BTBF Reflections: Two Articles in Conversation

  

    In the previous weeks, I explored the impact of trends on cultural food with my graphic novel and the impact of lunchbox bullying with my PSA. While the two topics may seem disconnected from one another, there is overlap in many of its components. Panigrahi, a freelance writer for The Foodsided, names cultural curiosity as a big factor of why cultural foods trend. This cultural curiosity is “nothing but the desire or eagerness to learn and understand those values and appreciate their heritage and how that shapes them as individuals or a community”. As I continued reading, I realized that social media often distorts cultural curiosity. For example, if a person posts a new food they try on their social media page and it becomes a trend, the person tried the food because of cultural curiosity but their followers may have other reasons. Because trends tend to echo, cultural curiosity gets passed like a word during a game of telephone. 

This game of telephone is also played in real life. Kids may not be able to grasp all the nuances of cultural curiosity; they only know what they know and believe that anything different is wrong or strange. Many kids that are victims of lunchbox bullying “respond by closing their lunchbox and not eating” because “the desire to fit in is more important than eating” (The Root Cause). Others, “eat their food but take on those feelings of I’m different or I don’t fit in”(The Root Cause). The impact of a lack of cultural curiosity can be detrimental for kids experiencing lunchbox bullying. Therefore, cultural curiosity is needed as much on social media as it is in schools and households. In fact, two out of five of the solutions that The Root Cause provides are “talk about food” and “be empathic” which are both rooted in exploring cultures and learning about cultures. 

Read Panigrahi's article "What is cultural curiosity and how it impacts food trends?"

Read The Root Cause's article "HELP YOUR KIDS BEAT THE LUNCHBOX BULLIES"