With the priority that the Chinese place on food in their culture, it's a shame that the recent food scares have been tinged with a hint of racism, says Jeff Yang in the Washington Post:
That's troubling, because it reinforces the notion that befouled food is the consequence of a foul culture. Chef and gustatory adventurer Anthony Bourdain may have said it best in a 2006 Salon interview in which he noted that there's "something kind of racist" about culinary xenophobia: "Fear of dirt is often indistinguishable from the fear of unnamed dirty people."
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