all rivers that come into an ocean."