Food is not only culture, it's diplomacy: Leah Selim at TEDxGowanus

Leah Selim is a co-founder of Global Kitchen, a social enterprise that hosts immigrant-led cooking classes to promote cultural exchange and awareness through food. In her recent TEDx talk, she discussed how food, identity, environment and politics intersect - contributing to a larger concept known as "gastrodiplomacy". It is through the communal act of sharing food that ideas can be exchanged freely, an essential first step in growing a community.

For more talks from TEDxGowanus, please visit www.tedxgowanus.com

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For those of you who've been lucky enough to
travel abroad in the recent past,

think about the first things you wanted to do
and see. You probably had some museums and

historical landmarks to check out, but I'll bet you
also had eating food near the top of your to do list,

and not just because you're hungry, but also
because so much of actually experiencing

the culture of a new place is trying the food. It's
why we try pasta in Italy and why we try tacos

and tamales in Mexico, and it's definitely why
Anthony Bourdain tried warthog anus in Namibia,

and not just for the TV ratings. So every
destination has a dish or cuisine associated

with it, and that's because food is so deeply tied
to our culture and our identity.

What we cook is an expression of who we are
and where we come from and when we are

traveling abroad, trying the food from that country
is a great way to experience the culture firsthand.

In the same respect, when you're moving to a
new country, cooking and eating the food

from your home is a great way to feel connected
and nostalgic about that place and bring you back

to your roots and your foundation. Sharing that food
with other people can instantly connect you

to people very much unlike yourself.
Commensality is a stepping stone for building

friendships and communities and strengthening
ties between disparate groups. So today,

there's also a growing trend among governments
and middle power countries to

create government-funded gastrodiplomacy
programs, which basically serve as a tool

to introduce the cuisine of a country to a foreign
audience in order to gain awareness for

the country itself. So as our world becomes
increasingly globalized, cooking and sharing food

have become powerful tools for preserving
culture outside of its cultural and geographical context.

So I'm here today to talk to you about the
importance of maintaining this diversity

in our culinary landscape and preserving and
sharing cultural traditions through food.

So to start, as Americans, our food culture is a
little bit muddled. First of all, the food that's

typically associated with the American diet isn't
really good food. I'm thinking mostly of like

ballpark Franks and fast food cheeseburgers,
things that taste really good,

but aren't getting any Michelin stars. Second
of all, America is a country of immigrants,

so our cuisine is constantly being influenced by
food that's coming in from different countries

and because of that, even though I'm a
fifth-generation American, I never really strongly

identified with a specific American food culture
until fairly recently when I was geographically

removed from it. And that happened in the
summer of 2010 when I went to Uganda

to live and work on a farm with a farmer named
Bob and his family in order to learn more about

agriculture and food systems in developing
countries. So while I was there, about four weeks

into my trip, I got malaria which unfortunately
is very common in Uganda,

it's much like getting the flu here, and I knew this.
I had been to malaria endemic countries

before. I was well aware that with a quick
diagnosis and proper drugs, it was

totally treatable. But being a stereotypical American
when I was sitting in that little rural hospital, and

that doctor told me that I did in fact have malaria,
I freaked out. I was really scared, and I think

it was the first time in my adult life that I felt truly
homesick. So in the following weeks,

even though I couldn't actually eat anything,
I was dreaming about American food.

And whenever I got a chance, I would text my
sister and ask her what she was eating,

and what she eaten earlier that day, and what
everyone else around her was eating, and

I was dreaming about chocolate and coffee and
bread, and I think that the food that

I miss the most, and this won't come as a
surprise to anyone was cheese. And ironically

during that week when I was getting better, my
entire extended family was vacationing

in the state of Wisconsin, cheese capital of
America. So this food homesickness was really

weird to me. It was something that I had never
experienced before, but it's actually

really common among people who are moving
into a new country and adjusting to a new culture.

