I’ve been watching a lot of reality TV recently, and one thing you hear over and over is “I’m from (insert ethnicity/ country) so food and/or family are important to us.” But aren’t these things universally important? Are there really cultures that don’t care about one or both of these things?
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They are important in every culture. I get irritated when I hear that too
I would argue that in many American households (certainly not all) it’s normal not to have a sit down family meal together and instead eat quick processed food separately. To an outsider looking in this implies that food and family is not considered a priority, even if that is not the case.
Sometimes people haven’t encountered a lot of diversity in life so they think things are more unique than they are. It happens with a lot of topics if you listen for it. It’s a provincialism but not meant as antagonistic of others, just unaware. But yes, food and family are common values in most cultures.
🤔
I get the impression food isn’t as important in Scandinavian cultures. Someone may come along and correct me.
This is honestly a great question. I really can’t wait for some response “our food sucks and so do our family dynamics”. There’s gotta be some culture, somewhere that can identify with this
I have seen that only in American television. Shows written by other countries rarely have this kind of trite dialogues.
Scotland.
It’s random meat, potatoes, and seasonal veg every night and we do Christmas dinner as a family and that’s about it. Possibly Haggis on Robbie Burns night (not as a group thing, just a regular dinner).
Very little is focused around big family dinners, extravagant dining, or even group dining. Our houses are too small to host HUGE family shindigs (majority of population).
I moved to Canada at age 12 and things like family style dinners, potlucks, themed food for every holiday, and dining out often was very bizarre to me. We ate a Fish & Chips from the chip shop maybe once a month as a treat, or Chinese food for a take away sometimes. I am middle class and grew up in a nuclear family.
I wouldn’t say family isn’t important. But the food part is definitely about a 3/10 of importance to the average Scot? We eat the same thing all the time, but it’s not a “thing” we sing from the rooftops like COME TRY OUR SCOTTISH CUISINE!!
American, Irish and Scottish descent. Food was definitely not important on either side of my family. Family, sure, but food was an expensive chore. Gatherings were outings or over coffee or tea.
I’m not entirely sure food is important in America culture. Sure, we like to eat a lot of it, but our cuisine grew up alongside industrialized food production and went through the awful mid-century phase of all processed, canned, boxed, frozen meals. Major priority given to cheap and easy. Many families don’t really sit down for family meals but just scarf takeout or something quick. Of course there are regional traditions but America is lacking the depth of culinary traditions of many cultures.
Well, coming from a country where food is a very important element of the lifestyle (France), I am astonished at the poor quality of the food culture in countries like the Nertherlands, most of the UK, most of the US… Many young people I know from those countries can basically eat only bread, French fries and, roasted chickens, in addition to eating a lot of crappy snacks..
My children could eat snails when they were 3, they eat raw fish, all sorts of weird cheese, oysters… They are young teenagers and can cook by themselves. We do some family trips of a few days only to go eating in Italy. Also, a family meal is a sacred time where everybody sits down for 45 minutes together with all screens shut off and we have conversation while enjoying the home made food.
Cosmopolitan, Western/northern european culture. Less and less people are continuing a family and we do not really follow our culinary traditions.
In some cultures, family and food are definitely MORE important than in others
Drug culture
I’m Dutch, tbh food isn’t that important to us compared to many other cultures. However family is.
I will answer for the family part. There is a marked difference between the ‘latine’ family and the ‘protestant anglo-saxon / German’ family model.
In the ‘latine’ family model, even when children become adult and are financially independent, they still continue a relationship with their parents where their parents have a right to give life advice which children have to pretend considering, and ‘in exchange’, parents will also support their children, putting helping their children as a priority compared to their own lifestyle.
For example, my mother, who is a healthy retired person, organizes her life around how she can help us, and I think she has a great time by the way seeing her grand children as much as possible even if she has less leisure (she never did the famous ‘boomers cruise’ although she could afford it).
I have a funny anecdote on how this works in Europe. I worked in Flanders (Catholic / Dutch speaking), and in Flanders, when becoming university students, children will typically go back to their parents house on week-end to have their mothers do the laundry for them. In the Netherlands (Protestant / Dutch speaking also), this would be unthinkable, as young people take pride in being independent, and parents make the children understand they are not their maid anymore and now want to spend time taking care of themselves.
Now, the right for parents to give advice has some limits in latine culture, especially for a man’s mother giving advice to the man’s wife about how to raise the children. Most ‘latine’ families have a bumpy episode where the son needs to explain to his mother his spouse is the mother of the children, and actually in charge and the grand-mother has to give advice on this topic only when requested.
People coming from the ‘latine’ family model typically think family links in the ‘protestant’ model are less strong, and also, they expect a potential spouse to consider the importance of family relations and behave accordingly.
