Before our meeting on Monday, April 15, I encountered Mabel as I was going to the second floor. Although she seemed to have other business at the Library I convinced her to come to the conversation club from which she had been missing for about a year.
What a joy! Mabel became our show-and-tell. She was a compendium of information about her Harvard fellowship on medical simulation that she will finish in May, thus qualifying to teach this skill to her fellow cardiologists, although the US law prevents her from practicing cardiology in the USA. We were amazed by the lifelike simulators she showed us on her phone. These simulations, we learned, are used not only for pre-operative exercises but also to teach parents and professionals how, for instance, to interact with children who have cranio-facial malformations. It was satisfying to hear Mabel speaking perfect idiomatic English, and to be personally thanked her confidence.
Food is always a welcome topic. This time the spin was how their favorite cuisines are adapted in foreign countries. In Japan, for instance, as Aoi told us, MSG is placed on the table in Chinese restaurants, unlike here in the USA where MSG is regarded with suspicion. From Jacqueline we learned that in Madagascar rice, their staple food eaten three times a day, comes in 150 colors. Jacqueline however prefers French cuisine. For Marcela the biggest change from Colombia is adapting here to light breakfasts and lunches. Amy got close to the article we were about to discuss when she said that we should use regional names like Hunan, Cantonese or Szechuan rather than lumping these distinctive cuisines together as Chinese food. Similarly, Anna objected to American Italian restaurants that serve nothing like Italian food which in her homeland is pretty simple with splendid ingredients. The fact that his homeland Peru is a gastro destination has stimulated Pablo’s curiosity about food. Here he has begun his exploration with Thai, fast food, deep dish pizza and New York pizza. Owing to their similar climates, Carmen Luz does not find much difference between the foods of Chile and the USA. In general, although many do not like spicy food, everyone was willing to try what is on offer here.
We broke into two groups, each with a teacher, to read and discuss an article about the furor created when a young white female Jewish health guru opened a Chinese restaurant in New York claiming to serve clean food. Each group worked up an argument, pro or contra, about whether the use of the term clean Chinese food should be used.
Group 1’s claims were presented by Shinobu with help from Mabel.
- “Clean food” as a term of art is not yet understood.
- This misinformation is deliberately magnified on social media.
- Those on social media want nothing but to destroy reputation based on misinformation, here making a false claim that clean food has something to do with cleanliness, when in fact it means avoiding MSG, processed food, and ingredients considered toxic.
- There is nothing wrong with changing recipes for the purpose of assimilation, as has been done by kosher Chinese restaurants for decades and decades.
Even though they were presenting opposing arguments, Group 2 largely agreed with Group 1. Anna said that the proprietor of the clean food Chinese restaurant, Arielle Haspel, should not use the word clean to mean healthy but that nothing could be done to prevent Haspel from trying to make her restaurant stand out. Pablo agreed that clean food was a marketing strategy. Aoi from Group 1 added that it is too early to use “clean food” as a concept. Jacqueline, also from Group 1, added that Michelle Obama had started the trend with her effort to introduce healthy school lunches.
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