 Food says so much about where you’ve come from, where you’ve decided to go, and the lessons you’ve learned. It’s geography, politics, tradition, belief and so much more and these next two weeks, we invite you to dig in and discover the rich, ever-evolving taste of America in 2011. Catch up on past coverage and stay tuned for the live blog from our Secret Supper in Chicago on Wednesday night starting at 6:00 CT. When you're all grown up and on your own and have lived a bit of life, it's easier to find peace with your weirdness. All those little and large things that set you apart as a child - your goofy-looking nose, talent for playing bassoon or obsession with the insides of small electronic devices - are what make you the gorgeous, fascinating, resilient adult you are today. Back then, though, kids may not have been so kind. Conformity is key in formative years - it teaches us all to walk on the right, chew with our mouths closed and remain reasonably clothed in public places. But it can have a cruel edge if wielded by the callow. Enter the elementary school lunchroom, where a break from the regimen of the day can often descend into food-flinging anarchy. PB&J or bologna sandwiches are the brown bag standard, and anything other than that is regarded as plain old freaky. Stella Fayman already felt like a visitor from another planet when she came to the United States from the Soviet Union in 1989, and lunchtime was a whole new universe of discomfort. She says, "I would bring Russian food and the kids would make fun of me and call my delicious homemade meal an 'alien sandwich.' Now as an adult, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches is a treat because of how much I used to envy those American kids with their Gushers and perfect little lunchboxes." It was the smell that gave away Maria Liberati. Growing up in suburban Philadelphia, Italian food didn't have the same have the same molto delizioso cachet that it does now. Liberati recalls, "I can remember attempting to find a place in a hidden spot to sit in the lunch room because I usually had an Italian type of panini sandwich dripping with olive oil and oregano or a cold meatball sandwich, and for dessert Italian biscotti and a piece of fruit. Others had the local Tastykakes for dessert. Everybody else would bring in a PB&J or bologna and cheese." She continued, "Of course my lunches were difficult to hide because you could smell that fragrant tomato sauce or the panini with fresh oregano from a mile away. I would place the lunch bag in the cloak room with my coat and try to cover the brown bag so to mask the fragrance." Fortunately, the shame faded over time; Liberati is now a noted cookbook author, specializing in Italian recipes. And again, the smell was a finger pointing straight at Hungarian immigrant Wanda S. Miarecki. In the 1950s, her grandmother would send her to school with a lunch of Limburger cheese sandwiches and a hard boiled egg and possibly sardines or a lard sandwich sprinkled with sugar. Sister Agnes would send Miarecki to sit at the back table in her Catholic school cafeteria and as she notes, "Needless to say, I didn't make any friends." For humor blogger Alexandra Rosas, the benefits of a traditional health drink were lost in translation. On the Tiki Tiki Blog, she recalls her Colombian grandmother sending her to school in the mid-1960s with a thermos of yerba buena, also known as mate, if she had a stomach ache. Already an outcast, she failed to win any new friends when she answered the class's questions about her beverage with a literal translation, "It's good weed drink!" - which they immediately ran home and told their parents. Pablo Solomon, now an artist and designer, grew in a multicultural home in Houston, and was bullied every day as a child. Lunch, however, provided a little bit of respite. Though his parents were poor, they got him a Roy Roger's lunch box. Solomon says, "Because my meals were often foods that the other kids could not recognize, at least they did not beat me up for my lunch. I would have such Mediterranean delicacies as kibba, dolmas, feta cheese, stuffed squash and cabbage - even baklava and huge date cookies. Throw in the occasional tamales, epanadas, sausages, containers of various soups, beans and stews, a variety of homemade breads - and I ate well." It was a comforting little slice of home in the middle of a trying day. Sandro Gerbini grew up in upstate New York to a father born in Lebanon. From first through third grades lunch was a similarly harrowing experience that turned out to be a cultural bridge to her classmates. Gerbini recalls, "While the other children brought their white bread, peanut butter and fluff lunches, my sister and I were packed with elaborate Lebanese pita wraps filled with ingredients ranging from hummus, baba ganoush, and Greek yogurt with olive oil, olives, tomatoes and mint. I distinctly remember multiple occasions where I came home to my parents in tears, begging them to pack normal kid lunches for me so that I might be spared the embarrassment of being scrutinized by my typically cruel first and second grade peers." Luckily, an astute teacher intervened, turning it into a cultural lesson for the class, inviting students to bring in a dish representative of their heritage. Gerbini says, "Most students were either brave, or were trying to appear so before their friends, and ended up trying a bit of everything, sampling cuisine from nearly two dozen different cultures. The event was such a hit that by the next week my formerly odd-ball lunch was suddenly in demand by former skeptics. I began exchanging bits and pieces of my lunch for whatever unusual foods their parents had packed for them and never again was my Lebanese lunch a source of distress for me." Julia Simens, who has lived on five continents and parlayed her expertise into a book called "Emotional Resilience and the Expat Child" fondly recalls a lesson in cultural pride gleaned from Jesse, a fellow student at her school. She says, "I peeked over his shoulder to see his packed lunch, a meat stick on fluffy white potatoes. As he ate more and more of his meal we had the conversation that got me to understand the difference between pounded yams and mashed potatoes. I even took a small bite, bland but doable food. When Jess pulled a large piece of meat off and smiled at me while he chewed and chewed. I had to ask him what type of meat he was eating. I never expected to hear 'snail.' When he offered Siemens contined, "I am sure Jesse would take his favorite treat with him ay place on the world that he moved to since it was his favorite and often showed up in his lunch bag." And Devna Shukla, an Associate Producer for CNN's AC360° digested an important insight in cultural pride in her essay Stall confessions: Life lessons from my lunch box, recounting the tale of finding a kachori in her lunchbox. It was a favorite at home, but in the lunchroom, she was so embarrassed, she ate it in a school bathroom stall. It was the most shameful moment of her life, she says, but she's since grown from it. Shukla writes, "It struck me that while our country has many obstacles facing us, it seems that we are embracing each ingredient that goes into the melting pot of American culture. I learned such an important lesson from my lunch box, and my kachori. Today I am proud of both my Indian and American roots. If I could go back, I would tell that little girl in the bathroom to be proud of herself and her culture, and eat that kachori with pride – outside the stall." Do you have any true tales of alienation or acceptance in the school cafeteria? Please share them in the comments below and we'll highlight our favorites in an upcoming post. |
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I just ate the school lunches,which were better than anything my mother made
She would make peanut butter sandwiches with regular butter,spreading it on the bread before the PB
The older she got the thicker the layer of butter got.Might as well be eating a stick of it
That isnt the only thing my parents screwed up,but if they had any sense they wouldnt have had kids
Mate and yerba buena are not the same thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerba_mate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerba_buena
Those lunches mentioned would now be staples of the "Mediterranean Diet" which is now so popular and proven to be healthier than most "American" diets.
I was born here, so could have had the usual white-bread-and-something, but I was a fat child and always brought some kind of diet lunch that was looked at very strangely. I wished so much to be allowed to have a sandwich...any sandwich! I also came from a kosher home and wanted nothing more than a ham salad sandwich, so I used to trade my yucky lunch (generally some kind of tuna salad with no mayo in a container-no bread, of course!) for a friend's ham salad. She was very nice about it, but lunch was agony then. Funny, when I first lost weight as an adult, I did it by skipping lunch...there are cultures and there are other things and I guess all kids feel strange and like outsiders until we grow up enough to see that everyone is pretty much the same in this regard and that we do have friends who don't judge. I still feel sorry for all the moms whose homemade lunches were the source of embarrassment...all that love, unenjoyed...
American kids and those who eat meat and dairy products at least 3 times a day, be it eggs, bacon, chicken fish, oil, cheese, pepperoni pizza etc. are already facing the risk of various diseases right from an young age. The best food is south indian food that has less oil. I learned from my neighbor a lot in 3 years all about healthy eating. My neighbor used to consume only 1 a gallon of oil for a family of four per year. Oil is used only for in very very minute quantity for dressing with spices ( also called tadka or wagar in hindi). Pulses are the main sources of protein – lentils like tuvar dhal, urad dhal etc. Yogurt is prepared at home – not bought from the store; oil less cooking with lots of vegetables is the key. All your animal protein and oil/fat is going to do is to destroy your kidneys and other organs. So going to McDonald's and burger king or Olive Garden may seem fun – but it is in reality like signing your own death warrant. Just look at how every other person has either cancer or heart problems or some other odd disease. It starts with the food that we eat and sadly we start doing it the wrong way beginning at a very young age. Folks do not know how to cook, some are lazy to cook, some like to eat out, some love pre-packed foods – they all lead to the same goal of ruined health. So to be healthy, you eat healthy and to do that you cook and control the ingredients that go into your dish.
I use about two gallons of extra virgin olive oil a year for our family of four, we're quite healty
Well South Indian food isn't necessarily the healthiest food, but the concept of it is. I try to have at least one vegetarian meal per day, I typically use natural fats to cook, rather than adding it. I never add oil to meats. Also, I eat a lot of vegetables. The closer a food is to its natural form, generally the healthier it is.
I'm never going to feed my kids PB & J on white bread. A turkey sandwich is way healthier (the real turkey, not lunchmeat) and takes the same amount of time. Although this view may change when I actually have said kids.
No wander "Americans" are so ill compared with the rest of "US".
Process food is a cultural indoctrination, one way to promote it is food bullying.
Can't find simple ingredients to cook your traditional dish, or they are so expensive that one can't afford it.
Even american traditional home cooking has disappeared.
No wander "Americans" are so ill compared with the rest of "US".
Process food is a cultural indoctrination, one way to promote it is food bullying.
Can't find simple ingredients to cook your traditional dish, or they are so expensive that one can't afford it.
Even american traditional home cooking has disappeared.
US".
We are being fed with all sorts of chemicals into our systems under the guise of feel good food and food preservation which I find funny cause people are addicted to the chemicals in the food which makes them eat more of it and end up with all sorts of illnesses now or in the future. If we let a bunch of corporate crooks control our food supply, we have to blame ourselves for letting them do so. What happened to the old fashion market place where chemicals weren't part of the food supply? Have we become this stupid? The ones who make a profit and laugh at us are the drug and chemical companies. Its just like being under the influence of drugs, you can either get out of it or get addicted and end up chronically sick.
Is not the lard that kill's you, is the hydrogenated process that is found on almost everything.
Honestly, when I was a kid I never had any of these issues, because I asked the other kids if they wanted to try what I had.
I have sympathy for Sister Agnes' predicament. Have any of you ever smelled limburger cheese? I love the stuff, but it is beyond gross smelling, and it is easy to imagine that it could nauseate kids not used to it. Something's gonna have to give, and keeping your class from vomiting has to be a priority. I used to work in a university in an engineering department, and many of the oriental students brought canned fish for lunch. It caused a lot of problems, because trash was only picked up once per week. Like it or not, smell always matters.
When I was in elementary school, I was just jealous of the kids who got lunch from home at all. My mom always said if I didn't want to eat the school lunch, I could make my own bag lunch. That was fine once I was a bit older, but in first grade, my food prep skills were limited, to say the least. Also, since my mom was a dietitian, pre-packaged foods like lunchables certainly weren't in our refrigerator. It probably benefited me in the long-run, but I was definitely jealous of the kids whose parents packed them a lunch every morning at the time.
Oh my, oh my how sad it is to discover that we raise our children to be as culturally encapsulated as we are.
Recently on tv, I saw news about people not touching fish cause they stink. They stink? What about the fishermen who catch fish? They stink too? What about the ones who jump into the sewers to clean up your filthy clogs? They stink as well? Ok lets make robots catch fish for us and clean the sewers. Next what? Make robots clean our behinds cause we'd stink if we wipe? Whatever you eat stinks one way or the other cause food = dead matter.
Eat whatver you want to eat, but make sure you eat healthy. I cant go around making fun of people cause they eat foods different to my diet. Making fun of people or hating them cause they eat a different food is what people with no brains do, which I find weak, pathetic and disgusting. That goes against FREEDOM. I hope the haters understand what it means to be free right? Free to eat whatever tasty food you feel like eating. Talking about stinking, TOILETS stink no matter who uses it.
Why do you care what other people think of you or anyone else then? You are free to be a freak, and others are free to see you as a freak and even to hate you. When everyone starts caring more about themselves and less about what "the others" think, people will be a lot happier.
