"Cultural Food"

When we hear "cultural food" we think of a specific group of people eating only certain types of food. But, what happens when the food we see as belonging to a culture has been skewed and no longer truly represents their heritage, or when a person of that culture doesn't follow the norm and eats something different? You might not want to admit it, but we all know what most people think about these situations, that "of course that represents their culture, I see it in all the movies" and "are they even a part of their culture if they don't eat that?" It is as if people fail to realize that, even if someone is different from them, they are still human beings and cannot be held to rules about how they should live because of those differences.
In "Reclaiming True Grits" by Bryant Terry and "Eating the Hyphen" by Lily Wong, we get firsthand knowledge of experiences like these and how it feels to be on the receiving end of such judgments. Terry describes society's definition of "soul food" and what it has become opposed to what it used to be. Today, soul food has come to mean food that is cheap and unhealthy when it used to represent food that was locally grown and high in nutrients. Wong tells us what it is like to be Chinese and yet feel as if you don't fit in your culture, because she Americanizes the way she eats dumplings. There is nothing wrong with food representing heritage or culture, but when we develop our own rules concerning the people it represents, it becomes a method of control and shame. Food is something that sustains our lives and displays our personalities, not something to use to control or define a group of people.