Why I Can’t Trust Someone That Doesn’t Love Food
It’s deeper than what’s on your plate.
Food is more than an indulgence and form of sustenance. It involves aspects of sharing, community, ritual, nostalgia, identity, performance, and well, the list goes on.
What I’ve come to terms with is this: I don’t trust someone who doesn’t love food. I cannot put my trust, something sacred, in a person who isn’t interested in exploring, tasting, and learning about the food of a new culture. Food to me is an expression of curiosity. Being able to accept and taste new things determines ones ability to accept the different, and to taste the life someone else walks.
Allow me to paint a romantic picture. I used to date a guy who would only eat frozen chicken fingers and burgers. It was devastating to me. Obviously, that relationship did not last long.
I come from a cross cultural background. My mother is Thai and my father is Dutch. I would spend my summers in Thailand exploring different varieties of Northern Thai village foods. We would eat anything ranging from deep fried crickets to cow intestines. “Exotic” foods are my comfort foods. They are meals that are shared amongst my family during crisis and celebration.
So, when I was dating this guy, lets call him Bland, I came home one day with BBQ pork buns, excited to share with him the food of my childhood. Bland’s first reaction was: “EW what is THAT?! That looks DISGUSTING!”
His general disgust, and what seemed like actual hatred, towards the very thing that defined my cultures snack time really stumped me. The person who I loved wasn’t even able to try the food from my walk of life; to taste or to open up to the experiences and flavours of a cross-cultural childhood and experience.
To say, “you’re going to eat THAT?” not only is a rejection of my own person, but it demonstrated his willingness to reject my own ethnicity. Rejecting the food of your partner is rejecting them. It isn’t necessary to actually like the food you are being offered. But tasting, trying, and attempting to understand the cultural background your partner is from, beyond aesthetic pleasure, shows that you are willing to open up to them.
Even if it’s difficult. Even if it’s different for you.
Now, I do enjoy mac ‘n’ cheese or a hot dog once in a while, but it is a dishonest form of eating for me. It doesn’t reveal my true identity, an identity that I felt I couldn’t embrace with someone whom I felt close to. Bland’s reaction showed me that he wasn’t willing to see the “Thai-ness” that I am. He wanted me to stick with eating frozen Po-Go Sticks (which are delicious, but packed with calories no one deserves) and to keep my “exotic” Asian diet away from our relationship.
So this is why I don’t trust a person who doesn’t love food, or who isn’t even willing to taste or learn or grow to like a foreign cultures food. To me, it shows their unwillingness to love.
Love is about acceptance, openness and generosity. When looking at that in terms of food culture, if one were to reject or mock new foods associated with who I am, then they aren’t able to love the person that I am culturally, emotionally, and spiritually.
