Come to live in a new country and one of the first things you’ll notice is the food. The food at the grocery store, at restaurants, on the streets, and – if you’re an international student – on campus. Exploring a foreign food culture can be exciting, but deciding how and what to eat can also be challenging, especially for young students, due to predetermined taste palates, dietary restrictions and other food habits. Such students are often newly on their own – without their parents’ guidance and cooking – and they may be overwhelmed by the choices they must make around food, especially if they are experiencing other symptoms of culture shock such as homesickness and loneliness.
There are a few reasons why food impacts us so intensely:
1. Food preferences are deeply ingrained.
You start deciding what foods you like well before you’re even born. The foods your mother ate while she was pregnant actually flavored her amniotic fluid and were transferred to you. And once you do begin to eat, each thing you swallow starts to impact what foods you’ll like later in life. Many flavors and spices are acquired tastes – if you are exposed to them as a child, you develop a preference for them over time. This doesn’t just apply to extremely specific tastes like, but also happens with spices as basic as salt or sugar. You’ve been conditioned over time to like foods with more or less of various flavors.
2. Food forms a part of your identity.
Food is an important piece how we define culture, and therefore a piece of how we see ourselves as people. Think about how many holidays are tied to special meals, or how many family traditions are focused on foods or recipes. As an international student from India, there are countless traditions and specific meals attached to the numerous festivals we have! In fact, there is a 9-day long festival going on in India right now called Navratri. In this festival we celebrate the female power through nine different goddesses, one on each night, through lots of dancing, food, and prayer.
Feast during Navratri (Photo source)
3. Food is tied to memory.
Food is responsible for creating some of your most significant and deeply-held memories. Nearly all of your sense of taste is based on smell – without smell, food would be practically tasteless. And smell is the only one of your five senses that is tied directly to the brain’s ‘limbic system’. That’s the part of the brain that processes emotion and memory. When you’re feeling homesick, it’s not unusual to seek comfort through familiar foods that recall happy family gatherings or other pleasant memories from childhood. That’s why they’re called “comfort foods” – they’re quite literally associated in your brain with happy and comforting emotions. The strength of these links means that even close substitutes don’t fit the bill. I know of many cases where international students complain that the international restaurants in America don’t serve authentic food.
Here’s a fun chart for you for understand how diverse food around the world is:
This year, we at ISSO are starting a new series of food recipes! Every week, we plan to put out an international recipe which is easy to make and one where you can find all the ingredients at a local grocery store. We will be starting with comfort foods and hopefully continue to more advanced recipes!
Stay tuned for more!
