Why do different cultures eat different foods?
Dinner's Long Journey
Why do different cultures eat different foods?
Why does your neighbor's grandmother make dumplings that taste nothing like your grandmother's pie? Why does one friend's house smell like cumin and garlic while another's smells like soy sauce and ginger? The answer starts thousands of years ago, when your ancestors looked around and asked a simple question: "What's for dinner?"
Long before grocery stores or shipping trucks, people could only eat what grew nearby. If you lived where rice paddies flooded every spring, you ate rice. If you lived where wheat waved in dry fields, you ground it into bread. If the ocean crashed against your village, fish showed up at every meal. Geography was the first chef — it decided the menu before anyone even struck a match.
