By Hollie Muir, Senior Editor
Food westernisation. What is it? Do we subsconsciously know how we are being affected by this new "trend", or are we so used to western culture that there is no difference?
Our global diets are becoming increasingly homogenised. Fast food chains are taking over the world, leading to serious health issues, increases in cultural diffusion and a lack of cultural variation. Westernisation is overpowering traditional diets, and is terrifying for our health and long-established traditions.
Westernisation is a social process whereby a place culturally blends to become more like the Western civilisation (Europe and America), by adopting certain ideas or behaviours. The Western culture is slowly “absorbed” into another country or place.
Food westernisation is part of a large cultural shift whereby Asian diets are becoming hugely influenced by fast food chains like McDonald’s. Rapid economic and income growth, urbanisation, and globalisation are leading to a dramatic shift of Asian diets away from the usual staple foods of rice, noodles and beans, and increasingly towards meats and dairy products, fruit and veg, and fats and oils. Some of the staple foods which the UK and America share are meat and potatoes - the main ingredients which end up in a large amount of fast food products.
America has always been the driving force of food westernisation through it’s large influence of always conveying the traditions of its culture to adjust incoming food from other cultures. For example, now we are seeing dishes change slightly to suit the western diet. This can even involve the toning down of Indian spices to be less spicy than they traditionally are, the alteration of the frying of traditional Chinese chicken, and the addition of barbecue sauce to Mexican dishes. The western culture also makes other minor changes to foods to detract it from the original cuisine. These are the products that spread globally and become well known all over the world.
Globalisation and the consequence of global interconnectedness of the urban middle class population, is the driving force behind the joining of diets. The rapid spread of global supermarket chains and fast food restaurants is reinforcing the trends of westernisation fast.
On one hand, this process could be positive in a way as new foods are being shared globally, and new traditions are being included in people's original diets. America alters these foods to suit themselves, but with the spread of fast food “restaurants”, they are spreading this new culture in all its glory to areas who have not yet experienced food like this.
However, the access to specific foods has a major impact on the type of food a country can produce, so many of these fast foods have to be imported. Also, fast food chains are glocalised to meet the needs of the new consumers. Glocalisation is a term used to describe a product or service that is developed and distributed globally, but is also adjusted to accommodate the user or consumer in a local market. Some of the foods McDonald’s glocalises and provides are: the Chicken Maharaja Mac in India, theMcTurco burger in Turkey, the McFalafel wrap in Israel and the McArabia in Egypt. These are just a few examples of the many glocalised products all over the world. This just shows how dominant fast food chains like McDonald’s are.
We already know that our diets are becoming more homogeneous, and the conclusions of a newspaper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences back this idea up. Researchers from around the world went through 50 years of data gathered by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation to identify trends in the global menu. They found that human diets have grown increasingly similar - by a global average of about 36% - as fewer staple crops, like wheat, maize and soybeans are being eaten.
“More people are consuming more calories, protein and fat, and they rely increasingly on a short list of major food crops, like wheat, maize and soybean, along with meat and dairy products, for most of their food.”
Now, more and more people are eating processed meats and foods filled with wheat and soybeans, providing a more varied diet for poorer people who cannot afford more expensive produce and who used to depend on a very limited diet.
But, as we all know, westernisation brings obesity.
The rise in global obesity has nearly doubled since 1980, and the production of food crops like wheat and maize increases climate change due to their carbon footprint being larger than the foodstuffs they are displacing. Obesity in countries without the NHS is a major issue. Medication to treat diabetes costs millions already, and many people cannot afford it. The global cost of diabetes is set to almost double to $2.5 trillion by 2030! Also, if the global diet continues like this, then the increasingly grown crops of wheat and maize could become more vulnerable to new diseases, pests, or climatic changes. All of this due to the westernisation of foods.
So, overall, our increasingly similar global diets are causing possible exploitation of children through McDonald’s and other fast food chains, a huge increase in global obesity which can lead to diabetes, and a general lack of cultural variation.
Do we really want this issue to take over the world? I definitely don’t.
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