the yuck face
I’ve seen it so many times when an American is offered foreign food, or when someone mentions something they don’t like. Look, everyone has a right to dislike something, and I know to a certain extent it’s a reaction. But, it’s rude to make the yuck face period, and as an adult you should practice self-control and not do it, especially around strangers or when you are in a foreign country. I felt embarrassed so many times in Japan when an American colleague would make the yuck face at someone who offered them something different and refused to try. So immature and wrong. It’s fine to say no to an offer of food, but I think it’s rude to make the face. To me, the face says, “Gross! I can’t believe you eat that shit!”
Self-centered as many Americans are, they seem to think it’s the food’s fault when they don’t like the taste. The fact that many people like the foods you dislikes means that it’s something about YOU that doesn’t mix with the food. Honestly, I think it’s a result of bad parenting. Parents need to expose kids to lots of different foods and cultures, and teach kids to be polite when they come across food they don’t like. Of course, your food habits are often inherited from your parents, and if they were eating nothing but hot dogs and hamburgers and crap food, you probably weren’t exposed to various flavors, and have a retarded palate. Yes, your tongue is retarded. I remember seeing a documentary on Marilyn Manson going to Tokyo. He went searching for a McDonald’s because he didn’t want to try anything new. Unbelievable considering all the great food that is in Tokyo. For a guy who wants to be outrageous and cutting edge, his eating habits were so tame and backward.
As a rule, I think you should try everything before you reject it. There’s some great foods out there. I found a delicious salumi deli that made great beef tongue salami sandwiches. Blood sausage, sea urchin, octopus, fishheads, intestines, chicken feet, etc… Learn to love it. If you can’t, just smile and say no thanks.
so good
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I’ll yuck-face at any and all processed foods. When I walk into my Shanghai Starbucks to order a black coffee and they try to talk me into “upgrading” into the sugar fat green tea sesame chai latte sugar fat sugar fat, I make my own version of the yuck-face: disgust, loathing, and oh-realamente? I have yet to vaporize a barista with my glare, but I’m working on it.
I like non-anglo foods; I love stinky tofu, and subsist on tea eggs. I believe in keeping an open mind. But I also think some things, particularly processed crap, but also most dead carcasses, are rather disgusting. I reserve the yuck face.
The thing is, and your point perhaps, is that Americans are largely used to ingesting plastics, chemicals and rancid carcasses, but all so blandified that they can’t eat actual food with actual flavor. They can only handle the genetically and chemical engineered food-like substances.
Asia remains much closer to its healthy, fresh, real food roots, but it is becoming ever more corporatized and corpulent. Check out my friend Paul French’s new book “Fat China” for what is happening here.
chinks make that face all the time…oh wait, you always look like that.
Look you myopic asswipe, who the fuck do you think you are placing stereotypes and judgements on whitepeople? What white person has wronged you? Did you not get a chance to bang any white girls in your life? Did you get beaten up or picked on in high school?
johan, you ignorant slut. the dude was just making an observation. chill out wonder bread. you attack, i counter-attack. you cockaroach.
why do you have to say “chinks”? what does that accomplish?
what, white people never place stereotypes or judgements on asians and other racial minorities? Why you act as if whites are the only ones privileged enough to generalize?
I can’t believe you are actually offended by the post. i don’t get it.
and what does banging white girls have anything to do with appreciation for foreign foods/dishes? or being picked on/beaten up in school?
you’re an idiot.
Shanghai Meimi got his point. and i agree with her.
and i’ll admit. as an asian guy, when i was in europe, i went to burger king. i sure did. i was craving a juicy greasy whopper with fries and coke. so i’m guilty.
i try to keep an open mind about different kinds of food. but i won’t eat dog meat, turtle soup, or bull testicles.
also, i agree with shanghai meimi, that most americans eat shit/junk – GM foods, fast foods, processed foods, chips, dips, sweets, soda, frozen dinners…it’s all shit food. it’s not real food.
but yeah, i do love those “chicken” mcnuggets. with BBQ sauce.
But then again, I can’t blame sometimes for people to get that face or say something when the smell is so strong and rank. Like certain asian foods have a very control smell. but it’s delicious. and if they have never tried it, i can see how they’d get grossed out since smell is such a powerful sense.
