By: Emily Chin   Date: 7/21/11

And you thought you were just going out for enchiladas.

Where did pizza come from?  And pad thai? How about fish and chips or sushi? Take a stroll down the main boulevard of any metropolitan area, and you’re likely to encounter a veritable bevy of cuisine offerings.  These restaurants are not just means of conveying calories to our bodies, they can mean so much more: a meeting place; a home to treasured memories; a chance to taste home when away from home; and, for some countries, a carefully planned and executed exportation of culture as a means of food diplomacy.

Food diplomacy is growing in popularity.  China has been levering its cuisine and chefs as a means of building goodwill in Latin America in what has been dubbed “chopstick diplomacy”, the Asian face of gastrodiplomacy.  The most popular foods, like sushi and spaghetti have exploded in popularity, particularly among American eaters, without government intervention, while providing free advertisement for home nations’ tourism boards.
 
Food As a Shared Experience
On the flip side, food is the global shared experience – the connecting thread of humanity. The threat of hunger, hikes in the prices of basic food stuffs, military and social unrest inhibiting the transportation of goods to market and the production of food, and the concerns surrounding agricultural development are global issues.  Everyone trying to feed themselves and their families shares the fears and joys of food availability.   Food and its many facets provide potential doorways into otherwise hostile countries and build lasting conversations and relationships.

In the harsh and, to most eyes, inhospitable desert of Rub al Khali, or Empty Quarter, which covers portions of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates, the greeting of a cup of tea is offered to both friend and foe.  Resources are shared and meals are communal. In fact, according to the handbook of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command, the goal of which is to provide soldiers with a basic overview of Arab culture, “It is assumed that guests will accept at least a small quantity of drink (tea usually or sometimes Arabic coffee) offered as an expression of friendship or esteem. It is considered rude to decline the offer of drink.”

In the same vein as the 1955 “Family of Man” exhibit – which “focused on the commonalties that bind people and cultures around the world” – food has the ability to bring cultures together, spark conversations and provide a forum for discussion, based on a universal need for and love of food. 

What other topic, besides water, involves the balance between life and death, culture and shared history?  And what else requires trusting others with what we feed ourselves and, perhaps more importantly, our children?

So the next time you sit down to a meal of a cuisine other than your own, think about the important role that you are playing.  While orange chicken, chorizo and paté may be listed in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, they are also distinct pieces of far-flung cultures that Americans have adopted.  That is the power of food diplomacy.