The West celebrates and claims ownership over global foods while ostracizing the migrants it belongs to and ignoring a violent, lingering history of colonial trade that continues to shape worldwide plates, palates, and people.
In 2018, Trevor Noah did a bit about how Americans who do not want migrants in the country should not have any rights to the food that they bring. Shortly after, a Reddit thread went viral, building on Noah’s quote on the history of popular ingredients [Image 1].
One of food’s most powerful attributes is its ability to evoke deep emotions. Food is a unifier: in times of growth, food is used to strengthen populations. Small beer used to be an alternative to water, and a drinkable fermented malt porridge was a staple at ancient Egyptian construction sites. Food incites curiosity and creativity: when belts tighten just enough so that we cannot travel, restaurants and food experiments become gateways to the world. Crispy banana-sriracha sushi, kimchi tacos, and rose water or saffron rum babas are all things I’ve witnessed in times of economic uncertainty.
But food is also a divider: in times of political uncertainty, when students are fighting governments, women are fighting for the right to survive, men are fighting a changing social order, and anti-immigration laws are rife, we become homesick. That after-school McDonald’s fries-and-soft serve combo, that homemade pickle, the bourbon-rub pork your grandparents made – in times of political unease and fear, our taste buds crave the familiar and the nostalgic.
In any scenario, however, what we rarely do is recognize, understand, or appreciate the story of our food.
Socio-political uncertainty stems from shifting power dynamics, and, in the case of food, capitalist greed. Over 350 years of exploration, exploitation and trade (the economic arms of colonialism) expanded access to previously unknown ingredients from around the world. With ingredients flowing both eastward and westward, the result is a form of gastronomic and agricultural imperialization where cultures cultivate and claim ingredients as their own. Vanilla, now associated with Madagascar or Tahiti and globally used for baking, is actually South American in origin. The tomato, now integral to Italian cuisine, was only imported from South America in the 1600s. Likewise, South America was the original cultivator of the potato, which ironically caused Ireland’s population to fall by almost half during the Great Famine in the 1850s.
Facilitating trade that flowed in the opposite direction, the Dutch were the first traders to become rich through the East Asian spice trade: cloves, black pepper, nutmeg, mace, cardamom, ginger. The multi-billion euro Christmas industry today, with its sweet, spiced aromas, wouldn’t exist without these savoury, South- and Southeast- Asian ingredients. Without global colonial trade, chicken tikka masala would never have become Britain’s national dish. Kopi (strong coffee with condensed milk and sugar) would never have become Singapore’s national beverage. And the sugar barons of the Caribbean would not exist.
The food item and its origins have been decoupled: the originators no longer own the food. And the consequences to the community’s identity could not be clearer: your food belongs here, but we’re not so sure you do.
Capitalism and colonialism are destructive, exploitative socio-politico-economic phenomena. They cause deep and long-lasting disruption, which can take generations to soothe, if it ever does. For instance, the slave trade in the United States that started in the 1600s resulted in legally binding segregation that lasted well into the late 20th century. The socio-psychological consequences continue today: Black Americans are still disproportionately likely to be incarcerated, homeless, unemployed, undereducated, have lower credit scores, or die from curable diseases or childbirth, 400 years after slavery started and 160 years after it legally ended in the Americas. Indentured servitude—an expansion of post-abolition slavery—brought South- and East-Asians to Southern Africa, northern South America, and the Caribbean, where their forced labour cultivated the non-native sugar and spice crops, and their nourishment came from adaptations of the cuisines they brought with them.
In South Asia, 2.5 million Indian soldiers fought in the Second World War, but those numbers have been washed into oblivion: the Allies won the war; that’s what Western-centric education systems taught most of us around the world. The fact that Allied war chests were filled by agriculture-led exploitation and global trade is forgotten or hidden. Alongside the exploitation of Indian and Ceylonese tea farmers for Britain’s national wartime drink, more than three million people died during the Bengal famine of 1942 — a toll exacerbated by the audacious decision to export Indian wheat to wartime efforts in Europe and Africa over keeping supplies for the starved local populace (Shattered Lands, Sam Dalrymple, 2025).
Epigenetically, communities of African and South Asian origin across the Americas, South Asia, and South and East Africa suffer today because of the effects of the trauma brought on by, among other things, starvation due to high physical labour. “Kari”, a South Indian term for a specific pepper-spiced sauce, became the generic “Curry” in the mid-1700s, and is now universally synonymous with any veg or meat dishes made in a fat-rendered spicy sauce. The truth that the word ‘curry’ does not actually exist—and that the people who created the cuisine it is credited to have been dispersed around the world, mostly through forced migration—was moot when the British co-opted the chicken tikka masala as their national dish in 2001. Today, so-called “curry” has become a dish that the British population reflexively go to their local ‘curry house’ to consume in abundance.