And you wonder why kids are attracted to junk food! PBJ sandwiches, or bologna and cheese, everyday for lunch? So bland and unhealthy.
My daughter is in 6th grade and she never felt uncomfortable bringing unusual foods or even leftovers from the previous day's dinner that she liked so much I have to cook extra to make sure she has enough for the next day.
She routinely has gyozas (dumplings), edamame (calls them pop-beans), leftover chicken legs or rice or pasta with home made (and very fragant) meat sauce, pork buns, fresh tomatoes, any fruit we have around, and sometime HotPockets or homemade pizza. It is not due to our ethinicity at all, she just likes this kind of food and PBJ is not even an option, she hates it! Yes she also like bologna, but usually by the end of the pack she is done with it for a long time!
This is not more expensive than the other kids eat, this just food we have in the house any day and leftovers make very good and very cheap lunches.
"American" food is boring, bland, and tasteless. Thank heavens for the all ethnic food variety you can get here.
And once again someone reveals their utter lack of knowledge of American food. Yes, there is bad American food, just as there is bad food of any ethnicity. And there is excellent American food, from hearty stews and soups, to inspired seafood and meat dishes, to wonderful baked goods, just as there is excellent food in all (or at least most) cultures. Take a look into American cuisine and I'm sure you'll find a lot to satisfy you.
That might be true, but it's very hard to find. I've visited the USA many times and until restaurant review websites became popular and easily accessible, I found it quite hard to find anything that would rise significantly above the level of something like Denny's.
And what American foods have you tried? If you find it all to be bland and boring then perhaps next time you visit America, you should try something other than the fine cuisine at the QuikStop.
Great story, I grew up Vegan in the 80's.....all i ever wanted was a happy meal from Mcdonalds
Parents can be cruel like that.
Years ago when I talk in a private school, I set aside a day for the students in my homeroom to bring food from home that represented their family. I brought some food myself. We sat together in our homeroom and shared the food. It helped build bridges between the students as they learned about each other and helped them come to appreciate each other's food and cultures. The students found out they really LIKED the different foods. It was such a hit with the children they wanted to do it more than once a year. They wanted to do it quite regularly.
My daughter never ate her lunch (daily fresh home made Indian food) at school during her elementary school years , she is a senior now, feeling bad about the comments fellow students made. She would come home empty stomach and we need to feed her immediately for the lost meal time. Now the same saga continues for my brother's daughter who comes home empty stomach ...it is really hard for working parents to convince the young kids to be proud of the traditional nutritional food at that age...I keep wondering when/how we will over come this problem.
Why don't you give him/her what she can eat publically proudly if they are so ashamed of her Indian food. My kids take Poori to lunch and never feel bad eating out in public. I liked the last sentence in the article
"If I could go back, I would tell that little girl in the bathroom to be proud of herself and her culture, and eat that kachori with pride – outside the stall."
Or you could be a good parent, stop forcing your kid to take weird food to school, and pack ham and cheese sandwiches.
Eating over-salted pig and congealed cow excretions is extremely weird.
ethnic food is way better than the the flavorless american crap you guys call food. don't hate, bland-salt-and-pepper-for-spices- white man!
Raji ... I am a vegetarian Indian working mom too and pack all kind of foods for my 2nd grader – Indian/ Italian/ Mexian/ American (mostly Indian tough) – none of them bland and .. might I say .. very aromatic ... I hear these cases of cafeteria-picking ... My daughter never asked me to pack anything specific ever so I asked her if this kind of things happen to her as well ... She said YES and then added .. "But I dont care .. I wont stop eating what I like and what is good for me just because other kids dont like it and I dont Ew them when they eat tasteless dead animals.." I was happily shocked to hear her say that ... It all boils down to what values we instill in our kids – I just happened to teach her to be her original self, be proud of who she is and not come under peer pressure ... I didnt know how or when she translate it into her eating habits also ... I feel so lucy to be her mom!! ...
Yes, I did the same like you packing Italian, Indian, Mexican and other vegetarian food ...but still it was tough for the kid as the other kids were making fun of the food...This is true to my brother too...we are not specific about indian food as long as it is a healthy food...but this is the reality I faced...my daughter also was never specific about her food choice except that it should be vegetarian...
I am American and I got made fun of in elementary school for having sandwiches made with potato bread (it's yellow). Who knew your lunch could come under such scrutiny.
At the end of the day kids are going to be as intolerant and ignorant as their parents. I'll be d@@mmed if I send my kid to school with Gushers or Pb& J sandwiches.
Your kids will hate you for it.
Mine was not an ethnic clash, but still devastating. My grandmother would send me to school with a thermos of homemade vegetable soup, half of a slow roasted pork tenderloin sandwich, cup of low fat yogart, an apple, and a small glass bottle of milk. Now I wish I had these things for lunch, but back then I was considered the weird poor kid who could not afford a cool lunch.
I went through school with no lunch most of the time. While at Putnam City I would gather pop bottles to get enough coins to buy a candy bar from the sugar shack that was across the street from the school. Then when we left Putnam City I was then forced to just sit in the library or outside on a park bench while other people had lunch. My parents never gave me any lunch money and their income was too high for me to qualify for a free lunch. They expected me to figure it out on my own. I resent them to this day for doing that as I don't think it made me any stronger. It just showed me they were more concerned about their own self interests. This is sorrowful and still exists today in our society.
Thank God for modern child cruelty laws, I'm sure you'll be a MUCH worthier father to your children than your parents were to you.
Boohoo you loser
Being a military brat, most of us ate the local cuisine wherever we happened to be. When I was in junior high in Okinawa, a classmate's mother had packed some kim chi for her lunch. The home room teacher made her remove it from her locker and place it outside the classroom because of the intense aroma. My classmate wasn't embarassed, she was afraid somebody would steal it! (Nobody did.)
This brings up a good point: the smell of a food should not be allowed to be a disruption. Certain food like fish or curry have very strong odors that overwhelm a room and even get caught in hair and clothing. It's not fair for a whole room of people to suffer.
What about the kids right to eat as his parents wish? If you don't like the smell move, maybe some others do. Maybe you should call Obama and have them pass some government regulation. By the way fish smell makes me ill but I suck it up and deal with it. It is only a smell and people have a right to eat as they see fit.
That's funny, us healthy people believe that come lunchtime, we shouldn't have to suffer for the sake of the picky and squeamish.
Before everyone starts defending the right to bring smelly foods into schools and offices, try taking a sniff of durian fruit one day. They are banned from the subway system in Singapore – no joke. On arriving in Singapore on my sailboat, I went to the subway to check in. There were signs posted at the entry; "NO DURIANS ALLOWED". I was shocked and saddened that those poor people were so discriminated against. Only later did I learn of, and smell, a ripe durian. They are a cult-like fruit in Southeast Asia, with whole families going out to buy one at the temporary stands set up during the durian season. The smell pervades the whole area. And, eat one and your body and urine smells of it for several days. Amazing.
Damn you, Sister Agnes!!!!!
In my school, no one packed lunches, and we ate the school fare. My problem was the opposite. I was used to delicious, varied food at home, and in school got the icky hot-dog, sloopy-joe messes I simply hated.
Breakfast (at home): Idli-Vadai-Sambar
Lunch (at school): Pasta or Chicken-cheese-spinach quesadillas or pizza or meatloaf or something that local kids are familiar with – avoid the teasing, don't play victim later.
Dinner (at home): Varan-Bhaat, Poli, Bhaaji.
It's really quite simple, y'all. Celebrate your culture within the walls of your home, but don't get in-your-face and militant about it.
This is really the parents' fault and not the kids'. Most immigrant kids want to fit in and assimilate but some are held back by parents who want the American advantages but don't want to participate in our culture.
Really? Eating what you like to eat is 'not assimilating to our culture' and 'shoving culture into other people's faces'?
I wasn't aware that all new citizens of this country were required to buy peanut butter, wonder bread and hot dogs upon taking the oath. What about regional differences? Should kids from Georgia not bring corn bread and black eyed peas to lunch if they move to the Midwest because they'd be refusing to assimilate? If a family from Minnesota moves to Florida, are they then required to forego casseroles? What about American families who prefer to make their own food from a variety of cultures?
This whole argument is ridiculous.
Food is definitely part of culture. That's why foods are "ethnic". Want your kid to fit in and not be bullied? Want to make his life easier? Don't do things that make him stick out.
my parents are filipino immigrants so i eat pratically rice with every meal. even breakfast. I am mocked my a boy who evidently finds somthing wrong with rice. he would say the i smell like rice when i come to school rice doesnt have an odor, and i always tell him i dont eat breakfast, my mom is strict and she got mad a him because his weigt broke our storage room door, so he insults my mother for that too. My brother is a 7 year old autistic child who has yet to master english so he also insults him. He also insults the phlippines because they were defenceless in ww2. just shows how ignorant some people are.
I'm sorry, Josh. Maybe the kid who is making fun of you now will learn and grow into a great person. We all make mistakes when we're young. Your best bet is to treat everyone around you with as much kindness as you can. Kindness will win in the long run.
I was born and raised in an East Coast suburb. My lunches came under scrutiny from my class mates because my Mom would pack me cut up veggies - cucumbers, green pepers, and cherry tomatoes. I liked them! Once in a while I'd get a chicken drumstick,which I loved, but other kids pronounced it "icky" and would make sure to leave empty chairs on either side because of my "weird" lunches. I thought their bologna sandwiches were icky, but didn't treat them badly.
I was a middle class white child in the 70's but... my mom liked different foods. Living in Arizona, we'd get egg rolls in our lunches. No one at my school of white, black, hispanic and native american ate egg rolls. Moving to Oregon, we got everything she learned to make in Arizona. No one was eating that way in small town Oregon. Or we'd get sardines and crackers or something else funky. I remember dreaming of having Oreos and/or chips. As an adult, I'm glad she introduced us to such a wide variety of foods.
I am an American hispanice citizen, we grew up poor and I remember there were times that we couldn't afford bread or peanut butter or just plain jelly so our mom would fix us tacos (flour tortialla) for lunch. We were embarrassed so we use to hide the taco in the brown paper bag, small bites so know one could see the taco. They would make fun of us for having tacos for lunch.
Times have changed.
I remember the scene from My Big Fat Greek Wedding where she brings the moussaka to school and the snotty white girl mockingly calls it "moose caca? You're eating MOOSE caca???" and they all laugh. It reminded me a little of me growing up American in another country-my mother sent peanut butter (which she ordered from the US because you could not even buy it there) and all the kids laughed at me, held their noses, and made rude jokes about where it came from. It goes both ways. Kids are intolerant no matter where you go.
Been there done it.
Yeah, well try going to lunch in Japan with a P&J sandwich when everyone else has double-decker obento boxes with plastic seaweed cut outs separating the food.
Ended up just fine.
This article is dumb, as well as timeles, kids know tasty food when they eat it.
Plus, last time I checked over 50% of immigrant kids are on income-related "free lunch programs" and eat the taxpayer subsidized "hot lunches" at schools (which cost $1.50 otherwise).
It's not just immigrants who experience this. I had all "health" food in my lunches and felt like a freak!
Oh how this subject grabbed me,when I was a first,second and third grade student at a one room school, Mom had a tough time having enough lunches for 4 of us to carry to school,we thought we had to have store bought light bread for sandwiches. Mom was an exllent cook and a super baker and would try to get us to take homemade light bread and t roll buns for our lunches but we fussed against it. Now I can see how stupid I was,what a delight it would be to have a taste of that home made bread once again and TO HELL WITH THE REST OF THE F&&&&% AS*$#@ HOL%$# 'S THOUGHT.
Yet more separatism from CNN. All white people are alike. All Immigrants are alike. All black people are alike. All men are alike. All women are alike.
My mom made pigs feet, stuffed cabbage, eggplant, etc., at home, but she knew enough to let us buy lunch or just throw some bread and butter in our lunch bag. This is all part of parents who aren't in touch with reality, and dangerous too because it's not like it is healthy to have a warm headcheese sandwich or pigs feet.
WHO GIVES A CRAP! You would be made fun of for other reasons anyway. I like how all of these stories are "I was obviously made fun of/unpopular because of my first-generation/immigrant status". How about you? What were YOU like?
It's tiresome to think of excuses all the time. There are positive and negative aspects of being an immigrant or first-generation American, and there are positive and negative aspects of being an eighth generation American. Our family is made up of two multi-racial parents, one second-generation American and the other tenth-generation American. It just doesn't bloody matter, an "American pedigree" means nothing if you aren't "in the click".
