Wilson

In the article, Pass the Tofu, Please. Liz Wilson shows a brief background of how Asian diet became popular in Western culture from 1960s to 1990s. Countercultural movements, such as macrobiotic movement and negritude movement contributed to the rise of alternative diets in the late 1960s. The author claims that the baby-boom generation tended to affiliate with non-western values through their choices about what foods and beverages to consume. During that period, the threats of packaged convenience foods were recognized. Ethnic food, to many baby boomers is not only a healthy pursuit but also one of the ways that oppose to homogeneity, commercialism and artificiality. Traditional Eastern value enhanced in the Western world in the postmodernism. Natural and simple food and herbs, yoga, and Tai-ji have become ideal alternative to industrialized, chemicalized diet, stagnating inactivity and pills. Moreover, food tended to be a preeminent means of self-expression, according to the article. Food has linked to status display and status differentiation. Although health was regarded as a significant role that driving the change of American food consumption, simultaneously, there are many other factors pushed this trend, such as vegetarianism, multicultural consumerism.

At the end of twentieth century, culinary pluralism seemed more popular in favor of tourism. Under the trend of post-modernism, Asian values and traditions were romanticized to some extent. Finally, the article links Asian foodways with American social changes in the past few decades.