What Food Means To Me Culturally

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What Food Means to Me Culturally I’m torn between hotdogs and “chorizos”, pancakes and “arepas”, “arroz y habichuelas” and macaroni and cheese, and “sancocho de pollo” and chicken noodle soup. For me it’s difficult to state what food means to me culturally because my taste in food is influenced by where my parents and family are from, where I was born and raised, and by my friends and their families who all have different cultural backgrounds. I was born into a Colombian home and since a really young age I was fed Colombian food weather it was rice, beans and steak, natural fruit juices, or rice pudding, my mother as well as any Hispanic mother was always making sure my “tummy was satisfied. I enjoyed it, until I started pre-school and was exposed to different foods and then my eating habits started to change. I realized my classmates weren’t eating rice and beans, rice pudding, or drinking natural fruit juices. All the kids were eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chips, cookies and juice boxes. I eventually made friends, who started sharing their snacks with me and my eating habits completely changed shortly after. I started asking for macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets with a Capri sun instead of rice, beans, steak and a juice. I went on to kindergarten and then elementary school, I made lots of friends but most importantly two best friends who live in my neighborhood, actually they’re my neighbors. Our parents meet and before I knew it I was at their houses on a daily basis, I would often eat dinner with my best friends. They’re both Puerto Rican, I got so accustomed to the food they would eat that I began to dislike Colombian food, which was something really difficult for my family to accept. Now that I’m 18 years old and have visited Colombia multiple times, I appreciate the native dishes from there more than I have in certain

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