I don’t think that it is wise to judge the whole white people just because you see some White Americans doing that in the public. I mean, what about the White people that live in UK, France or Germany?
Hi, first of all, I would like to let you know that I think it’s a excellent website you have here. What I wanted to ask is, I haven’t find out the way to include your blog feed in my rss reader – where is the link for the feed? Many thanks
Thanks, Wilbert. I’m not an expert of RSS, but we have the two links on the right hand side of the homepage:
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What is RSS? this is a test
Please cancel that last post, since I didn’t finish. Thanks
I registered for this website because I was somewhat sympathetic to your views on white men dating Asian women, and I find this bigoted rant on the front page. Wow. Maybe you should just wall yourself further off from gwailo if you hate us that much. I consider myself someone who has tried many cuisines and enjoyed most. The “yuck face” is a cross-cultural facial expression that apparently has been suppressed in your culture. I don’t do it. At worst, I furrow my brow. I have a strong suspicion that you would make noticeable, offensive gestures and make offensive comments if I offered you freshly cooked food from the place I grew up.
There are many cultural reasons that people have for eating what they eat. You don’t seem to understand that there is no one “American culture.” I suspect that your “yuck face” was observed more in young, white females, who constantly struggle to conform and express disapproval as a way of expressing their inchoate identity.
I suggest you eat with people of your own kind. Then no one will offend you enough to rant on the internet about facial expressions.
what i’m really offended at are the slutty asian girl concept you perpetuate on your site. thanks brotha.
what i’m really offended at is the slutty asian girl concept you perpetuate on your site. thanks brotha.
While I can see the counterpoints to SAM’s post, I have also experienced this rudeness from several caucasian co-workers. She would comment, without solicitation on MY lunch “Oh, THAT’S interesting.” It was rice, chicken and spinach in a little bowl. All the while she put her potato chip in her sandwich and chomped on that…I didn’t ask for your opinion. On the other hand, I have many friends who try all kinds of foods so, we just need to learn to ignore, well, ignorant people, and value those who are intelligent/considerate, in our lives.
I mean the very nature of this topic can be potentially offensive – as it is directed at white people! I see what the author is trying to make the point of westerners certain habits that he or she may think is universally inappropriate and I take it at face value that he kinda meant well regarding that-how insentitive it may have come off. However, I agree about the point that taken at face value, stereotypes are more directed at Asians or any other minority 90% of the time. So let’s settle down there WHITE BOY.
I’m a proud round eye and I eat the same raw ass fish, chicken assholes, fish heads with rice and kimchi that Asians eat when I was in Korea and China all while squatting in the dirt next to a rice patty. I’m so bad ass that I ate stuff that the Thai people wouldn’t eat. Had to stay in the Bangkok hospital for only eight hours. I will try the food anywhere anytime because I want to be part of that specific culture. When in Korea I did start craving and demanding a hamburger after about week. This hard, committed, intense training has made me the muff diver that I am today.
Disclaimer: American, Caucasian, female, 30
I’ll try anything once. Some things — I’d prefer to not know ahead of time what I’m eating. Let me decide if I like it or not first, then tell me I’ve just eaten a sheep’s eyeball. I don’t make the yuck face, simply because I was raised to have better manners than that.
RE: Bigotry and racism, I only recently happened on this site, but I do see a lot of white- and American-bashing. Bashing is bashing and hurtful to anyone its levied against, minority or not.
However, I choose to read this site and be open-minded to the points of view expressed. If my shit-o-meter reaches critical capacity, I’ll go elsewhere, not flame the writers who didn’t force me to read their stuff.
Though I’m taking what I read here with a grain of salt, I will say that I’m disappointed by the stereotyping. It screams the same ignorance, narrow-mindedness, intolerance, and pure lack of observation attributed to the groups decried.
Disclaimer: White, American, 17, female
Yeah, thought you’d be getting a faceful of overused “like”s and blatant unintelligance, huh? Well, since we’re on the topic of stereotypes, which all have to come from somewhere, I find this article to be dead-on. Stereotypes exist because there is a grain of truth in them, but when it comes to white America, try a pillar of salt.