The word is now so common that it is used to describe any spiced saucy dish. Rendang, a dark, flavourful, meaty Malay speciality, is now sold as a premade, convenient rendang “curry” paste base; Japanese katsu with karē-raisu became katsu-curry-rice(a British-navy-inspired dish respectively inspired by Indian cuisine; Thai curry paste is now available in at least four ‘flavours’ along with Surinamese chicken curry; even American curry-gravy with its packet-powder bases now carries the same, falsified name. After 400 years of global trade and appropriation, the value of the term ‘curry’ and the South- and Southeast-Asian ingredients involved is unquantifiable. And yet, one of the most ubiquitous terms in the Western culinary dictionary remains “curry”.
That we face the impact of colonialism today is unsurprising, considering its relative recency. The term ‘Middle East’ is a distinctly colonial term, designed for Western European colonizers to differentiate between their Asian holdings closer to home and those much further east. It is being quietly dismantled, as decolonialist scholars and politicians have begun referring to MENA as SWANA: South West Asia and North Africa, a more geographically accurate description of the region. Yet the colonial legacy of this region’s food history still goes undiscussed.
One of Germany’s most popular dishes is the doner kebab. With origins in the SWANA region, the kebab was brought to Europe in the 1970s by immigrants from countries including Syria, Türkiye and Lebanon. The delectable combination of roasted meat, fresh salad, soft and spicy sauces, and unleavened bread contributed over €2.3 billion in revenue to the German economy in 2024. There are more than 1600 kebab shops in Berlin alone, run mostly by SWANA migrants (some now second- or third-generation). And yet, despite the public’sreverence for migrants’ food, and the billions contributed to the economy as a result, collective attitudes towards SWANA migrants in Germany are dire: the country saw a 33% rise in hate crimes against Muslim and SWANA-origin communities between 2024 and 2025. Of the 64 attacks on religious institutions, 61 were targeted at mosques. The food item and its origins have been decoupled: the originators no longer own the food. And the consequences to the community’s identity could not be clearer: your food belongs here, but we’re not so sure you do.
The arrows point clearly: violence and uncertainty in the SWANA region over the past 70 years have created a cognitive dissonance between the people on the news and the family around the corner. Migrants’ arrival, and indeed their existence as the family around the corner, is very much a consequence of the military and political abuse most North African and West Asian countries continue to face today. Living in safety requires escaping danger, and may even require living in relative seclusion, resulting in pockets of culturally separated communities in ‘host’ countries. The fact that incoming immigrants bring their food and inject cash into the economy is a benefit that goes without consideration, as Western governments continue to ostracize immigrant communities and often to drive them out entirely. The instigators of this oppression are obvious: Western powers, usually former colonizers, playing politics on the presumption that such is their right.
Even as we consume their biryani, noodles, or pasta, we see the family around the corner being victimized – a relation that, in itself, is a dehumanizing power imbalance that limits empathy and social cohesion. Worse still, political victimization builds a sense of helplessness in those perpetuating xenophobic harm, creating a dangerous mix of fear, guilt, and ultimately, blanket oppression. This less delicious combination of political fear and social uncertainty makes people seek the familiar. Familiar people, familiar places and smells, and of course, familiar food. And when those are not available, we struggle with the chaos. The danger zone is precisely where the subsequent despair and desire for familiarity result in an echo chamber of opinions that’s created out of a need for safety. We forget then that our comfort comes at someone else’s cost. In the case of food, it’s the cost of a culture’s history, language, culinary customs, and, at extremes, their culinary dignity.
But we have already established that food is a unifier. When Trevor Noah joked about anti-immigrant haters not being allowed certain foods, he underscored a universal truth: food may be for everyone, but it requires honour. Ingredients and recipes are living things and must be treated as such. They evolve through time, experiences, expertise, experimentation, and trust. They can also be abused, misused, mistrusted or taken advantage of, forgotten, or ruined. All of which sounds like what people go through, too. Separating people from their food is as criminal as separating penguin partners: they live together, they create together, they die together. In the political volatility we experience today, we need to celebrate food, its heritage, and its worth to keep us honest, grounded, humble, and fulfilled.
Image Credit: Czeva / Wikimedia Commons ( CC BY 4.0).