What? This was an issue when I was in elementary school in 1978. But not now. Now, most kids bring rice and many are now bringing gim (seaweed "paper" used to wrap around rice), all sorts of food, every ethnicity. Lots eat from bento boxes, cool multipayer thermos containers. Everyones lunches smell great! PBJs are the minority. We live in northern virginia, and the school is defintely diverse.
From my experience as an Indian class-outcast, that would only happen if the foreign kid was popular. Example: If she is a popular girl who happens to be Japanese, then all the popular kids will gather around and try her lunch and claim to love it. But it she isn't popular, and is rejected by her peers, then the popular kids will laugh at her and her lunch. That's how brutal 3rd-grade society is, unfortunately.
I couldn't believe this was an issue either lol I mean I'm sympathetic for those who felt that way but I was the only asian in my elementary school... but I still had friends and no one made fun of me because of the food my mom packed me for lunch... In fact, we usually exchanged some lunch items on occassion.
I truly understand the alienation experience in the cafeteria. I am also a first-generation child- my parents straight from India. Luckily, all through grade school, they would give me lunch money to buy the school lunch. I loved the Chicken Curry and Puri and Chapathi at home, as well as junk food, burgers, and Capri Sun.
But I was still alienated because I was the only Indian kid in the entire school (both elementary and middle). The popular white girls laughed at and teased me, the black girls ignored and sometimes fought me. The boys always ignored me unless they were making fun of me.
So I often sat alone in the cafeteria, eating the school lunch and wondering how I could be proud of being from a country I've never even visited. My parents told stories of India, but it didn't seem like a real place, and everything about America seemed better anyway. I wished plenty of times that I could be Indian with white skin, so at least I would look like my peers. The teasing was never-ending- comments that I lived in a tee-pee, bathed in a river, or was Pocahontas' sister. Only now, after entering college, have I truly enbraced my heritage.
This was really a wonderful collection of great stories....it's why we publish the Tiki Tiki Blog - to share the stories of growing up with a foot in two cultures.
Love everyone's stories.
Let's look at this from an entirely different perspective...that being from the perspective of the American child eating lunch at an International School in a foreign country where the family lives as a result of one or both parents careers. An international school student's packed lunch can be anything from a toasted bagel with cream cheese, to roti prata, sushi, laksa, pasta, samosas, and the list goes on. Being exposed to different foods is a cultural experience, an opportunity to learn about other countries, traditions, local produce and specialities. We as parents and as educators should promote the positive aspects of diversity amongst our children whether living in America or as Americans living abroad. Learning about others through the food they eat could be the starting point of some very interesting cultural discoveries.
I agree – see my comment below
Why? Most Americans don't know enough about America itself. In history class we get the gleamings of the past, but not the gritty details. In geography we again got the highlights but the nuances of America were simply absent. People have this idea that the grass is greener on the otherside of the fence but how would they know if they've never bothered driving just 100 miles from their place of birth, stopped and walked in some out-in-the-middle of nowhere town and just did some exploring? Draw a 50 mile circle around this town, Bryan, Texas, and I guarantee you that the people inside of it know more about multiculturalism than most anyone else. There's small towns out there, every 10 miles as dictated by the railroads, in there's towns that are 100% native, and 100% German, and 100% black, among many others. And where do they all come in to town? Right here. No one's being hassled or firebombed, and no one's making a kumbaya moment out of it either. This is Texas, in America. We live our lives as they are, not as others think they should be.
dont worry, in the end the immigrant kid will be the smartest in his class, become a doctor and laugh about it while seeing his old classmates work as the cashier at home depot
You got that right!
I had to pack peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and milk for my son just to conform. Being vegetarian was even harder.
When I sent a sandwich with soy meat he was so happy that it looked like other kids' lunch. But I feel bad that I couldn't send him a filling lunch. He is a grown man now and loves experimenting with food and doesn't care what anyone thinks!
Reading this brought back a host of memories... Yup, I was the odd kid too. Who can forget the "good weed drink?" haha. Our version was a different herb (Spearment) but my mom made me chug that thing down... Now I love it and consider myself very fortunate to have been raised between two worlds. Thank you for posting such a refreshing article.
They get the same food ours do, only difference is we PAYYYYYYY for ours, their lunch is free. Eat like our children do or get out of my country.
What are you talking about? Poor people get free lunches, regardless of whether they are American citizens or not. Most immigrants in my community (mostly Indian and Asian) are middle class and they all pay for lunches.
This is why our country will never progress toward equality and acceptance for ALL people. We want everyone to conform to our beliefs and customs. So many other nations are excepting of other nationalities. We try advertise how we are multinational and multiracial but the truth is, many of us know very little about other countries and are not interested in learning about them. Such ignorance!! I don't blame other people not wanting to eat our food. It is filled with chemicals and crap.
Their is a joke, what country only speaks one language? Give up? The United States!!!
You appear to be pretty ignorant of American foood as well. While I agree different cultures all have delicious food, american food is far more than stuff chock full of chemicals. there is much to be celebrated in all cultures, and decrying "american" culture just to appear enlightened is as ignorant as any other cultural stereotype.
I am American born and raised and I speak 4 languages fluently.
Kim, you are just another ignorant, generalization-throwing muppet with horse blinders on. Get a clue..and a life.
@Sue:
Wow, that was a really ignorant comment!
E Plurabis Unum (out of many, one): Our country's motto. How about, believe in it or get out, sue?
Somehow I knew there would be at least one trailer park denizen on here saying something stupid.
What?
If they're eating the same food your children do, they ARE eating as you do.
If they eat different food, they're obviously making it themselves, at home.
Americans eat so much junk, they don't know what good, home-made taste like. Bologna really with it sodium nitrites and mechanically separated parts of animals I don't even want to know where it came from!!??? I don't think parents in this country know how to cook anything if it isn't from a box and you can stick it in the microwave. That is why we are so freaking fat!!
Haha, I have way too many stories along these lines from my childhood, but here are a few:
* In general, I was always careful to conceal my lunch when my mom packed Indian food...and I *hated* answering questions about it, because I never knew what to say. "What's that?" "Uh...it's called idli." "What?" "Never mind, it's Indian food." The worst was this one time in 9th grade when I happened to have yogurt rice (a very standard, traditional South Indian dish) and got the usual "what's that", and another friend at the table (ironically, an Indian) chimed in with, "it's white s**t!"
* I've been vegetarian all my life, as is my whole family. My favorite moments from childhood related to this are:
(1) the time in kindergarten that I was Student of the Week, and got to have lunch with the principal...at KFC (that is still the only time in my life I have ever set foot in that particular restaurant; I had biscuits and coleslaw)
(2) the time that a girl in my 4th grade class asked me, "are there no fat people in India?" "...Huh?" "Well, you can't get fat if you're vegetarian, right?" "Uh...yeah, you can...and not everyone in India is vegetarian anyway..."
(3) the time in 6th grade that my friend decided to hide a piece of pepperoni in my pizza while I was away from the table - the snickering at the table and my anxious expression led him to confess, and I'm happy to say that I retaliated by throwing his drink in the trash :-)
* In 7th grade world geography class, we did country reports, and there was a day when everyone was supposed to bring in a food from their country. I did my report on India (original, I know), and my mom made some of her trademark rasmalai (a cheese and milk-based Indian dessert that I love) for me to bring in. I took it to my teacher in the morning and said clearly, "this needs to be refrigerated", so imagine my surprise when I got to 3rd period and was told, "I wasn't sure how much I should microwave it, but hopefully this is warm enough." :-( We vainly tried to cool it by setting it on top of the rattling A/C unit in the classroom, but I don't think it worked. A few people decided to try it, but I'm sad they didn't have the proper experience. To add insult to injury, one kid actually threw up, then proceeded to tell me - I kid you not - "I'm lactose intolerant". I'll never know why a lactose-intolerant person decided to partake in a food that I clearly explained as being almost entirely dairy in composition. That's 7th grade in a nutshell, I guess.
Great stories!
Prabhu, those were awesome stories you just shared. Thanks for sharing! And I used to get so embarassed when my mom would send me to the movie theater with tacos so I wouldn't need to buy popcorn or hotdogs! Ah, those were the days of no worries.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading about your experiences. I can only imagine the plight of my soon to be preschooler kid if I decide to give her the south indian food that I prepare at home!
Awww I've been there done that. I was so embarrassed by my mom's foil-wrapped burritos in my lunchbox. All I wanted was a ham sandwich, a twinkie. And some straight up assimilation! :) I wrote about this very subject not too long ago.
http://pearmama.blogspot.com/2011/03/burritos-in-your-lunch-box.html
You trade the fruit, toss the sandwich, and eat the cookie. LIfe was pretty straightforward. I have no idea what these people went through but I get some kind of idea reading about it.
Great article! Most of those foods are delicacies now
It's not just the kids who can make comments about peer's. lunch. Today my child forgot to bring the lunch and I brought it to the school office. When my child was called to pick the lunch up, the woman behind the desk turned the lunch bag over and over, sniffed at it and when the bag was handed to my child, she said "You mean you eat this!' When I picked up my child from school, my child simply said,'the secretary was rude'. The lunch was an apple, peanut butter with maple syrup on whole wheat bread and water.
(I am assuming that you heard this woman make the above comment) What I find disturbing about your little story is not what the woman said, but that you THE PARENT didn't say anything back to her. Why put up with rudeness and being put down? Too many people put up with it, like you did apparently, your kid got to hear it and then see you do nothing, he/she probably felt weird and now wonders what is wrong with him/her and you just stood there. Reallly? You don't have to be rude back but you certainly could have put her in her place with a few choice words. Too often, people put up with rudeness and bad behavoir ( and this certainly qualified) because they are afraid to say anthing back. A simple "yes this is his lunch. What exactly do you find wrong with it?" puts her in her place and puts the ball squarely back in her court. And then you stand there until you get an answer. Which won't be forthcoming because there isn't one. Simple,effective and you stood up for your kid without any aggression at all. Stand up for you kid lady.
Oh sorry, I didn't make this clear. I gave the woman the lunch and left the school. My child picked it up at the office only later.
It is very sad the way adults teach children to be cruel to anyone that does not fit in. I had to live with that torture my whole childhood, and not a single adult would even consider it wrong. "It is your own fault" they would say.
We live in a bigoted, cruel society. It is very sad.
No kids today bring bag lunches to school. They all eat the school lunch, which consists of white bread and cheese. Most immigrants' children live in poverty, and they are lucky if there's any food at home, let alone worrying about whether it's perceived as "weird" food. Plus, because the schools in our country are so segregated, most immigrant's children are in school with mostly all kids from their same cultural background.
Uhhh, no. I know all kinds of kids who bring their lunch to school.
Then you must live in a upper-middle class suburb.
When they r below poverty line school gives free food so let's not worry about them.. But kids who bring food from home are lucky coz they have food which made with love and affection
We SHOULD be worried about them, much more so than about the kids with the "stinky" lunches. That's my point.
Erin. You are so wrong.
Because you say so? I'd love to BELEIVE that none of my students go home and have nothing to eat until school-provided breakfast the next day or don't have to walk to school in January with no coat, but unfortunately that doesn't make it so.
Erin,
You are so wrong, you view of immigrants and school terrifies me..maybe you need to tour your school!
Really, it "terrifies" you to think about the reality of a great number of children's lives? I also find your comment about needing to "tour my school" hilarious. Just really funny.
Erin, you are very wrong. My two girls bring their lunches almost every day, as cafeteria food, although decent, is not what they want. And, many of the immigrants do bring their own food also and are not on free lunches. Most of the immigrants around us are also firmly middle-class (some even upper-class).
Again, your personal narrative experience is great, but don't construe it as representative of the norm, because it's not.
Actually, lots of kids still bring lunches, aaaaand, no immigrant families I know live in poverty. So. yeah.
I'm glad the immigrant families around where you live are doing so well, but it's just not the norm. It's just fact.
"The report found that while 11 percent of non-immigrant children live below the poverty level, 35 percent of immigrant children are living below that level. This is not because their parents are not working. In fact, 84 percent of these children live with at least one parent who is working full time and 74 percent of immigrant parents are employed full time.
