Are Comments of this Photo of Taiwanese Shaved Ice an Example of Culinary Racism?

shavediceThis week, popular food blog Serious Eats put up a Flickr photo of a popular Taiwanese dessert hongdoubing, or shaved ice with condensed milk, red beans and flan. It was meant to be taken as food porn, but to a couple of the commenters it was anything but: “That looks terrible to me,” said one. “Looks like someone had a bad bowel movement … if that ever came out of my [ass], I’d head straight to the emergency room,” said another.

I didn’t grow up on sweet red beans and shaved ice, so the dessert looks a little intense to even me, but at what point does someone’s objections to food start getting offensive? Another commenter put it best: “There’s an interesting dichotomy in the comments. This stuff is delicious, but I kind of feel like I do when they use ‘weird and crazy’ Asian food on Fear Factor after reading [these] comments.” Balut, anyone?

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About Ernie

I'm the creator of 8 Asians and one of the editors. While I'm a regular blogger to the site as well, think of my role as Barbara Walters on "The View," except without the weird white hair. During the day, I'm a Developer for a major Internet company and live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I've also been writing in my blog, littleyellowdifferent.com, for seven years.
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