Ms. Aali Kumar: Food Historian & Founder Zaikanama
1. Most teens probably don't think about it, but does it matter to know the history behind the food we eat?
Every meal is a record of history. The rice, chili, or chocolate on your plate got there through trade routes, empires, migration, enslavement, and invention. Knowing that turns eating into understanding. When you learn that chili peppers came from the Americas and only reached India and Thailand after 1500, "traditional" cuisine starts to look like the result of global exchange. That matters now because food is tied to today's big debates: who can afford healthy food, how climate change threatens crops, and whose culture gets credit when a dish goes viral. If you know the history, you're harder to fool with marketing.
2. What's your own relationship with food like? Has it changed over the years, and how do you think it compares to how teens today see food?
As a kid I saw food as fuel, or as a reward. Studying history changed that. Once I learned how hard people worked to preserve, stretch, and share food, I stopped taking it for granted and started to see it as connection. My grandmother's habit of saving bread crusts no longer looked odd once I understood what wartime rationing did to her generation. Teens today often meet food through a screen first. It's something to photograph, rate, or track before it's something to taste. That isn't all bad, but food can then feel like a performance instead of a pleasure.
3. Are there any traditional foods or eating habits that you think teens today are missing out on---and should maybe give another shot?
• The shared table. For most of history, eating alone was rare. Meals were where families passed on news, stories, and values. Even a few shared meals a week makes a difference.
• Fermented foods. Yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut, miso, and sourdough were developed as preservation technology long before anyone called them "gut health."
• Eating with the seasons. Strawberries in winter are a very recent luxury. Seasonal food tends to taste better and cost less.
• Humble staples. Beans, lentils, and whole grains fed civilizations for thousands of years. They're cheap, filling, and adaptable.
• Cooking one family recipe. Ask a grandparent or relative to teach you a dish. Recipes are heirlooms, and many disappear when nobody asks.
4. Food and cooking have historically been seen as "girls' work." How has history made girls feel pressure around food, body image, or eating the "right way"?
For centuries, feeding the household was framed as women's moral duty. In the 1800s and early 1900s, "domestic science" and home economics taught girls that a good woman kept an efficient kitchen and a well-fed family. Around the same time, diet culture took shape. Victorian ideals praised delicate appetites in women, and some reformers, like Sylvester Graham and John Harvey Kellogg, tied plain eating to moral purity. Through the 20th century, magazines and advertisers sold "reducing" diets mostly to women. So girls were given two conflicting jobs: feed everyone else well, and deny yourself. That legacy continues today. Diet culture often returns as "wellness," "clean eating," or "what I eat in a day" videos, and it can shame girls into thinking there's one right body and one right way to eat. Knowing this history helps you see those messages as a centuries-old sales pitch, not truth. And cooking isn't gendered. Most of the world's professional chefs have historically been men, which shows the "girls' work" label was about unpaid labor, not ability.
5. Thinking about teens today, what's the biggest difference you see in how they relate to food compared to previous generations?
Information and image. Earlier generations learned to eat from family, religion, and what was available locally. Today's teens have endless food information from influencers, algorithms, and apps, and it often contradicts itself. They also have more global variety than any generation in history. A teen today might eat ramen, tacos, and jollof rice in one week, which would have astonished their great-grandparents. The downside is that food choices can feel like identity statements that get judged, and ultra-processed convenience food is everywhere in a way it never was before.
6. You share a lot about food online. What's the most fun or surprising way you've seen teens connect with your stories about food?
My favorite moments come when teens turn history into action. After I posted about wartime rationing recipes, like cakes made without eggs or butter, a group of students baked them and posted side-by-side taste tests with modern versions. Their verdict was honest and funny. Others have commented that my stories finally explained why their grandmother cooks a certain dish only on one holiday. The biggest surprise is how often a food history post starts a family conversation that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
7. What's one food story from history that totally surprised you or made you see food in a new way?
Ketchup. Most people think of it as the most American condiment there is, but its name likely comes from a fermented fish sauce from southern China. British traders encountered it in Southeast Asia in the 1600s and 1700s and tried to recreate it at home with mushrooms, walnuts, and oysters. Tomato versions came much later in the United States, and sugar was added even later. That one bottle taught me that no food is "pure." Nearly everything we eat was borrowed, adapted, and remixed across cultures.