Erin, I read that report, too (http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=8f381d4fe9464a48d313a1886ba591ea), and it was based on a study done in ONE city – San Francisco. You can hardly use that report to extrapolate its results across the whole country to support statements like you wrote above : "No kids today bring bag lunches to school. They all eat the school lunch". Additionally, all the statistics from the report you quoted indicate that below-poverty living for immigrants is far from "the norm". 11% and 35% indicate levels far below the norm, and nowhere near making up a majority. I hope you don't teach math or statistics. While our school district does have quite a robust program for free and reduced lunches, there are many kids – my own included – who bring their lunches several times a week. And just because kids bring their lunch, it doesn't mean their parents are making a middle-class living. Working at our food pantry, I get a decent picture of the number of families who get their bread, peanut butter and jelly, snacks and juice boxes for free. Many of these are folks who make "too much" to qualify for the meal programs at school, but nowhere near enough to feed their families 3 decent meals a day, every day. I'm not blind to what hardships are happening every day in all parts of the country.
erin is a troll. Don't feed the trolls.
Builds character, plus they had the good food, not some crap P B and sugar Jam, white bread and fat American BS food, Limburger cheese rocks! Best with beer however.
my family was poor growing up- we were on food stamps for a time. i remember every lunch period still being hungry after eating my lunch (liverwurst and cheese on white bread), and fantasizing about stealing food from the other kids lunches. if some other friendless, hopeless dork like me had some sort of embarassing or stinky lunch, you'd better believe i would have been willing to take it off of their hands real quick!
I have the most incredible idea....... stop having kids that will at some point will be hungry after being handed a free meal......... the single most fundamental problem in this country is 30% of high school students drop out, 40% of all kids are illegitimate, and then we read stories about baby Lisa, the poor little kid that was found near the cemetary and her 20 year old mother is a suspect and the father and mother did not live together..... what kind of country would we have if people actually finished school, worked hard, started a career, and perhaps eventually started thinking about a family..... there would be 2 billion fewer people on the planet, the vast majority would be educated, we would not have 70% of black kids born out of wedlock – nope that is going a step too far – that would still happen.... people would be responsible for themselves, the government would not be providing meals to everyone, and the whole would be a lot better off... but of course the government provides incentives to be irresponsible so there is no way to get around it..... so I guess we will keep reading stories about kids that cannot support their kids and therefore kill them.... a few months ago there was a 25 year old black mother whose only surviving child when she tried to drown all her kids and herself was a 10 year old son, so she was pregnant when she was 14.... are we in Chad, Lesotho, Gambia, OR THE FRIGGEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.............
"...we would not have 70% of black kids born out of wedlock – nope that is going a step too far – that would still happen...."
Would BostonDawg please go and die under a rock...all the last poster was trying to do was share, and you had to interject about something completely un necessary AND took an opportunity to take a stab at black people for no apparent reason along with the poster?
Get the dick that is stuck in your ass out, and maybe you won't be so angry....
And by the way, I am black and hispanice mix......I am a NATURAL BORN American citizen whose BLACK FATHER was married to my HISPANIC MOTHER, when they had me, and my BLACK Father has been involved with me and his ONLY 3 kids (which he had with my mom.). AND GUESS WHAT ELSE! I was MARRIED (AND STILL AM) to MY BLACK HUSBAND when I had my kids, after I FINISHED COLLEGE, and they never go hungry because even in this crappy economy, I have a job which I go to everyday, and I DO NOT live off of the system... that about destroys every assumed stereotype
I mean since we are talking about unrelated stuff and all........
I didn't give a rats what anyone thought of my lunch as a child. If my mom packed leftover tuna noodle casserole, I ate leftover tuna noodle casserole. If she packed cassava leaf and rice (an african dish), I ate cassava leaf and rice. As long as I was full, I was content. And in my personal opinion, pb&j and gushers are not a decent luch. That's more of a snack on the run, and an unhealthy one at that.
I always thought they rolled out the Red Carpet for Immigrants oh wait thats just the Russian Immigrants. They have unlimited education opportunties, I work with one who is working on her 2nd Degree, she gives nothing back to society and brings her values of Greed and selfishness to this country to spread.
I work with refugee and immigrant children in a children's museum setting and see this kind of thing all the time. Children naturally pick up on similarities and differences at a very young age because that's one of the tools they use to define themselves and their place in the world. Food plays a unique roll in this development because it's a basic human need, across the board, no matter what it is we're eating. At our museum we have a teaching garden and kitchen, and we use the kitchen and the food we grow and prepare to not only educate people on how to eat healthy, but also as a way to bridge some of these cultural gaps that children new to the states face, (and that people locally are seeing too). By inviting them to try something new or different, and us doing the same, we can then talk about what's similar, what's different, and in a free space where it's okay to say something's 'yucky' or 'gross'. No feelings are hurt, rather, children who may not have found acceptance otherwise find it in the act of tasting and talking about food. I think a lot of it is up to the adults to show children that they (or their food) don't have to be all the same and that there are kind ways to explore differences.
In the late 90s I sent my son to school with roast, ham, chicken, or meatloaf (never processed lunchmeat) on home made bread along with some fruit and fruit juice. His teacher informed me that he was pitching his lunch in the trash because it wasn't like everyone elses. On the other hand, my daughter, who was a very picky eater, appreciated the healthy and tasty food and simply told the other kids to worry about what was in their own lunch.
When i was in elementary school, first grade (1995) i had a lot of people staring at me, since i moved from Russia to America. No one was mean to me, and this doesn't happen anymore, but the students are still a little hostile to the idea of new food.
Stinky polish kielbasa! Nothing can smell up a grade school classroom like fresh smoked kielbasa. No matter how my mom packed it, all the kids knew what I had for lunch when I had a kielbasa sandwich. Someone would say, "What is that smell?", and needless to say, everyone would point and laugh at me, "Oh, its her lunch!" I used to cry and beg my mother not to make me kielbasa sandwiches. It was horrifying and embarrasing! Ironically, now as I'm 30 years old, I find it to be one of my favorite foods.
It’s called assimilation. You moved to someone else’s country, it is your reasonability to adapt not the native population. If I moved to France… should they change who they are to make me more comfortable? Or, should I adapt to the culture and people I’ve chosen to live among?
I don't think you know what the word "assimilation" means. Perhaps a chemistry analogy would help: if an impurity is introduced into a chemical solution, it will either remain distinct or it will be assimilated into the solution. If it is assimilated into the solution, it will lose its distinct character BUT it wlil also alter the makeup of the solution. Imagine putting some red dye into a blue solution: the red dye will disappear, but the colour of the solution will change slightly.
Most Americans use the word "assimilation" to mean "you lose your distinct character, and we don't change at all". That's NOT how it works.
as·sim·i·la·tion /əˌsɪməˈleɪʃən/ Show Spelled[uh-sim-uh-ley-shuhn]
4. Sociology . the merging of cultural traits from previously distinct cultural groups, not involving biological amalgamation
Sean you should try reading the definition that you cut and pasted. The definition indicates *both* groups change whereas your post implies that it is only the visitor who should change.
If no one ever ate the meals of their heritage, but tbose of this country only, non Italians would never eat lasagna or pizza. Non Jews would never eat bagels or a nice corned beef on rye. And hot dogs, that "all American" thing? Well that's German and we would never be eating those. You never eat Chinese food? Sean, would you be happy eating only Bison, rattlesnake and turkey for dinner ever night? I think you get my point.
See above.
Art – Contrary to popular belief – Pizza is not Italian – it is Chinese. Polo brought in back from China to Italy.
Contrary to popular Chinese belief the Italians didn't acquire pizza OR pasta from the middle kingdom. Next we'll be hearing how the Chinese invented the tomato.
So, you would never eat a (insert your favorities American food) again? I'm glad that people from different cultures are willing to introduce us to their various dishes. Diversity is a good thing.
We live in the melting pot.... full of chunks.... where the chunks stopped melting a long time ago..... they come to America to become wealthy not American.......... so we have vast segments of society that have no intention of becoming Americans.,.. unfortunately a large segment of America (about 13%) have been here for hundreds of years and still have absolutely no intention of becoming Americans and do whatever they can to perpetuate the stereotypes we are not supposed to use when discussing them.
Well, I would certainly hope that if I moved out of this country, my children would never completely assimilate. Sure, they need to learn the language and would probably eat some new foods or dress alittle differently, but I would hope they wouldn't lose themselves completely. Part of what made America great was the mixing of different cultures to create an amazing global whole. Its still the case in many cities, but in the big giant trailer park that surrounds them, it seems to be a scary world of processed foods and Wal Marts and people trying to blame others for their lot in life.
B.S. YOU assimilate into the expectations of total strangers, if you're that uncentered and socially insecure, the rest of us, will be us.
A lard sandwich sprinkled with sugar???
Say it! Say it! That kid is just plain weird! I would make them eat alone in the cafeteria as well!
Ah, and here one of the themes of the article was that kids, being ignorant as kids often are, made fun of other kids' meals. Most of those ignorant kids learned better, Sherman.
btw, my Eastern European grandmother used to take a piece of dark rye, slather it with bacon fat (lard of sorts), then salt it before eating. She lived to be 88...
What the F ever. Lunchtime hazing is a rite of passage.
I went to Catholic grade school in the 60's with an abundance of Irish kids who epitomized the PB&J, bologna, Wonder Bread, Twinkies crew. I had a nona who packed my lunch box with meatballs, sweet sausage, chicken & veal cutlets and on friday's (the no meat day) peppers & eggs or Italian tuna salad (oil packed w/capers, black olives & diced onion). Always Italian bread, never mayo (she thought it was disgusting). For dessert biscotti or fruit. I was proud that my nona was a good cook and intrinsically knew they ate crap and I did not. Fifty years later I still have never eaten bologna or Wonder Bread, don't like Twinkies or mayo (unless it's home made) and am uncomfortable with tuna salad "l'americana".
omg, the govenrnment must do something about this. clearly we need an new federal agency to combat the hostile school lunch environment...... stfu.
You always get made fun of if you bring egg salad sandwich because it does stink.
I remember those days, never having a lunch while all the other kids were feasting heartily, because your parents seemed like the only ones to not give a rat's ash if you were well nourished.
When one of the adjacent children in 3rd grade showed up without something to eat, and their tumultuous sobs were greeted with generous amounts of foodstuffs, I just couldn't stop laughing out loud. If I had a lunch, I would have given the whole bag over to him; but the spectacle as seen from my position was just too much to bear. Where were my offers for food? Were others so readily able to be accustomed to a frequent atrocity, that they lose sight of it altogether?
What needs to be done is outlaw any American-type foods. Then make it a crime for anyone to make fun of anything. Then punish the white people. And keep raoming death squads on hand in case any immigrant gets their feelings hurt.
My lunchroom troubles were the reverse. We were poor, so my Mom baked bread a couple times per week. Instead of ho-ho's or twinkies, I got home made pie or cinnamon rolls. Oh, how i wanted Wonderbread sandwiches with commercial lunch meat! Instead, when my Dad went deep sea fishing and caught a 50 pound salmon, my parents had it smoked and canned it at home in a pressure canner. Instead of tuna on Wonder bread, I got smoked salmon on fresh home made bread. I'd sometimes trade parts of my lunch for junk food. A fresh apple from our tree for a commercial cupcake; home made cookies for Oreos. Now I eat store-bought bread because I'm more affluent and busier and long for Mom's bread and baked goods and the fresh fruit off our trees.
Why are the (I assume) adults who are reading/replying to this article showing such intolerance? Its just as intolerant to belittle the ones who had PBJ as it is for the kids to pick on the ones who have other kinds of lunches. The only difference is that adults should know better. Instead of name calling and getting all self righteous, etc why don't we teach our children to be more receptive to foods, ideas, people that are outside their small comfort zones? Why do we become so polarized even about an article regarding food choices? Live and let live. You walk in your shoes and I'll walk in mine. The parents send what they have to send-let's not be judgemental about what people eat. Why don't we use these things to learn more about other cultures and pass that on to our children instead of the " I'm right and everyone else is wrong" mentality. My God people, we are talking about FOOD!
pretty simple-kids want a bologna sandwich or a p&j sandwich-no need for adults to put their weird foods into teh brown bags-besides, most immigrants kids get free lunches anyway-non issue and dumb article
Actually, no, and no. Most kids want food that they like, which in turn often means food that they're comfortable with and that they grew up on. I know a number of Japanese children, for example, who hate peanut butter and hate cheese. They would find the idea of packing a PB&J disgusting, but they like rice balls wrapped in seaweed (o-nigiri).
