Sidney W. Mintz

The findings of these diverse essays are compelling. That so
many people should have so quickly become enthusiastic con-
sumers of foreign, largely unfamiliar foods flatly contradicts a
once-unquestioned stereotype. Most East Asian peoples were
thought of as being unchanging and conservative--viewing
everything foreign as barbaric, mean, unworthy of cultural
borrowing. These essays eloquently reveal just how wrong
such generalizations can be. But they also make clear that the
cases described differ significantly from one another. At the
same time, the ethnographic details they provide lead us to ask
different specific questions. As a case, Korea stands out; Sang-
mee Bak shows that the newly popular stereotype--"Mc-
Donald's always succeeds"--must be qualified. But the Korean
case is certainly not an entire "failure" from McDonald's point
of view. Its difficulties in Korea do not invalidate its successes
there; nor are all its Asian successes exactly alike.

On a larger canvas, such materials when viewed together
provoke us into raising far broader issues related to human eat-
ing habits. Such issues have to do with nutrition, of course. But
they also invite reflection about the range of the human taste
aesthetic, which seems so wide when viewed upon a world

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