Reconciling that old and familiar food with the
new unfamiliar food is part of a larger process

called acculturation. And although this is different
for everyone, cultural anthropologists have

mapped into roughly four stages. So the first is the
honeymoon stage, which is pretty self-explanatory.

It's basically when everything is new and exciting,
and you're like on an adventure in this new country.

And then the next is the hostility or the conflict
phase, at which point those differences in culture

become grating and everyday life can become a
little bit frustrating. And then you move up

through the adjustment phase when you can
objectively identify the differences in culture

and kind of approach it with a more lighthearted
sense of humor. And then finally there's

the home stage at which point you're about as
close to assimilation as you're going to get.

Most people adapt either by cultural identity or
relinquish their old cultural identity entirely and

it should be noted that these stages are much
more pronounced when you're moving into

a culture that is starkly different from your original
culture. And also when you have little to no contact

with your home culture. So I found a lot of
references to them in literature for

peace corps volunteers, for example. So I was
never in Uganda or anywhere else long enough

to go through all four of these stages, but in a
country like America, that has a large immigrant

population, people are going through this new
curve of cultural adjustment all the time.

It's been well documented, and there's actually a
lot of really interesting literature about the effect

it can have on food purchasing and food consumption
habits among immigrant communities.

So one study of Korean immigrants in America
found that when they first moved here,

they were very adventuresome in their purchase
of American food products, and then they kind of

quickly moved into the hostility phase at which point
they reverted back to purchasing more traditional

Korean food products, and then made their way
up to the home phase at which point they were

purchasing those American food products with
about the same frequency that they had been

when they first moved here. There's also multiple
studies showing that when non-western immigrants

move into Western countries, like America, their
rates of obesity and diabetes rise to about

the same levels as those that are in their new
adopted home. And this trend is associated directly

with their increased consumption of Western foods.
And finally a study of Mexican immigrants

in America found that in just one generation the
influence of the Mexican diet was almost

entirely lost. So as these communities are moving
into second and third and fourth generations,

they're losing some of the traditional foods to
make way for the American foods. And with that

they're losing some of that sense of culture and
identity. And this experience was actually illustrated

beautifully in a recent New York Times article in
which the author herself and the subject

she interviews discuss desperately trying to hold
on to those recipes and culinary traditions

from their parents and their grandparents in order
to maintain a connection to family and to

their home country. She says, "Over generations, palates evolve and customs fade. The old

ways of cooking are quietly forgotten." So in an
effort to kind of curb that loss of cultural capital,

as social scientists like to call it, me and two of
my friends from graduate school, Ryan and Pete,

started Global Kitchen which is a social enterprise
that hosts immigrant-led cooking classes.

And our classes are based in the New York City
area. And all of the chefs that we work with

teach the cuisine from their home country.
So they'll be home cooks, and they'll sometimes

be classically trained chefs, but they
always teach traditional foods to our students

that are common in their countries of origin.
Some of these foods are well known to an American

audience, such as Filipino adobo and Indian curry,
and some you'd be hard-pressed

to find in any restaurant even in New York City.
A good example of that is Egyptian koshary

which is actually incredibly popular in Egypt,
but because it's so labor-intensive and

there's so little demand for it in the United States,
there's no real justification for serving it

in restaurants here. So one of the things that we
really like to emphasize in our classes is

the cultural and historical traditions and context
behind the food. So this can come from a chef

instructor talking about cooking this particular
dish with her parents and her grandparents when

she was growing up, or it can mean talking about
trade routes and a history of colonization and

how those influence the dishes in the ingredients
in a particular country.

A really good example of that would be the
Spanish influence on Filipino cuisine, bringing in dishes

like paella. And then finally we like to incorporate
cultural elements into the classes themselves.

So with our Ethiopian class, our chef instructors
perform a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony.