And most immigrant families don't get free lunches. Just because you're an immigrant doesn't mean you're poor.
Simple. Food defines us as a culture. If you don't have the right foods, then you are on the outside still and need to try harder to assimilate.
Greeeaaat. You keep your bland, processed, cholesterol/high blood pressure/stroke/colon cancer culture, I'll keep my Spanish/Caribbean one.
My son lunches with a boy that regularly brings chinese food and sushi to lunch. My son (a very picky eater) was so intrigued by his friend's lunches, he asked that we buy him a sushi maker. He now makes his own sushi, and while it is only california rolls, it is a huge stretch for him.
Fantastic. First steps to becoming a great cook. I did not get enough, especially baking, when I was younger. There are guys in my workplace who can bake excellently. Of course they started when they were 5 and have 50 years of experience.
Immigrants? Ha! "Immigrating" to the Northeast from California as a kid in 1970, my sandwich with its slimy-looking green slices got a lot of stares. Today, I can't imagine anywhere in the US where avocado slices on a sandwich are deemed odd. Heck, guacamole is practically as American as apple pie these days. But back then, lettuce was pretty much the only vegetable that was common on sandwiches.
Avocado slices are indeed very odd here in Florida. Guacamole is not the samething as an avocado sandwich and the only region it may be considered like apple pie is the south west due to its huge immigrant population. Legal and Illegal.
I live in Massachusetts and I rarely have a sandwich without avocado on it. Maybe you're the weird one, Sean.
Avocado slices rare in Florida!!!??? You must not live anywhere NEAR Orlando or Miami...
After my mom started working my sister and I were forced to eat the bland cafeteria food for breakfast and lunch. I missed the burritos packed with chorizo, potatoes, and eggs most of all because cold cereal just didn't cut it. Thankfully a new boy in my class came from Mexico and didn't understand a word of English. He was so thankful for my company that he would split his home-cooked lunch with me and his mom would also think of me in the morning by making something extra for him to bring. Maybe we got weird looks and comments from the other kids but I was too busy enjoying good food to even care.
You know what's funny? My kid brings a pb&j to school every day, but he's the only white kid in his class, everyone else is Mexican. His meals are the ones that look weird!
not funny-sad-almost half of thsoe kids are illegal per all stats
I've legit never remember any kids getting made fun of for a foreign lunch. Anytime kids ever brought in something different I just remember everyone thinking it was cool and being curious. Everyone needs to chill on the hypersensitivity.
What year was it? These stories are mostly from the '50s-'80s. I think once we got into the 1990's, kids were used to having not only immigrant kids in their classes but kids whose foodie parents embraced "weird" foods like avocados.
I'd sooner die than take my ethnic lunches to school in the 1950 and '60s.
Little did I know that, 50 years later, my lunches would be today's chic and most-craved-for items.
A panini for lunch? Tacos? Bratwurst? I WANT THEM AND I WANT THEM NOW!
If I ever have kids, I'm going to remember when I use to LOATHE eating disgusting PBJ and bologna sandwiches brought from home and disgusting cafeteria food (Pizza on fridays, dry hot dogs, nasty canned fruit) and pack my kid(s) with better more inspiring lunches. I love to cook and I could see myself making dinner and packing my kid(s) with leftovers. I'd make them pad thai, mie goreng, al pastor tacos, quick and easy spaghetti, crockpot chicken and stuffing, braised short ribs, etc. I believe in eating a wide variety of cultured food for pleasure and health. My only problem is I know my future kid(s) would probably lose the containers they brought to school.
If you cannot prerly feed your kids, then you should not have kids. If you want to succeed in America then you need to embrace the dominant culture, otherwise you will just be a minority. A statistic.
Dear Jin, when your dustry, hungry and rugged immigrant cousins invade my Texas in the 1800s, they certainly did not embrace the spanish/mexican/indian culture.
Same in New England.
Same in Calif.
What you really mean is that white culture is the best and all should adhear to your narrow little world.
Um, europe called and they want you back.
Thanks for putting that so nicely! Great point that isn't always considered by the Texans who are frustrated with the many cultures in their state!
Funny thing about your “spanish/mexican/indian culture”. Such a thing existed because of dusty, hungry and rugged immigrant Spaniards invaded before 1800s. Funny how we only go back in history as far as is convenient to our argument.
"Prerly?" What does that mean?
I think its supposed to be properly, but i'm really not sure!
So you're trying to tell us that a lunch of PB & J or bologna sandwich is a proper lunch then? No wonder there's too many "unhealthy" people in this country. There is more to life than PB&J and burgers and fries. Embracing another cuisine also doesn't alienate you or make you a statistic. It just shows you that there's so much good food out there that you have been missing out on all along.
Which dominant culture? Whose food? Southern food, like my grandmother made – cornbread, blackeyed peas, collard greens, ham, fried chicken? Midwestern cassaroles like my mother made? Seafood from the northeast?
Or do you mean something like pizza (italian origin) and french fries (Belgian)? Or are you implying all Americans eat exclusively peanut butter and jelly, or bologna sandwiches? Bologna isn't even 'American'! Most 'American' food has been assimilated and adapted from other cultures.
But hey, let's go with your plan. Get rid of all those fun 'ethnic' restaurants, we're narrowing it down to Applebees, Cheesecake Factory (better edit that menu, though, they have pasta!) and McDonalds from now on.
Properly feed them what, dumb hayseed beans in bigot sauce until they kant spel rite no moar?
I grew up with other military kids. We had kids that had been around the world and/or born in places we didn't know. Our teachers showed us on maps where that country was and asked the child to tell us what they did or saw while there. Great way to learn geography and something about the culture. In about the 4th grade, we had a Japanese lady come into our class to show us flower arrangements. I still remember some of her tips. When we applauded her for showing and visiting with us, she was embarrassed some, but very pleased.
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Work in a medical center now with people from around the world. I think one of the reasons I'm so comfortable here is the same mix of people and cultures as my childhood. We have some very unique lunches and dishes brought in. Lots of questions back and forth about food. Fantastic way to learn more about our coworkers and we get some wonderful food as well. Makes for a good working environment as well.
Where I came from, kids were horrible. One day my mom sent me to school with what I thought was a great lunch...a peanut butter sandwich, a cup of chocolate pudding, a banana, and a little box of fruit punch. I decided to make a Reese's sandwich by adding my pudding to the peanut butter. All the girls I sat with thought it was disgusting, and everyone started calling me fat. From that day forward, I brought a can of Slim-Fast for lunch. I was in the 6th grade. I never told my parents about it...but when MY daughter comes home crying because some twiggy b**** makes fun of her lunch, I'm going to bring her the most delicious pizza on earth and we'll eat it together in front of everyone. If they ask for a slice of it, I'll tell them to bend over.
Your comment almost brought me to tears! There are times that I pack almost the same exact lunch for my daughter and you're right, your lunch sounded perfect!
I hope your daughter never gets picked on, but if she does, I hope you share that pizza. Great idea!
You lost me at "bend over". What a disgusting thing to say about kids.
When I was little I would only eat homemade hamburgers for lunch. My mom would cook me a burger ever day and pack it in a lunch box cut up in quarters. Everybody was so jealous. That was 45 yrs ago! I can't believe my mother would do that every day.
1. Kids are not going to call you fat because you smeared your lunch. They most likely called you fat because you were a “chubby’ kid.
2. How does a 6th grader afford a daily supply of Slim-fast without their parent’s knowledge?
3. Calling a kid a twiggy b***. Confirmed your ‘chubbiness and rather makes you sound like a terrible adult.
Sean, you took the words right out of my mouth. Kendrea sounds like she has a huge chip on her shoulder.
I grew up in Hawaii where we had various food from all the different cultures. Now that I live and work in Washington, I get the adult version of wrinkled noses and attempts to be polite about what I brought for lunch. These are the same people who brag about going on vacation to Hawaii, yet they never tried many of the "local" food that the people that live there eat. European cultured food is far more accepted than Asian cultured foods socially, except when I brought in pasta with Italian truffle sauce I brought back from Umbria...
I still have people wrinkle their noses when I bring some german dishes I enjoy. Now I just laugh about it and offer to let them share with me. I will try any food and I try to educate people on the fact that we like what we know.
Limburger cheese I enjoy when I am by myself...lol
I married a Hawaiian girl, love the food and love to go to the "local" places to eat when we visit took some getting used just like it took her getting used to eating the food in my home state of KY when we visit there.
What, people wrinkle their noses at your SPAM?
Carrying my big pink & blue lunchbox was always a nerve-wracking experience in my 8th grade middle-school cafeteria. That was the year I moved to the US circa mid 1990s, and with little knowledge of "lunchables" & PBJs, my Mom sweetly packed me the usual Indian pancake type wheat bread with veggies i.e. Parantha & sabzis. I had become the typical victim of questions like "ooh what is that? you don't like the cafeteria food?", along with the funny rolling of eyes & the yucky glances. Now after being an American for several years, and enjoying my usual Chipotle & Panera for lunch – I have assured myself that whenever I do have kids, they probably will also experience the stinky lunch & not the fried chicken, the sloppy joes, the corn dogs etc they serve in the school cafeterias even today! I know my mother will be proud :-)
Hamhocks and butterbeans.
I'm from SC. When I moved to NY when I was 10 I got picked on for eating grits, hamhocks, chicken feet, and collards. I moved back to SC when I was 12
I grew up on PB & J but I married a Colombian...We lived with his mom the first year we were married. The food she made always ended up in my lunches. My adult co-workers were always curious about what I was eating and more often than not wrinkled up their noses at some of the most delicious dishes! Of course I find their egg salad and tuna salad sandwiches disgusting as well!
I went through the same thing but i wasnt an immagrant, I just traveled alot due to my mother being in the Navy. I would bring all sorts of yummies I had aquired over the years and in high school (a small one) I would have people make fun of my lunch or snack, but I was lucky enough to have made friends that would actually want to try what I had brought. It made it easier but I still had to deal with the torment from the other students.
Now that I'm basically on my own, I miss having some of the food my mom made, she wont tell me the recipe so I'll come home to visit. If I could go back, I dont think I would have traded my lunches to fit in at all. The friends I made are here to stay no matter what I'm eating. Except if Im eating dairy, then they give me a wide berth. lol
Wonder bread and bologna and peanut butter and jelly. Fade to the lowest common denominator of American white trash. Idiocracy
Well... Nowdays when coke and cookies are all but banned from the school and children all have same lunchbags, Russian food doesn't look so alien. Classmates of my kids have no problem with it.
Wow. It's interesting that kids made fun of immigrant kids and their meals. I remember being young and I loved it when the kids who were immigrants or children of immigrants brought food in that was strange. I loved smelling it and sometimes some of my friends would share and I'd get to try foods that I have never been able to find again. It was amazing. We also had a party at school once where we all got to make something and bring it in and share with everyone and that was one of the best days ever. My husband still brings home foreign food for me to try when he goes on business trips. My experience was completely different growing up but what a shame. American kids can learn so much from different people and cultures. Culture is the real wealth of the world. Good to all of you who grew up with pride in your cultures. My own grandmother was a child of immigrants and for her it became more a thing of shame then of pride because of the treatment she and her siblings received at the hand of her peers.
My kid can't bring anything "foreign" looking. Even silly cup of mandarines in jelly is picked on by her 4th grade classmates. But again, it's a small country dwelling of 5K and I hate it here, closed minded PBJers and thats all.
My husband is the pickiest PA eater I have ever met in all my life and he loves those mandarins in jell-o. When I met him it was one of the things I always had to have for when he stayed the night. Kids are cruel. A lot of it they learn from their parents unfortunately(not all of them but a good amount). We all need to learn to be a little more accepting I guess. Some of my relatives are also pretty prejudiced which I find confusing seeing as my great grandparents were muslim immigrants from Albania but you meet any of my Uncles and cousins and you'd think our history saw us fighting in the American Revolutionary War. I guess to some in America you must be ignorant to fit in.
I became a vegan as a child. No one else in my family was, which meant I made my own lunches. That wasn't the problem. No one at school made fun of me for my lunches, instead they would throw their chunks of meat and cheese at me during lunch and laugh. They would wave their hamburgers in my face and teachers would let them. I eventually started eating my lunch in a classroom alone. Now, as a 26-year old adult, who is still vegan, I often get ridiculed at work as well. I personally find animal products disgusting and always have, however I never as a child or an adult picked on anyone for their food choices.
