Food, Phobia, China

It has been over a year since I moved to Shanghai to study. And the thing I miss the most is Indian Food. I belong to the group of people who try to seek for Indian food regardless of the country. I enjoy cuisines of numerous countries, but the end of the day Indian cuisine gives me the satisfaction of a wholesome meal. Yes, I choose to overlook the layers of oil and massive salt content.

Daily I dream of a Banana leaf cuisine greeting me in the morning and instead I wake up to Tea (which is not even ginger chai) and biscuits. I love Indian Food and I love the Indian sweets more. They are easier to purchase back in my home country. But here, I did manage to get my hands on jilebi, which lacked the genuine taste I was craving for.

Some people have an unexplained paranoia with health. I call it paranoia. They are stingy with salt and claim it is healthy. Do they even taste their food before serving?! Cos there is no taste! I could have screamed that out at a dining table, but come on I am nice. They also stay away from sweet stuff! My aunts are a classic example of wanting to stay healthy but falling ill more often than not. They have sugar-o-phobia. No, they are not diagnosed with diabetes. They just automatically back off from Indian sweets because they are sweet! Who says that? They are sweets and obviously meant to be sweet. Any reduction in sugar content in my Indian sweet will call for a protest from my part. I am serious.

My aunts fear chilies as well. Way too spicy and they go all teary. Some enjoy the spice if we see them tear, others are crying for help like my aunts.

Phobia itself would cause illness. Moderate consumption is what an individual needs and not silly phobias that minimize the variety of the food we consume and limits the taste. My mom is an awesome cook. Whose mother isn’t? She cooks a whole lot of Indian dishes which never made me fat and I never found out why. Here in China, I got rounder. Plus I am going healthy. Not that I want to but rather because of the lack of variety of what I can consume here. Vegetarians are looked upon with utter shock. They give you the look as if I had just sprouted another arm that instant.

Which also explains why Chinese eat everything and anything?

Article written by Usha Amudan.

Tags: food and culture, food culture, food humor, food talks, humor

This entry was posted on November 8, 2009 at 7:00 am and is filed under Food Xplorer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.