And this is a part of daily life in Ethiopia. It usually
involves roasting beans over a fire or stove,

and then grinding them by hand with a mortar
and pestle or with a coffee grinder in our case,

and then brewing the coffee in front of your guests
and serving it to them, and in Ethiopia it's meant to

signify friendship and hospitality towards the
people that you're welcoming into your home.

So what we really want to do with Global Kitchen
besides the classes is create this platform

for cultural exchange. And we also want to record
these recipes in these culinary traditions that

otherwise wouldn't be documented. And we're not
the only ones with this idea.

Some of you may have heard of "Eat With" which
is a service that's rapidly expanding over the world,

and it's basically a way to connect to hosts in a
country that you're traveling to and then go to

their home and they'll serve you a meal. There's
also a really awesome restaurant in Pittsburgh

called "Conflict Kitchen," and they only serve
cuisines from countries with which the United States is

in conflict. So this would be places like
Afghanistan, Venezuela, and Cuba. And

finally UNESCO has actually added specific
cooking styles from countries like

Japan, France, Turkey, and Mexico to it's
intangible cultural heritage list. And these are all

small examples of gastrodiplomacy, which I
mentioned earlier. And defined broadly, simply means

communicating your culture and your identity
through food. But in the public diplomacy context,

gastrodiplomacy is actually a tool that governments
use to tap into people's emotional connection

to food in order to gain influence and raise brand
awareness about the country itself

in an international setting. And it's also a fantastic
way to encourage tourism to your country.

So the first country to do this was Thailand. In 2002,
it started the Global Thai program. And at the

time, there are only five thousand Thai restaurants
in the world, and their goal is simply to raise that

number to eight thousand. And they did this by
helping Thai restaurateurs in all over the world

to gain access to funding and ingredients that
they needed in order to build up their restaurants.

So as you may have guessed, based solely on the number of Thai restaurants in Brooklyn alone,

the program was incredibly successful. Today,
there are upwards of 20,000 Thai restaurants

in the world. Thai food has become one of the
most well-known international cuisines and

Thailand itself is a wildly popular tourist destination.
And so other government saw this, and they

followed suit. Korea started a gastrodiplomacy
program in 2009. It was a 40 million dollar program

and now just a few years later, Korean food is
consistently ranked among the top American

food trends. Taiwan started a program that
helped throw gourmet food festivals on the island

and also started a think tank, the sole purpose
of which was to figure out new ways to

introduce Taiwanese restaurants and coffee
shops and food products to a foreign audience.

And Peru started a gastrodiplomacy program
that helped make Peruvian food more

recognizable to a wider audience, and Peru itself
was recently ranked the number one culinary

destination in the world, and it expects to see
one billion dollars in culinary tourism just this year.

So this might seem really simple, but gastrodiplomacy
is actually really working as a tool to

introduce audiences to the food and the culture of
a new country. Food is an easy and incredibly

effective way to introduce an unfamiliar culture to
a foreign audience and then suddenly overtime

make the country itself more approachable, as
was the case with Thailand. And on a more

personal level, sharing our food culture with
others and letting them share theirs with us

can create an immediate connection. This is a
picture of me mixing cake batter in Uganda

and simultaneously trying to make gaucho pants
happen. (Laughs) But when I was there,

we cooked together as a family nearly every day, and we were usually cooking the food

from the farm. So it was during those moments
when we were cooking and we were eating that

we actually got to know each other outside of the
context of work, and it was also during

those moments when I felt most included in the
family unit itself and most connected to

Ugandan culture. Similarly since starting Global Kitchen,
I've been able to witness connections like that

happen all the time. One example that really
stood out to me was when we had an Ethiopian

class and we had three couples come in who had
all adopted children from Ethiopia. And they wanted

to learn about the food and the culture in order to
share that experience with their children.

I thought it was a really wonderful example of what
Global Kitchen is trying to do, and it inspired me

to continue working to preserve culture through
food, and I hope it's through this example and

others out there that will inspire you to do
the same. Thank you so much.