What is cultural curiosity and how it impacts food trends?

We all know that cultural curiosity drives cultural awareness. But what’s cultural awareness? The dictionary definition describes it as “the understanding of the differences between us and people from other countries or other backgrounds, especially in the differences in attitudes and values.” Extending from that theory, cultural curiosity is nothing but the desire or eagerness to learn and understand those values and appreciate their heritage and how that shapes them as individuals or a community. It helps us to develop a new perspective on the world, makes us more sensitive to other cultures, and accepting of change and newness. And being social creatures, it’s instinctive for us to share our perspectives and experiences with others.

Food, like every other art, is an expression of one’s culture. What we eat, how we procure/make it, who makes it, how we consume it, and what drives us to eat the food we eat, all come together as a holistic presentation of our heritage. Cultural curiosity helps you find the answers to these questions through the intimate experience of eating, dining, and cooking. This learning eventually inspires us to connect with people, their communities, and sometimes, with other nations.

For hundreds of years, travelers and explorers headed beyond their borders and discovered new cultures around the world. By sampling their food and bringing back home the newfound flavors, they created an exchange of cultures between countries. And that’s how, hundreds of years ago, Oriental spices reached the farthest corners of Europe and the Americas, just like French and Italian cuisine ended up in almost every country around the world.

Cultural curiosity and food trends

Food, as we know it today, is more than a mere requirement for survival and sustenance; it’s a culture in itself, or at least an integral part of world culture. One of the most significant effects of cultural curiosity is food trends. The very reason why we get to eat food from different corners of the world is that someone, somewhere out there became curious once and decided to explore food from another culture. For instance, during the 1960s, Thai cuisine saw a rise in popularity as a product of cultural exchange. Today, Thai food has become a part of the American culinary collage.

Cultural curiosity and food trend is a two-way street. On one side, intrigue makes people want to sample newer flavors and different cuisines, and explore different ingredients than what they usually eat. On the other, because there’s constant evolution in food and food trends, we try to incorporate that into our daily food habits, thus creating new cultures of our own.

Here’s an example.

The zero-waste food trend started in the 1980s but it got largely ignored through the 90s and 2000s. It only became widespread and a household practice only in recent years. The food industry has been quite wasteful for the last 50-odd years but it was not until the 2010s that the zero-waste lifestyle movement resurfaced and began to influence people. Today, there are large groups of people around the world, from professional chefs to home cooks promoting a no-waste eating culture.

Similarly, the culture of veganism that began in 1944 only became mainstream in the later part of the last decade. Why? Because the more curious people became about that practice, the more they tried to connect to that culture of eating differently, implementing the same in their own lives. And thus, veganism became a trending practice and established a whole new culture of eating.

With social media almost dictating our lives and lifestyle, it’s not hard to adopt a new food culture. Wherever and whenever there is a free exchange of communication, there is and always will be the exchange of cultures, because, by our very nature of being a social species, we are curious. It can take effect in the smallest of actions, from picking up a new baking technique from a viral TikTok video, or simply wanting to sample a maca root smoothie.