From Chinese to Italians and beyond, maligning a culture via its foods is a longtime American habit

NEW YORK — It’s a habit as American as apple pie: accusing immigrants and minorities of behaving strangely or disgustingly when it comes to what and how they eat and drink, a kind of synonym for saying they don’t belong.

The latest iteration came during Tuesday’s presidential debate, when former President Donald Trump a false online storm put in the spotlight around the Haitian immigrant community of Springfield, Ohio. He repeated the unfounded claim, previously spread by his running mate, J.D. Vance, that immigrants were stealing dogs and cats, the prized pets of their American neighbors, and eating them. The outcry gained enough attention that officials had to step in to refute it, saying there was no credible evidence of such a thing.

But while it may be enough to turn your stomach, such food-related accusations aren’t new. Far from it.

In the late 1800s, Chinese immigrant communities on the West Coast were insulted and vilified regarding food as they came to the United States in greater numbers. In later decades, they spread to other Asian and Pacific Islander communities, such as Thai or Vietnamese. Just last year, a Thai restaurant in California was hit with the stereotype, which caused such an outburst of undeserved vitriol that the owner had to close his business and move to another location.

There’s this idea that “you’re engaging in something that’s not just a matter of taste, but a violation of what it means to be human,” says Paul Freedman, a professor of history at Yale University. By portraying Chinese immigrants as people who would eat things that Americans would refuse, they became the “other.”

Other communities, while not accused of eating pets, have been criticized for the strangeness of what they cooked when they were newcomers, such as Italians using too much garlic or Indians using too much curry powder. Long-standing minority groups in the country were and still are not exempt from racist stereotypes—think derogatory references to Mexicans and beans, or insults to African Americans about fried chicken and watermelon.

“There’s a slur for almost every ethnicity based on the type of food they eat,” says Amy Bentley, a professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University. “And that’s a really good way to belittle people.”

That’s because food isn’t just sustenance. Human eating habits embed some of the building blocks of culture — things that set different peoples apart and that can be used as fodder for ethnic hatreds or political polemics.

“We need it to survive, but it’s also highly ritualized and highly symbolic. So the birthday cake, the anniversary, things are commemorated and celebrated with food and drink,” Bentley says. “It’s just so deeply integrated into all parts of our lives.”

And because “there are specific variations in the way people perform those rituals, how they eat, how they’ve structured their cuisines, how they eat their food,” she adds, “it can be a theme of commonality … or it can be a form of clear separation.”

It’s not just about the what. Insults can also come from the how — eating with hands or chopsticks instead of forks and knives, for example. It can be seen in class-based prejudice against poorer people who didn’t have the same access to elaborate table settings or couldn’t afford to eat in the same way as the rich — and who, out of necessity, used different, perhaps unfamiliar ingredients.

Such disdain can have direct repercussions in current events. During the Second Gulf War, for example, Americans angry about French opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq began calling French fries “freedom fries.” And a common insult in the United States for Germans during the First and Second World Wars was “krauts” — an attack on a culture in which sauerkraut was a traditional food.

“What was wrong with the way urban immigrants ate?” wrote Donna R. Gabaccia in her 1998 book, “We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans.” Assessing early 20th-century attitudes and the era’s demands for “100 percent Americanism,” she noted that “sauerkraut became ‘victory cabbage’” and lamented in one account an Italian family that “still ate spaghetti, not yet assimilated.”

Such stereotypes have persisted despite the fact that the American palate has expanded significantly in recent decades, thanks in part to the influx of immigrant communities, with grocery books containing a wealth of ingredients that would have astonished earlier generations. The rise of restaurant culture has introduced many diners to authentic examples of cuisines that in other eras might have required a passport.

Finally, Bentley says, “when immigrants move to another country, they bring their food habits with them and maintain them as best they can. … It’s so evocative of family, community, home. They’re just really material, multisensory manifestations of who we are.”

Haitian food is just one example. Communities like New York City have contributed to the culinary landscape, with ingredients like goat, plantains, and cassava.

So when Trump said that immigrants in Springfield — whom he called “the people who came in” — ate dogs and cats and “the pets of the people who live there,” the echoes of his comments played out not just in the food, but in the culture itself.

And while American tastes have broadened in recent decades, the persistence of food stereotypes and outright insults, whether based in fact or completely fabricated, shows that just because Americans eat more broadly doesn’t mean they’re tolerant or nuanced toward other groups.

“It’s a fallacy to think that,” Freedman says. “It’s like the tourist fallacy that travel makes us more understanding of diversity. The best example right now is Mexican food. So many people love Mexican food AND think immigration should be stopped. There’s no connection between enjoying a foreigner’s cuisine and that openness.”