Maybe it is you, not your food...
Where do you live? That's awful! Your choice shouldn't be ridiculed. My kids are allergic to milk and it can be hard where we live because of all the dairy farms.... many of field trip ends in ice cream that my kids can't eat. Yet none of the other children have ever been cruel about it. I send my kids with packed lunch everyday and often with home made vegetarian chillies or curries and they never have a problem. We always make a point to teach our kids of different cultures and cuisine. Shame. Your diet is healthy and not unusual. Kids are cruel and apparently adults can be too. PA is huge with hunting and farming and I've never had anyone show that kind of cruelty for our dietary choices.
@jen- I live in the midwest where veganism isn't the norm. I'm not a stereotypical vegan who likes to talk about animal cruelty and poor nutrition to someone eating McDonalds in front of me. I always keep my opinion to myself, which is why I find it odd that I get criticized. I've been made fun of by co-workers for eating a salad–which is hardly unusual. I'm glad your children do not face any problems with their dairy allergy. Milk is often incredibly hard to abstain from, especially when you're a child. I think children (and adults) and very protective of their food habbits, and like to reject anything unusual. They do not want to think that they are eating anything "smelly," or gross, or unhealthy, or immoral, so instead of broadening their view they do the opposite and cling to their view and reject anything else. People should be able to eat whatever makes them happy and healthy and let others do the same.
Rachel, I doubt I would have made fun of you back in the day, though maybe I would have. Joke's on me as I have recently read Jonathan Safran Foer's book, Eating Animals. I have decided to give up meat. Many more people would if they took the time to educate themselves.
You're right about milk being in everything... including some gums. We make a lot of food from scratch at my house and shopping takes time because we need to read a lot of labels since companies are often changes ingredients and recipes due to changing prices. I'm not a vegetarian or a vegan but they have every right to say they don't like meat and what their reasons are. Most meat is far from ethical and eating too much of it is bad for people and the environment. It can even be argued that eating it is bad for people and some of the smartest people to ever have lived live a life free of meat. I can see both sides of the meat debate (with the exception of torture for food) but I can't see someone attacking another person for a choice of being vegan, vegetarian or eating ethnic foods. I also see some of the commenters on these sites and I wonder why they even bother reading and responding. I guess ignorance is bliss but I certainly don't want myself or my children to be ignorant which I find regrettable behavior from human beings. Good luck to you and I hope that people in the midwest find a way to treat you and your choices better.
Jen If you do your cooking from scratch why do you have to read labels at all?
You must find yourself disgusting if you find animal products disgusting, as you are the product of two animals.
I grew up on a dairy/beef farm and hunted as a kid. I've also been vegan for the last 16 years. I never make comments or judge anyone by what they eat. I used to make those same choices and that helps me understand how they feel. I've found that people that tease/harass me are the most are the most insecure and small minded. They are threatened by my choices and respond with aggression. I've also been surprised by others willingness to try "my" food and will go out of their way to accommodate me (not that I need it). I always pack food with me and try to never have to rely on anyone to provide food I can eat. I just try to stay positive and lead by example, I can't force anyone to change. I only ask that they respect my choices and i'll leave them alone too.
"I became a vegan as a child."
You can get vaccinated for that now.
I grew up eating PB&J for lunch at school, but after I married a Chinese woman and took homemade lunches to work, my fellow workers had opinions! "Wow, what is that, that smells great!" was pork in black bean sauce and "Ewww, what's that smell?" was octopus soup. Needless to say, adults are kinder than children, but just as opinionated.
The same thing happens to us, I'm latina and my husband is asian so often bring chinese food to work and even pack some for our daughter, we live in the middle of nowhere in the midwest so as you can imagine there are always comments. Just las week I joined our daughter at school for lunch and brought fish soup with noodles, all the kids had something to say about it, BUT we did talk about food preferences and respecting our differences.
Adults may be a little kinder than children. However, I still would not dare bring my food (curry), and heat it up in the kitchen at work. :(
Wow. Thanks for stirring up some memories. I do not come from an immigrant family- just a poor one. Most days I had government cheese on yesterdays bread. No drink or milk money- I had to stop at the water fountain after lunch since we didn't have one in the cafeteria. I would have enjoyed getting picked on for having a decent, healthy lunch.
Wonder if anyone ever brought kimchi in their lunches? I have a niece that's 5 years old and is in kinder this year. In our school district parents and authorized ppl can eat lunch with their children. Although I'm just the aunt I make it up to her school about once a week to eat with her, and I usually bring something from a restaurant that she wanted me to pick up for her. One day her daddy calls me and asked me to go up there and eat the cafeteria food. She was to get one meal and I'd choose another meal. We wanted to find out if the food was that bad for her to insist on bringing her own. I'm telling you, she got a spaghetti and meatball lunch, and I got a chili frito pie. YUCK! Both were cold, horrible smelling AND nasty tasting. She has won the battle of at least once a week I can bring her something in, and her parents send her to school w/lunch. There's a logical reason why school lunches can be free or 1/2 price, IT'S ALL NASTY and it's not worth the money that is charged!
Amen, they have the nerve to charge good money for the processed pig slop goop that they pass for 'nutritious,' and take offense at kids who bring their own lunch from home.
I grew up as the kid of first-generation Chinese immigrant parents in Greenville, South Carolina. My sisters and I made up 3 of the 5 Asian kids in our elementary school (thank God for the Kim family). One of my favorite food as a kid were homemade jaozi (dumplings), the kind where my mom would expertly knead homemade dough and snap perfect little segments to be rolled into wrappers. By the age of 8 I could pop a jaozi into my mouth and tell whether the wrapper was frozen and store-bought or if it was homemade. I'd drop big, splashy crocodile tears if I discovered the offending jaozi was made of the former. I remember begging my mom to wrap some jaozi into a lunch box for me, along with some soy sauce seasoned with fresh ginger. At lunch, I can remember everyone - including teachers - crowding around me to inspect my completely foreign, smelly meal, and I can remember my utter mortification.
The jaozi never happened again in my lunch box; I resigned myself to surviving on turkey and provolone sandwiches for the duration of my primary education. But now that I'm a mom of a 1 year old who goes to a preschool during the day, I find myself making the same lunches I used to be so embarrassed about as a kid: coconut-milk poached red snapper (which doesn't have to be reheated); meatballs with bok choy; slow-braised soy ginger chicken thighs with daikon radishes. My son is the kid with the smelly lunch, and I hope he always will be.
Love reading this compilation of the walking lunch wounded. Yes, that which doesn't kill us, gives us blog fodder. Thanks for the feature..I am beaming!! Alexandra Rosas/Humor Blogger/Good Day, Regular People
If it were only in school! I love ethnic foods and have weathered many comments on my "fragrant" choices for lunch at work. Of course, as an adult, I just told them to pi*s off...LOL!
Why don't they become acclimated then and eat normal food...
Seriously? Normal food? What the heck is the matter with you that normal means anything other than what YOU know and are comfortable with? Who cares what people eat? If you don't like it, don't eat it. But there is no reason to judge something that is really not your business.
Normal? As in peanut butter on white bread? Hilarious.
Ouch... define normal...
I'm not sure I'd call bologna and american cheese on wonderbread "food", much less "normal".
Acclimated!
LOL. Why don't you use "normal" words?? LOL
What is normal bj? Your PB&J?
Yesterday I read an article concerning congress turning back proposed legislation to make lunchroom food more healthy for our kids because of 'pressure' from the fast/frozen food industry. I can't help but feel the frustration of those who are trying to leave their kids a legacy of healthy habits and trying to teach them to eat right while school districts use their parent's millage taxes to put a slew of unhealthy processed cr@p in front of them come lunchtime. I'm American-born with a foreign family who has come back from 26 years overseas (so you could, in a sense, see us as immigrants). My wife an I have instilled a sense of family foodieism and healthy eating in our 14 year-old to the point where she loathes to eat contemporary lunchroom food (which quite frankly, is one step above pig slop nutritionally) and instead hoards a serving of the previous evenings avocado/tomato/sweet onion salad with salt cod and olive oil, paella, chicken escoveich or whatever was on the table the previous evening whenever she can. She doesn't particularly care what the other kids say but she's told me that teachers ask her if my wife or me are chefs. Maybe they should pick up a cookbook or two.
Umm...wow. Is this really the biggest problem immigrant kids have in schools? If so..then shut up. Because no one really cares.
It seems easy to say that nobody cares, but in school when you are surrounded by your classmates and friends who care if you are a part of their group, it does matter. However I agree with the writer, kids need to be preached early in childhood itself that being diverse is OK, and 'normal'. This would help them grow out of the fear and stress.
As a child, our family had an income that lower than most of my classmates. Although I normally had the regular PB&J lunches, occasionally my mom would pack sardine sandwiches because that's the only thing she had to give us. I hated those days because then the kids would tease me and complain about my smelly lunch.
This oddly enough reminds me of my mother. She's kind of a health nut, and other teachers make fun of her food in the staff room. (Meanwhile they're stuffing their faces with school lunches of pizza and corn dogs.) lol Poor Mom has taken to eating her lunch in her classroom.
My father passed away when I was 2 yrs old, life must have changed for us. I do not recall having lunch money,Momma had 5 kids. Life is better now, I have never balanced a check book, always knew not to spend more than I made. Single and retired military, I have money in the bank, you would be surprised. I drive a 1998 Camry that I bought for 3,600.00 but could buy a new car. Life is better.
My dad made my lunch every day because I have serious allergies. I was never allowed to eat school lunch. I was never embarrassed by the food my dad made though. All of the other kids were in awe of the fact that I had a dad who cooked. My mom cooked too but with 4 girls to get ready, Dad handled most of the breakfasts and lunches.
I had my eight year old read this article and her comment was "Ewwww, disgusting." To having a peanut butter & jelly or bologna sandwich for lunch! She has taken sushi, albondigas soup, feta cheese & veggies on skewers, hard boiled eggs, large chunks of grilled tuna, salmon, swordfish, and trout. Beans, lentils, hummus & pita chips. Soba noodles with tofu, hot pot, cashew chicken and rice, I mean., I could go on but you get the picture. Her kindergarten teacher told me all the adults looked forward to seeing what she brought for snack and lunch. Won't eat sandwiches and will only eat La Creme yogurt. So, I'm not sure why an "unusual" lunch is cause for ostracizing, but it hasn't happened to us......
I guess you're trying to sound pretentious?
I guess you're trying to be rude?
Many of us do not eat a "typical" American diet full of fat, sugar, and carbs. That makes us healthy, not pretentious.
Dunno, listing all of those just to illustrate a point does sound pretentious to me.
That is excellent Susan! I'm a chef, and my son took his lunch every day until high school, he wouldn't touch the stuff in the cafeteria, he said it smelled bad and looked weird! He took pasta, pizza, fresh veggies and fruit, all kinds of salads, home baked goodies (I own a bakery) that made him the envy of all the kids at his table. The kids begged to change lunches, my son refused. Smart kid!
There is a precedent here, and I would not deny you the right to continue to seek or maintain the admiration of the other adults at her school that are aware of the vast lunch options your child may brings to school on any given day.
People often validate their self-worth in the least expected places.
Well-put!
I'm sure the trout was grass-fed, the vegetables free range and the rice locally grown.
I've seen kids embarrassed by bringing weird lunches, eating cafeteria food, NOT eating cafeteria food, having "poor" lunches, not having money for snacks, and for not having lunches at all. There is no one group that had it any harder in that regard. And at least these kids HAD lunches, unlike some of us. I would've taken a stinky lunch any day to avoid everyone asking me why I wasn't eating again.
Although one of my parents immigrated from Argentina, I simply preferred different foods... I wanted a liverwurst or a hummus sandwich any day over pb&j. I got the same kind of flak, but at least my lunch tasted better. :)
Amen, Maria.
I guess I got lucky I grew up, and went to school with, a bunch of Cuban kids. We all were eating Arroz con Pollo and Picadillo for lunch.
For us, PB&J would have been weird!
