There are two types of white people. One type cannot handle spice beyond black pepper and the other drinks hotsauce called colon cleanser 9000.
Sometimes i think salt is a little too spicy
I think spiciness is so absent from many white gastronomic cultures (the reason why that is is a whole other story), that many people don’t really understand spice level as part of the flavor of a dish. It’s either “my mouth hurts i hate it, why did i put tabasco on the mashed potatoes i like bland” or “i have to be completely extra with this, i don’t know how to use it”
Makes you wonder how they lost them because horseradish and mustard, while a different type of spice compared to something based on chili, was quite popular and is still commonly found in supermarkets. But using something like a really strong mustard as a condiment seems to be exclusively the deal of people of the colon cleanser 9000 type
The consensus in Food Scholarship is that it’s a product of the enlightenment, colonialism and nationalism combined with remnants of galenic medical theory. Summarizing really hard, these required to construct colonized peoples as backwards and worthy of subjugation by characterizing everything they do as nocive or outside the European character, like: “their” food is spicy and bracing, while ours is balanced and delicate, effectively racializing certain ingredients/tastes. What we know about European food pre-enlightenment, people liked mustard, brassicas, and spice, but then the political economy of food and empire changed, and with it, the culinary superstructure.
There’s a great book about it I just finished reading: it’s called The Coloniality of Modern Taste
Fascinating, is there a reason it didn’t just play out as “their barbaric tongue burning chilis” vs. “our noble nose burning mustard”? Given the context I feel like there’s a lot of that stuff going on which seems easy enough to do here to both be racist and eat mustard
There was some of that, especially in places where Slavic peoples (very mustard and horseradish-centric) came into contact with Turkic ones (more spice oriented), so central and Eastern Europe, Western Asia. But as with most value judgements rooted or supportive of racism, their origin isn’t isolated to the thing itself, but rather a product of the tensions and fears that the food of the “other” would do, or to what national aims it serves. Slavs didn’t hate chilis/spice because they considered them barbaric, but because they associated them with the Turks they had been at war for centuries with. Racism was born as a consequence and a tool of empire, and it shouldn’t be understood otherwise, at least in that historical context.
The opposite happened when Chinese people came into contact with European gastronomy, too. There’s a famous book by a chinese noble in the 18th or 19th century, where he goes over all the rules Europeans have for food, and that they use to justify their food being “better”. Then he applies them to Chinese cuisines, and concludes that Chinese people do them all better than Europeans themselves. Except for desserts, he gives Europeans that win. These comparisons were useful to China, because it helped it find its place in a world so different from what it used to think it was the center of. So he was doing a “by your logic…” to Europeans, even though before the comparison wasn’t even necessary.
Also, from pre-modern times and all the way til around the late 1800s, European people saw food as something that became a part of your body and soul as you digested it, so it had the power to change fundamentally who you were. There are reports of imperial metropole communications warning colonizers not to eat too much of local crops or dishes, lest they become “as” the natives. So to them there was a very real existential fear that eating too much spicy food would have them lose themselves, and therefore becoming susceptible to the same conquest/weakness they had subjected the natives to.
Is “hot sauce enthusiast” a culturally white phenomenon? Seems that way to me but I lack perspective
I eat it plain and boring as fuck. Recurring peptic ulcer along with IBS means even white rice is too spicy.
If I have to get stuck in the meme group because of it, well you know… whatever. idgaf.
Personally, I think it’s fine to eat whatever way you can/want. The problem is that so many white people use spice as a signifier for otherness, and love to use food and taste to police whatever poc cook or eat, or what spaces we’re allowed to occupy, as with everything else we do. It’s like when I say “men are always xyz”, even though I know some wonderful men who don’t do xyz.
Individual white people who don’t eat spicy food for whatever personal reasons? I have no beef with y’al. White people as a category complaining about our food? Get bent crakkkers.
This is also just a meme, so I should chill, even though i make my living out of overthinking food stuff.
Hope your condition improves, as much as it can, though!
Got given some Indian food recently. Only one thing was spicy, and they warned me that it was spicy even for them. First bite I took was up there on spiciest things I’ve had. The rest somehow was about as spicy as a middle jalapeno.
Confused my cracker ass so much. I was prepared to up my tolerance and instead it was just good food.
Nah sometimes its just thai food
A couple years ago I remembered that my mom’s threat for ‘idle talk’ was to pour hot sauce on my tongue and it suddenly made more sense why I never developed a taste for spicy foods. It would be great if I could handle spicy but developing the tolerance is a chore at this point
“Idle talk” what the fuck mom
my mom’s threat for ‘idle talk’ was to pour hot sauce on my tongue
On the other hand, I love to order “5/5 very spicy” at an ethnic restaurant and getting the equivalent of tapatio on my food
We need this as an emoji
The only thing that can stop me is a seed from a pepper in my tum tumz!!!
Hmm, my family is white as hell but can’t get enough hot food, while I sweat eating the mild spicy wings. I wonder how much this theory takes into account the whitey tendency to smoke so much their taste buds scarcely function.