When I explain all the above, which is another way to live family relationships with good and bad sides, the anglo-saxon people reaction is that this is just ‘toxic’. I do not think so, it is another way of doing things which has pros and cons. I would personally not like to move to the anglo-saxon pattern.
Also, I took examples from Europe, but this distinction also exists in the rest of the world. The Muslim world and India will typically be close to the latine model, East Asia is somehow in the middle, but probably more on the latine side.
There are different levels of “important”.
I’m from Germany and while, yes, my family is important to me, it will never be as important to me as to my former classmate. He comes from the Middle East, has a picture of his mom in his wallet and regularly prays to it. He couldn’t fathom that I complained about my parents being abusive bc “it’s family and you owe them so much”.
Idk if this is universal but he told me that family in the middle east is more important than your own life.
My experiance as a Finnish person is that food and family are of less importance to us than others. I have siblings and a mother. I am in good terms with all of them, but last time I met them was a year ago. I consider this quite normal and I do not stand out as having a weird family. There are traditional foods and dishes that are served on important days, but in general no one likes them. It’s just tradition.
I don’t think it’s as big of a thing in the nordics (scandinavia + Finland). Sure we have the occasional bigger family gathering for the holidays and some people eat dinner together, but for example adult kids very often move out at the age of 18 and sometimes are even expected to do so, there rarely is food offered to guests without planning it ahead and checking if it’s okay for the guest too. People don’t go out of their way to make food for guests, if you are hungry while visiting someone you can ask for food and will get it, but it’s not offered by default.
It does vary from culture to culture. Think about lunch in the UK. For many people it’s a sandwich meal deal without much thought to where you eat it and the people you’re with. In Spain you’re much more likely to have a proper meal with friends and family at midday. I grew up eating in front of the TV and as we got older we just made our own meals at a time that suited us. Sit down meals with the family were for Christmas, Birthdays and maybe Easter.
There are definitely cultures where family and food is more important than others. I’m African, Italien, German and feel like in Germany family and food is not as important. Like in the African part of my family they will have their elders live with them and care for them, Germans often put them in a home. I have a friend that takes very good care of her elderly father and I’m always so impressed but mostly because it feels so unusual for the culture. And definitely out of the three the Italiens place a huge importance on food, even though I am a crazy picky eater I would have never said no to trying anything my Italian grandma or one of her friends made I would have been way to scared to insult them,
Everyone here saying food and family are important in every culture are americans that cannot comprehend it.
WASPs
They never have food at home
I think when people say “food” is important I think they are taking about like, the cultural identity of the food itself, if that makes sense. It’s more than being Mexican and you and your family love food. Your family is Mexican and has recipes passed down through generations, and you have big gatherings with your family to celebrate it.
Just my specific experience: My family is the typical WASP family. Until recently, family wasn’t super important and we weren’t into big gatherings like that. My mom or myself did not grow up around grandparents or cousins. We started gathering more after we started our own families and more ethnic groups married in to our family.
I would say my family loves food and my parents are great cooks, but there is no recipe or defining dish that represents us. The food they didn’t grow up eating isn’t passed down.
Some countries definitely have less a food culture.
There are a lot of cultures that fuss a lot more about family and food than us Germans
White Aussies maybe. My mum is an awful cook, her mum was an awful cook, my husband’s mum and grandmother aren’t great cooks. None of them have ever used a seasoning. We have no family recipes or beloved childhood dishes. I didn’t learn to cook until I was an adult and taught myself.
I’ve had a number of boyfriends who’ve come over for tea and been surprised that my family would sit at the dinner table together and eat, as if sitting together as a family and sharing a meal were unusual.
There are so many other virtues which people claim to be important to their culture, and they often scream about their significance whilst using it as an excuse to be a dick to someone. e.g. mafiosi in films excusing their lack of guilt for their (family’s) criminal actions, because family is so important to Italian culture. You are this echoed everywhere in the real world.
Corporate culture.
Germanic countries.
As someone who is half German, half Italian, I can say from experience: family and food are way way more important / a central part of life than in Germany.
I’ve also lived in the UK for ten years and , well, was surprised how much they manage to value their food, given its quality (or lack thereof).
I’m Dutch and don’t give a fuck about food. If there was a pill that fed me and made me feel full I would rip out the kitchen in a heartbeat and turn it into a gaming room or whatever. I’m under the impression we don’t care about food that much in my country.
I read an article once where they asked people from various places about what they ate and their favorite foods were. One of the groups was, if I remember correctly, some people from Sudan. They primarily ate rice and grain. When asked what their favorite dish was, they just expressed confusion.
For some people food is just about survival.
Ham Sandwich Race
ironically, named after a food
Happy 18th birthday Tim! Now get out of the house or I’ll start charging rent!