I am of mixed Eastern-European descent and I was raised in the 50's with lots of great fresh food. My mom was a fabulous cook and occasionally made amazing sandwiches but most often packed my lunch box with the previous nights leftovers. Since she made a fresh pot of soup almost every day that meant I took a lot of soup to school, which was usually not a problem, except when I brought things like borscht or sour kraut soup. The kids in my classes always thought that was pretty freaky, but I never remember feeling different in a bad way. Maybe it was the pride in our heritage that my family instilled in me, because I kind of enjoyed being different and I raised my kids to be proud of being themselves. Plus, after awhile most of the kids would badger me to trade parts of my lunch with them, and it didn't take me long to realize that flat, tasteless Wonder Bread sandwiches were not some thing I wanted any part of.
Wow... "food bullies"? Really? Is there nothing our PC divas will not dredge up, to show how rough life is?
NEWSFLASH! Bullies, at all levels, will pick on those who are different, weaker, less likely to fight back.
So, if you are dress weird, you'll be confronted. If you speak with a weird accent, you'll be confronted. If you have strange habbits, you'll be confronted. If you have a weird sounding name, you'll be confronted. If you bring smelly food to lunch, you'll be confronted. The ironic reality is that while striving to establish their identity, our kids (all over the world) demand conformity from their peers.
The PC crowd seeks to eliminate the confrontations. Instead, we need to develop people with stronger backbones, with more confidence and personalities that will stand up to bullies and defend themselves. Even better, they may even defend others against these bullies.
Bullying will not stop because we wish it to, or because people say it's bad or because we bring up more examples of fragile people. Hey, maybe your idiot parents should have realized that the limburger, sardine and onion sandwitches were not the most appropriate thing for a 12-year old to eat. But they didn't so the "locals" made fun of you.
Bullying is an ugly part of human nature, and it will always be with us. The best we can do is to confront and cause the bullies to move along, until the day they realize that a burrito or a panini is a great lunch treat. Though I'm still not up for the sardine and limburger sandwitch.
You know, I'll bet the children of immigrants eat a lot healthier than PB&J and Gushers. I'll bet they'll have the last laugh when it comes to their health.
I think I was the only one kid with a bean and cheese burrito and a large glass of water. That made me the favorite of a dozen bullies, who decided to leave me alone after I farted all over them.
Since then I decided to get more sophisticated regarding my school lunches. I made sure to include soft bean tacos and hot souce, the nutritious burritos, and my favorite, bean dip and chips with a side of avocado. That great variety made me look forward to lunch time.
It was later in life that I discovered bean tostadas and my second favorite, bean soup.
However, I was out of my mind when I found out an exquisite bowl of chily beans that one of my girlfriends prepared for me back in the day. I would have married her if her younger sister wouldn't have presented with a concoction she came up with: chicharrones and beans in hot red souce. The flour tortillas were a true luxury.
I went to school in a small town, and we were allowed to go home for lunch in elementary school, which I did. My mom made me lunch everyday. On the rare occasion that I got to eat lunch at school (which I would sometimes beg to do so i could spend more time with friends), my mom would pack my lunch. But it wasn't like the other kids: she packed my sandwhich in a bag, then in foil. Then she would pack my a can of 7-up and wrap it in foil (to keep it cold she said). All I wanted were the same things my friends had – the same chips, sandwhich on white bread with the crust cut off, and a juice box. I would have given anything to be like them. it wasn't until I was older that I realized how lucky I was to have a mom at home and be able to go home to a hot lunch. But as a kid, I was mortified when I took out my 7-up wrapped in tin foil.
My mom used to wrap soda cans in foil too!! I thought I was the only one who had to suffer through that haha!
i was born in this country. my school lunches, which i brought from home back in the 60's, was NOT pb&j. i hate that and i still do. my lunches somethings were fried chicken, home soup in a thermas that kept it hot until lunch, salami sandwiches, tuna sandwiches, or whatever was left over from dinner. i was made fun of because i did not eat the pb&j. to this day, i still think i had the better lunch. my classmates did not know what they were missing. and, today, i still bring my lunch to work. my boss is always asking what do i have for lunch today because it smells so good.
Maybe if your parent had made peanut butter, baked bread or made jelly, you might have liked it. Each to their own.
I remember in high school, we had a group of Japanese people visiting and a few joined my friends and I at lunch. Thanks to a lot of time in Hawaii, I had a pretty solid base of knowledge concerning Japanese food and it was fun to trade for the good stuff and watch my friends as they tried the more odd foods while I sat those out. I was the only one who liked most of it though, apparently arari crackers don't fly well with middle class high school kids. Good thing they didn't bring poke' or I would have been a real outcast for going face down on a pile of delicious pickled seafood heaven.
While I was born in Arizona, my parents are British. They were the ones who taught me how to speak so I have a slight accent without ever living in England. So that was strike one. Then the lunch....strike two. Cheese and pickled onions? I am 32 and I still hurt a bit from the bullying. Strike three was being really pale and liking football....I mean soccer.
It's a different world now. Culinary cuisine has become such a thing in America thanks to all the cooking shows. I really don't think these issues still apply.
Actually, unfortunately these issues do still occur. My daughter gets teased at school for bringing in one of her favorite Danish lunches – mackerel in tomato sauce served on dark heavy rye bread. It's the Danish equivalent of a tuna salad sandwich. It's gotten so bad she's quit eating her favorite lunch – which is a shame as it's actually quite healthy.
No. 1 this reminds me of the scene from My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Moose-ca-ca!
And 2 kids tend to be such picky eaters. How is it the immigrant kids eat that stuff? Or do they throw it away?
they eat it because thats what they eat at home. If I wasn't raised with tostones and arroz con habichuellas (my spanish spelling sucks) I would hate it.
My daughter is in the 1st grade and her school does not serve any lunch. In fact, non of the 5 public elementary schools in our district have a kitchen. All the children bring their own lunch and snacks. I make her a fresh and healthy lunch everyday. We are lucky enough to live 1/2 a block from school so sometimes our nanny will make her a hot lunch and bring it to her around lunch time. But it is never PBJ sandwich or Lunchable. I have a good collection of bento boxes and she LOVES her bento lunches. Her favorite lunch items are California roll sushi, raw carrots and hummus, fresh fruits, home made wonton dumplings, soba noodles in soup with fresh vegetables. She has NEVER come home complaining that other children make fun of her lunch, but she does tell me how other children would say they wish their moms would make lunches like hers.
Is it you or the nanny who makes the lunch? Please, get over yourself and your goofy lunches. Sounds like a princess raising a princess.
That was a nasty comment. I wish all kids could have that "goofy lunch" eberyday instead of the instant crap that most kids get. Kids need to eat healthfully not white bread and processed meat everyday.
Mmm...sounds like someone is jealous.
@Gemma – It is obvious you are a bad parent. If you were, a good parent, you would see that serving your kid processed foods and white bread is not very good for their health. This mother is actually a GOOD mother because she cares about what her child eats and not what is the norm. "Normal" food is why American kids are FAT. Parents feed them lots of sugar, bad carbs and processed meats. I can almost bet you are obese. Don't be envious because she has a nanny. She obviously has the means to have one.
Before criticizing a bento box meal or any other meal, realize that what some folks in this country consider a fancy, princessy lunch is a perfectly normal meal in another part of the world. My Asian parents still think a cold meal is just not proper!
Do you think Japanese parents swoon and brag about their kids' palettes when they declare they want a cheeseburger?
oooh, a nanny. oooh, bento boxes. oooh, hot lunch delivered from home. Egads.
Don't bother with the nasty comments. They probably don't know what a Bento is!!! They are SO MUCH fun! And healthier than a Peanut Butter Sandwich (Which only raises FAT kids). Congrats on being a good mother. The other are just lazy moms who rather take 5min than 20 making something healthy. ^^
Or maybe they are not lazy. Maybe, just MAYBE they can only afford PBJ sandwiches for their kids. Maybe they are doing good to afford that. Not everyone can afford a nanny to prepare hot meals and deliver bento boxes. Why is everyone so judgemental and intolerant? One of the points of the article is that even in food choices kids (and adults, too) are intolerant and/or ignorant or anything outside their own small world.
Good for you!
Raise you child as you think best.
She is a lucky little one to have a mom who cares what she eats.
Happy Days!
My dad used to pack my lunch with a sandwich on wheat bread that I wished was white bread. He also used to include a cheese sculpture that he sculpted out of cheddar cheese. It embarrassed me because I desperately wanted to be "normal." I used to hide my cheese sculpture so no one would see and throw it away. Now I'm an artist and I wish I had been brave enough to admire my dad's lunch box art.
and how does she reply?–"oh actually that's my nanny; don't be jealous of my food–I envy you the time you have with your real parents instead of hired help"
It's abundantly clear who's the jealous one.
hey and you know, while you're gloating about the wonderful spendy meals you send with your child, why don't you teach her and YOURSELF some humility and let her know not everyone can afford sushi for lunch, and you should both just be thankful that you can.
The ingredients she listed aren't spendy at all.... try doing a little grocery shopping yourself for dinner once in a while.
Spendy lunches? I am absolutely certain she spends far less on these food choices then the average parent who send in the expensive Lunchables or packed/prepared foods. Sushi primarily means cooking with rice. It is a very economical way to eat!
One of my favorite things to do for my girls is to send in fresh Avocado Maki. I set my rice cooker (found at Target and used a coupon) the night before to have fresh rice for the morning, add a little rice vinegar (pennies, the amount used), roll it up in a piece of nori (healthy and not expensive) with 1/4 of an avocado (an avocado costs me roughly $1.50), slice it up and you have a delicious, fresh lunch that is very healthy. If I'm feeling into it I might even add a drop off food coloring into the rice water and have pink or blue rice for the maki! So cute, the kids love it and their teachers are envious! The leftover rice is used in my lunch for the day or my husband's or I freeze the rest and use it for another Bento style lunch for another week. VERY inexpensive to make, doesn't take any longer to make it then a nasty bologna sandwich and I have happy kids and I'm a very happy mom knowing what they are eating. And yes, they eat every last bite.
I also pack my children Bento style lunches. In fact, it's a hobby of mine. I love collecting cute little boxes and accessories and making them fresh, healthy lunches that they will enjoy. They not only taste good, are healthy but they look great too! I have children who only eat enough to survivie (unlike their mother, LOL!) and if I put a little effort into it, and love, it shows and they eat more of it!
My daughters are also vegetarian, so eating the school lunch isn't always an option. I also save a lot of money by providing their lunch from home, usually leftovers from the night before.
My favorite lunches for the girls are hummus and veggies, slices of cheese or pieces on skewers with veggies, fruit (usually cut into cute shapes) and pretzel dipping sticks.
I have had many of my younger daughter's preschool teachers ask if I will make them a lunch too!!! On the days when I have a little extra time I also make a nice Bento style lunch for my husband and he is very happy indeed, with his peers asking him what I made him that day and can I make them one too!
Don't let other people make you feel bad because you choose to put a little extra effort and love into making your child's food! If that's how you show you care and that you love them, go for it!
Wow, I didn't realize paying someone to watch your kids because you're a 2 working parent family so that they can provide your children with a better public school system and a safe neighborhood would be cause for criticism. We also have a 10 month old baby. Having a nanny at home was the cheapest option because it would cost more for an infant daycare and extended care for our 1st grader after school. The nanny is a necessity, not a luxury. I'm not getting my nails done or getting spa treatments while having someone else raise my kids. My husband and I both have 10 hr work days (counting commuting time) so on many days, I'm making her bento lunch at 12:30am. Our nanny cooks only occasionally a hot lunch and that's when I do all the prepping already and she just cooks and deliver (cooking is not one of her duties). The norm at our house is that all the food is prepare by me or my husband. And her bento box lunches cost about $1 a day. My friend who's daughter is also in the 1st grade, but goes to school in another district, pays for school lunches at $2.75 a day and I would bet at much lower food quality. I make lunch for her precisely because it's cheaper, not the other way around. So for those who thinks a healthy prepared bento lunch and having a nanny is living the luxurious and pampered "princess" life, think again.
I used to bring Greek salt-cured olives to school with my salami on rye sandwiches (wrapped in waxed paper instead of plastic baggies like everyone else's). The kids would scream, "you're eating prunes, ewwwww!" And, in our house the word for mustard was always "senapé," (Northern Italian dialect) so that was what I asked for on our first "hot dog day" at my Catholic school.
In High School, my son would try to weird out his plain vanilla buddies. The two biggest successes were pickled quail eggs and bentons' bacon. (not at the same time!)
