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You said it! Readers' Responses: Opinions on Food and Eating There's lots on food in the Tastes from Around the Globe section. Readers have added these comments. Share your ideas about food and eating Send your ideas. I think food is important for humans because one can't live without food. But some people waste food. Now there is a lack of food in Africa and so on. In fact, Japan also lacks food, so Japan trades food with many countries in the world. So we must not waste food and we have to be thankful for food. Seiichi Okimura from Japan The most popular food here on the East Coast (U.S.) are pizza, buffalo wings, salad, lobster, and mostly junk food. Weena from the U.S. Some of everyone's favorite foods here in Canada are pizza, viel, fish and chips, salad, and a lot of Italian food Chrystal White from Canada I would really like to learn about specific instances of the way that foods and recipies are changing due to american influence. I've heard that egg-salad donuts are popular in Japan, and I encountered extremely strange pizza in China. Does anyone have any other specific examples of this phenomenon? Meribeth Deen from Canada I think the most traditional food in Taiwan is rice dumpling--a pyramid-shaped mass of glutinous rice wrapped in leaves. We often eat rice dumplings on May 5th of the lunar calendar in remembrance of a great poet--Chu Yuan. Long time ago, he was a courtier and very worried about his fatuous and self-indulgent ruler. He kept demonstrating but it didn't work, and then he wanted to commit suicide to awaken his ruler. After Chu Yuan died, people wanted to honor his spirit and ritually cast a bamboo container of rice into the river to prevent his body being eaten by fish and shrimps. Then that bamboo container evolved the rice dumplings today. It's very delicious, for there will be various kinds of food inside--peanuts, pork, mushroom, boiled yolk and so on. I often eat more than ten rice dumplings on this festival. I think most of our citizens must like them as much as I do. Rudy Chen from Taiwan >According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, food is one of the fundamental needs required for living. Without the food, our life cannot be sustained. Except for the purpose of surviving, the food serves the functions of providing sufficient nutrients that helps us to grow well and healthy. Some food possesses the medical functions as well that helps to resists the diseases. In addition, food is incorporated into the pleasurable activities like award dinner, celebration party and meeting break. To people whom loves cooking would enjoy the time dealing with food while making delicious but healthy food becomes a big task in today's world. However, overeating or avoid eating becomes a problem. Thus, it is important to get a balanced food intake. On the other hand, food could transmit diseases as well when its cleanliness and chemical or biological contamination are not taken care of. Chee, Malasia I think the most typical food in my country is soy milk. It is white and sweet. To get soy milk, you squeeze the juice out of soy beans. Then you boil the juice. Adding sugar into the juice, and you have made tasty soy milk. Soy milk to Chinese is just like milk to Americans. We always drink soy milk at breakfasts. Susan from Taiwan There are a lot of kinds of food. The most important thing in the world is food. We can see advertisement about that on the T.V and radio. Everywhere we go there are restaurants and fast food places; everybody like to eat. Each country has its typical food. For example the typical Venezuelan's food is the Arepa, is like a bread, is easy to make, you can eat it with cheese, chicken, beef, black beans, etc. We can find people who like to eat meat, also we can find people who don't like to eat meat, they prefer to eat vegetables and fruits, we call them vegetarians; they never eat meat. I think food is very important, but sometimes we give it much importance and forget other things that are important too, like the people who don't have anything to eat or dress. We could help them instead of spend a lot of money in restaurants and fast food places, we can go to those places, but not everyday. There are people who everyday, for example, go to McDonald's, and spend much money, that could be used to help the people who don't have anything. Maggie from Venezuela Send us your ideas about food and eating. Return to: You Said It | Home Page TOPICS Online Magazine ©1997-2008 - Sandy and Thomas Peters - topics.mag@gmail.com