I was born in Australia but have an Italian dad, and Dutch mother. Imo food wasn’t a top priority for my mum and her family, my mum learnt how to cook from my dads Italian family (thank god) and tbh we had a lot of influence from his Italian side growing up. I feel like now I’m creating my own family I’m still referencing some of those values as my own – like sitting down for a meal every night as a family, and also having my siblings and their partners over often for food. It’s fun!
Food is less important : I’d say if there is a lot of processed food in daily life, if fresh food is more expensive or less accessible than processed food, or if just eating takeout at home is very common. Some americans in my class used to say it was like this in some parts of the US.
Family is less important : if other than cases of abuse and abandonment of course, there is not much solidarity between family members when there are problems or for childcare, lots of people who choose a combination of living far away from family and not travelling a lot to meet up, parental leave isn’t very well accepted, forced (not arranged) marriages and unwanted children are common. I remember a friend whose family was from a place where there had been a terrible armed conflict in Congo, and she used to say that the war had scattered and divided so many families, that she felt that the ties were much weaker in that part of the country.
Australian born in 1970 I’m now 54 been estranged from family since about 25, food in my house growing up was pretty ordinary AMA..
Northern Europe (Scandinavians and UK, Scotland, etc)
Germanic cultures
Less popular Eastern Europe
Canadians (Waspy or descendants of the above)
Some Americans (if from these ancestors)
These are cases where you leave a party or wedding hungry. Many of these folks also aren’t close to family and see them maybe once a year, if that.
How many Americans only speak to family at holidays?
I’m white American and our family is estranged and our food is bland. Education was the only thing that mattered.
Doesn’t seem to be very important here in Scandinavia. Our food kinda sucks and a lot of people I know aren’t very close to their family.
American culture often places little value on family. Consider this, most non Americans think sticking your parents in a nursing home is unthinkable. It’s common across the globe to have multi generational households. So most people spend their entire lives sharing daily meals with family.
Meanwhile in the US, it’s common to either kick your kid out at 18 or be advised to kick them out if they don’t get a job. Again, familial ties in most other cultures are considered mostly unbreakable. This can result in some toxic behavior, like when a parent tries to strong arm their children into changing their lives inexorably to fit their expectations.
TLDR: Americans often don’t really understand that familial bonds are a daily obligation and has your whole life revolve around them.
UK. btitish food – we all know.
Kids tend to move out as soon as they can. Once the parents are elderly, instead of having them move in with them to care for them, they shove them in a old folks home or leave them living alone.
Dutch
Dutch. Of course family is important but nowhere near the way it is in other cultures (confirmed by several dutchies). Lots of my Dutch friends were shook when they learnt I call my mum everyday, they apparently call theirs twice a week and that’s it. It’s just a different approach, they explained to me that friends and family are on the same level, which I can’t relate to due to growing up in a different culture.
Regarding food, it’s a travesty. They don’t care at all, eat bread at every meal despite having amazing opinions.
I second the commenter pointing out varying degrees of importance. Even within subcultures in the U.S. I can see these differences, and my friends and I actually speak about them a lot.
For example, I’m from a family of mostly German descent who immigrated to the Midwest in the 1800s and are very much American(TM). Though I’m very close to my family, there is not a strong sense of familial obligation – each person is very independent, and customs like parents relying on children, for example, are basically unheard of.
A dear friend of mine is from an Italian-American family in the northeast, most of whom immigrated in the last 2 generations. Her family has a much stronger sense of obligation. For example, it would be unthinkable for her not to travel home whenever they ask her to, even if it disrupts her own life, or to ask them to get a hotel room when visiting, whereas my parents would never ask those things of me, and if they did I’d refuse.
Neither of us is closer, per se, to our families, but the weight of their influence in our life differs greatly, even though we’re both American.
Sweden
I worked with some Russian guys, and would ask them about Russian food, and they would give me the blankest stares and ask why would I want to try that when there’s everything else around. They also did everything they could to not be at home with fam.
British food is notoriously terrible compared to the food of a lot of other countries. I say this as a British person. I’m not saying we’re all bad cooks or that all food here is bad… but I think food in a lot of other countries … is… better.
Maybe not the answer you’re looking for but in queer communities there is far less emphasis on “biological” family than there is among cishet people.
Queer people being rejected by their parents is a common experience, and as such we’re quick to encourage one another to establish healthy boundaries with family members that repeatedly cause anti-queer distress. This can result in queer people distancing themselves from toxic family dynamics more readily than cishet people.
Secondly we’re also big on “found family”, i.e. people that you choose to be in your life can be as close as family without being biologically related to you.
Uruguay’s food is basically the same as Argentina: asado, dulce de leche, and mate which is not even a food. Family is somewhat important but if you don’t like your family you just go no contact and you’ll be alright.
I’m an American. The vastness of our country has separated a lot of families. Food is important, but not as important as in many other countries.