I'm an adult and I've been ridiculed for what I pack for lunch at the office. My husband is a chef and we eat exotic foods at home pretty often. I've gotten everything from "What's that?" said in a tone that adds the unspoken "Gross" to it all the way to snotty comments about me thinking I'm better than other people just because of something leftover from the night before that other people have either never tried or never heard of. I've gotten that "That stinks" comment, too. Even stuff that other people would have brought to lunch has been met with snide comments because we made it different than they did. I think some people get stuck in the mean kid from school bully complex and never leave it.
How lucky you are!!
Pack you lunch? Ha! 80% of Los Angeles Unified school district get free or reduced price lunches. LA Daily News has a story about how the LA Unified immigrant kids won't eat the healthy new lunches and are going hungry because breakfast and lunch at school are the only meals they get all day.
when they get hungry enough they'll start eating it
I work at an elementary school with a really high percentage of immigrants, refugees, and first-generation Americans. Almost all of them get free or reduced lunch. Very few have the "problem" of getting home-packed lunches that are different from the majority, because there is no majority – mostly it's a plurality of Hispanic kids. And every single fourth-grader wants the Asian noodles that the Burmese kids bring in as a snack. This piece smacks of lazy nostalgia and isn't speaking to the reality of immigrant kids in school cafeterias today.
Dumb article. I was sent to school with ethnic foods also but just the same, if an American kid was sent to school with his mom's meatload leftovers, he would be made fun of also. Kids are kids. If its not the food, its their not so hip lunch box or their plain milk vs. some new cool juice box. Get over it.
Not only did I grow up feeling like a bit of an outsider for bringing Macedonian baked goods like zelnik with leeks and feta cheese to school for lunch, but my bigger issue may have been the paper bag I brought it in! My father worked at a paper bag manufacturing company and was allowed to bring home the "irregulars" so we never had a shortage of slightly oversized, waxy white bags. I didn't think anything of it until one day someone joked that I brought a big bag of donuts to lunch. Oh how I wished for a bologna sandwich and a juice box in a brown paper bag!
My mom was an Avon lady, and she used to pack my lunches in Avon bags. I was mortified because all the other kids brought their lunches in either a plain brown paper sack or a decorated lunch box.
American kids get picked on because of their lunch choices too. It really isn't just immigrants kids. Children at certain ages don't understand/cope well with differences. It is an opportunity for parents and teachers to discuss cultural issues and tolerance.
I'm one who moved around a lot growing up, and honostly I've even brought lunches to school that the other kids looked at me (and my siblings) weirdly. Guess what, who cares. I enjoyed every single meal. One time it was smoke sausage and sourkraut. We had moved back from Germany recently and my mom had made it for dinner. It was one of the best lunches I had, and it's still one of my favorites. Another time my dad made chinease at home (from a Chinease cook book a good friend gave him), and we got strange comments on eating those left overs as well. I'm grateful to have moved around and gotten to try local and even cultural foods. One of my favorites from where I am living now....green-bean dumpling soup!
oh yea
i have gotten packed lunches before that are a little weird, not all the time, but sometimes. I didn't care, i don't even remember anyone saying anything, i am in high school. And f they did, too bad, i enjoyed my lunch, and i guess now laugh at them because they were missing out on some good lunches instead of the generic lunch all students had.
Even now that I am working, I still bring my own food. I am Asian and I crave for rice everyday. There are some people at work that kind of have that look at my food and even make comments. I couldn't care less about what they say especially when I bring the fish with the head. I ate the foods that I grow up with though I tried eating fastfood but it's just a waste of money because it's like a snack for me. So I still have to cook to feed my hunger. I am just not satisfied with spaghetti, sandwhich and ham. And most of the time my food is way much healthier anyway. So regardless of what they say, I take pride about my food.
Where in Asia are you from? My wife is Vietnamese and when I bring pho or cha gio to the office, it is usually pretty popular. I know what you mean about the whole fish though. That took some getting used to when I visited her family.
I have a feeling the people interviewed were not so much embarrassed by their lunches but are actually now bragging that they were so exotic back in the day... i mean boohoohoo – fresh oregano, on a sandwich – she must have been such an outcast to those kids that had to get free/reduced lunch. Growing up is so hard.
You obviously don't remember how cruel small children generally are to anyone who is different. Your post reeks of jealousy and envy. I'm assuming you were a bologna/cheese everyday child? Don't assume bad things about people just because you feel bad about yourself.
@Dave in Portland, who wrote in response to Sloppy Josephine: "I'm assuming you were a bologna/cheese everyday child? Don't assume bad things about people just because you feel bad about yourself."
Good job making assumptions yourself. The scenario that "Sloppy Josephine" hinted at is at least as plausible as the scenario presented in the article.
You may want to gain a little personal perspective.
Bravo to the teacher for actually paying attention to surroundings and taking the time to give a lesson on food culture. Even though children are raised by parents, it's up to those figures of authority to make sure children are aware that things that are different aren't a bad thing. Just to the naysayers...I don't encourage babying but I discourage bullying and cruelty to our own human beings.
I agree that it was the only good piece of advice in this article. Thank you for bringing that up
Yes, that struck me, too. My daughter had a teacher like that and you wouldn't believe how a group of third graders can inhale "exotic" foods! A good teacher is worth his/her weight in gold.
I grew up in the city as well...our school was a huge melting-pot of cultures. as a white girl, I was the one that brought the stinky foods since my parent were culinary teachers and traveled all over for spices. boy, did I want that PB&J and Bolgna sandwich on squishy white bread. I was so embarassed that quite a few times I threw my lunch away and just got stoned instead. those were the days! I would do anything for a do over on those lunches now
To me eating international foods is the best thing about a meal. Those spices, aromas and strange objects add such mystique and romance. However DO NOT EAT THESE FOODS ON A PLANE. The smells at 30,000 feet in turbulence do not hold up.
Really, "immigrant" kids should be so lucky as not to have pb&j or bologne sandwiches. My kids went to grade school in a large urban Canadian city, a country in which your heritage is embraced and not looked upon as non "North American", and I'll get flack for this but more specifically American. Their lunches reflected what we ate on a daily basis at home and their classmates were no different. I would guess there might have been 10 different ethnic backgrounds in any class. Long live the foods of the world and kids of this world, and let's not let our kids think not bringing white bread to school is being a social outcast. Ignorance really is taught at home you know
My kids think it is cool that their Indian and Asian friends in school do not bring in sandwiches. There is a lot of food swapping and interest. Not all kids are cruel – in fact, most are not.
I see this as a failure both of parents and of the schools in the past. A very bigoted attitude to anything "different" and the schols wasted many teacjing opportunities.
I once had a good friend tell me with a straight face that he preferred real American food like pizza and Spaghetti. he was a great guy but had grown up in a very religious household and so lacked a lot of cultural9and indeed regular) education.
You know, everyone, at one time or another, has been bullied, made fun of, laughed at, been set a part from others, was made to feel embarrassed, made to feel different, and any other "poor me, I've been mistreated as a child" moments in their lives. We can all think back and find a specific moment where something "life crushing" happened to us and made that moment in our childhood stink. So what? Get over it! That kid with the "normal" PB&J sandwich, that you so coveted, may have had that sandwich because that was all his parents, or parent, could afford. I ate PB&J. I ate lots of bologna. I had friends that brought what I considered "better" food items in their lunch. I had friends that brought what I considered "weird" food items in their lunch. That's life! We are ALL different! Time to move past all the "poor me I'm an immigrant" attitudes! Sorry, I don't mean to offend, but I'm just tired of the "self-pity party" that people have now days. People need to stop feeling sorry for themselves!
Bravo to the teacher who used the differences in the meals to teach a valuable lesson.
Yes, everyone has likely been teased or bullied at some point in their childhood. However, not everyone has gotten bullied and teased every day, all day, to the point that other kids were afraid to be friends with them. Some of these kids with different lunches probably went through that and I assure you, it isn't something you just get over.
Kids are more vocal about smell and shape of food. I try to take the same food for my lunch as my kid so I know how it smells and feels after few hours in the box. I will try to avoid food that gave out smell. Nowdays schools are teaching kids about diffrent culture at early age, that helps at some degree but if children are raised with prjudice at home it will show up at school too.
When I interned at an art gallery, the fat greasy owner would always make fun of my food and said it smelled "fried and disgusting" while he would stuff his fat face with Five Guys everyday. Yeah, oven roasted chicken = fried and disgusting.
People can be real jerks.
I was raised that you don't make disparaging comments about other people's food. It's very apparent that others were not raised this way.
To each his own. I'm Canadian, born and raised but my parents came here in 77 from India. I eat all kinds of foods and enjoy almost all of them. Ppl would complain about my food (only happened a few times though) when I was younger but no one was really rude about it. I can't complain, for me the smelliest thing ever is Mac n Cheese, hate it with a passion and reminds me of the smelly locker room in junior high.
@GSA, that's exactly the reason why I won't eat mac & cheese, nor parmessean cheese! If something I order has parmessean cheese as an ingredient that is sprinkled on top of my meal, I order it without the cheese, if they bring it to me and didn't omit the cheese, I'll immediatley send it back, it smells like dirty feet and I can't get past that.
why did you single out "ethnic" kids. c'mon now. what about the plain old whiteys who had adventurous parents? wow, that's bad cnn.
Might have been a good story if it contained any info pertaining to TODAY's schools and not stories from previous decads. Perhaps the author needs to head to some schools today and see what kids are bringing and how the react to things that are 'different' in other students lunch boxes.
"Kids from immigrant families are up against a lot, and the pressure to assimilate to their new culture ..."
That sounds like present tense to me.
At the end she asked, "Do you have any true tales of alienation or acceptance in the school cafeteria?"
Changing the content of the post would invalidate the question.
I thought it was a good story. Diff strokes for diff folks.
I grew up a poor, white female in the South during the 1970's in a single parent home. I was on a free lunch program. My mother rarely bought lunchmeat, so when children were required to bring a lunch to school for a field trip, my mother always made egg salad sandwiches. I liked them okay at home, but they smelled terrible after several hours packed in a sack, and I was ridiculed. Although this article addresses foods from other cultures, I think a good theme in general would be tolerance and understanding for others, including those less fortunate.
Hope you didn't get sick. Egg salad sandwiches sure don't keep for very long.
I hope the sun has shone upon you to where you can serve your kids and/or grandkids all the BBQ, fried catfish w/fresh hush puppies, mac and cheese, homemade cornbread, shrimp 'n grits, Southern style potato salad, sweet potato casserole, banana puddin', key lime pie and red velvet cake that their hearts desire. Just keep them busy so they don't get too big.
Je rk off.
May God's love bless you and keep you all the days of your life.
Give us grace for today. Feed the famished affections.
This one hit a chord. For me the issue was whether to eat my Indian food with a fork and knife or pick it up with my fingers as it is meant to be. I think a more kid friendly presentation would help bridge the gap a bit.
I am indian and I can understand your pain. I eat my food as it meant to be. People eat sandwiches with hands why not my food even it's shaped diffrent.
I have my Indian food in our traditional style, no matter where I am. Even at my office desk too. Can't dream of eating Roti by fork n knife. Althoguh I use spoon for rice but I know people around from south india eat bare hand. I don't see any one complaining about them, and ofcourse never noticed any annoying faces.
I am Indian. I always pack lunches for my kids. Often, it is the lunch ladies at the school that put on a wierd face or comment on the kids' food and say 'how are you able to eat that yucky food' whenever they see rice or 'pav bhaji' – which is sandwich sort of thing with vegetables. I guess, adults need to be role models for younger children. None of the kids from this country or outside, have made fun of my lunch or my kids'.
In our school district in 1972, blacks were first being integrated into white schools. Jackie Wilson said she'd never seen a lunch like mine (she's black; I'm white) and asked to sample my bologna & American cheese sandwich. Since mom cut the sandwich in half, I gave her the half I hadn't bit into. She took a bite, screwed up her face, spat it out onto my plate and threw the uneaten half in front of me. That was the first and last time I ever shared a school meal with anyone.
=( Ooh that is so sad, when we r kids we r the cruelest, mostly because we are at our purest and therefore lying and sometimes thinking about others feelings are concepts we haven't mastered.
I am now in upper management at a leading computer software company. Sorry, but that sandwich was disgusting.
Jackie, considering how late you are with completing your TPS report, you really shouldn't be wasting valuable company time commenting on stories here at CNN.
Great article, brought back lots of memories. I think those of us whose families were new to this country have done a great job influencing and encouraging a bridge between two cultures. Wasn't always easy, but benefits for all.