Personally, I hate the shit that America loves to perpetuate as food. We’re all so willing to consume rotting carcasses, plastics, artificial dyes and flavors, but we can’t even try new foods? Give me a fucking break. At my base level, raw fruits and veggies arm my palette when there’s nothing else. Out there, though, I’m willing to try anything. Buckwheat noodles get me drooling, tofu excites me, and I eat soybeans like they’re candy. If someone proffered me authentic food from their culture, I’ll probably love them for it. It’s enough that someone is generous enough to take time to make the meal, but it’s a step above that if it’s something from their culture and they’re taking the risk to giving it to me knowing the lovely reputation Americans have dedicatingly fostered fostered for themselves throughout the world.
Personally, I think that I’d much rather land myself in the middle of Nanjing to eat their food rather then smack dab in the middle of Times Square with nothing but McDonald’s for miles around since fast food makes me throw up, literally.
PS johan, please stop sucking your mother’s tits and please make an attempt at maturity, mr. wonder bread. Whole grain’s healthier for you anyway.
@ Cat Very wise for a 17 year old. I’m impressed that you have such an open mind. But then again, I think the youth is where the changes are going to happen the most in terms of Asian equality. The youth in this country are the ones who have embraced Asian entertainment, fashion, food, and culture. Gives me hope.
@Everyone Yes, I wrote this ranting article towards ignorant and rude Americans. I did generalize in the process. If you are not one of these people, then that’s great. Congratulations. Now move on. When it comes down to it, America is full of individuals, and not everybody acts the same way. Some choose to be rude and racist while others are polite and open-minded. It all depends on the person. It’s interesting how sensitive white people can be when some of their own get criticized. Now you know how blacks and other minorities feel sometimes. But, just because I speak in generalizations doesn’t mean there is no truth in my words. If you dismiss all I say because you feel it is critical or general, then you’ve just missed an opportunity to grow.
Not to be too offensive but I want to say one thing about J Doe’s comment.
You say this is all stereotyping and you will try things without a yuck face but you just said you’d try something only one time. What if that one time the thing is cooked terribly? What if you see the thing and it grosses you out before you actually put it in your mouth?
I think people on this site do generalize and do stereotype too but from what I read the majority of it is made out of personal experience so let me add some of mine. I know tons of non-asians that make the yuck face and I also know tons that do like you said, try something once. Then when they don’t like it that one time by that one person’s cooking style they hate that food forever. Do you like crab? EwwWW! It smells terrible and there’s no meat in it and you end up with a mouth full of sand! That’s just because that one time you ate it the guy cooking it was an idiot that plucked the live crab from his net didn’t even clean it and chucked it into a pot of just boiling water. Ofc it sucked!
Trying something one time is just a step above making the yuck face. It means at least you tried the food you end up saying you don’t like. But since you only try it once, if you don’t like it that one time suddenly its the food’s fault again. Asians at least all the ones I’ve met try anything at any time even if they know they didn’t like it before because the only way you’re gonna know you don’t like something is if you try it not just the first time but every time. Nobody’s forcing you to eat the whole thing if you don’t like it but if you get offered just suck it up and take a bite. And DON”T make the yuck face after or spit it out. That’s rude too.
Yes, great point, Typecast. You have to try food more than once. Food preparation is just as important as the ingredient itself. Tuna that is in a can is going to taste different from a raw tuna sushi. Duh! A raw tomato is going to taste different from a tomato pasta sauce, or ketchup. It’s common sense.
A lot of these people were probably raised by parents who didn’t teach them the importance of eating what is in front of them. They fail to think about nutrition, and they fail to understand that they are privileged to have food on their plate. Asians are raised to not waste food, and that is probably another reason why we will try anything.
In general, I’m sorry, but I don’t take American’s very seriously when it comes to opinions on food. Every time I try something a white person recommends, I’m always disappointed. It makes sense. They were raised on Kellogg’s cornflakes and Hamburger Helper. Their taste buds are not as well developed as Asians who give things a chance and have tried a much broader range of food. I love it when an American says ‘This place has the best sushi!’ with full confidence. Really? What do you know? Have you ever paid $20 for one piece of sushi? Do you even know the difference between a hamachi and a hirame? Have you had aji before? Seriously?
Be proud Asians of your food heritage.