This chapter explores U.S. migrants' experiences with and perceptions about institutional food choices, with a special emphasis on vegetarian or plant-based diets. The author draws upon oral history interviews with South and Southeast Asian migrants residing in the Midwestern United States. Emergent themes include dining at home versus at work or school, religious considerations, and assimilation. Of particular interest is the finding that many interviewees perceive compatibility in dietary preferences as a vital characteristic in potential marriage partners. The chapter concludes with research-based recommendations for including plant-based food choices in school cafeterias, hospitals, and restaurants.
TopBackground
South Asian immigrants are composed of individuals from the Indian subcontinent, which includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. South Asians represent great religious, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity. They are one of the most recent US immigrant groups, having arrived in large numbers only after passage of The 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act.
Eleven countries make up the geographic region defined by Southeast Asia: Brunei, Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (also known as Burma), the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam (Migration Data Portal, 2022). Southeast Asian immigrants and resettled refugees also are well-represented among US migrants, arriving in large numbers following the end of the Vietnam conflict in the 1970s and 1980s, and again following The 1988 Burmese Uprising in Myanmar (Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC), 2023).
US migrants sometimes struggle with differences in institutional cultures between their birth country and mainstream North American society, especially migrants from Eastern cultures that value interconnectedness over individualism (Hickey, 2016c). Immigrant students and their families often find their experiences with US institutions, such as schools and workplaces, differ widely from their experiences with similar institutions in the birth country (Greenberg et al., 2021). In terms of migrants’ adjustments with food, cafeterias, dining halls, restaurants and even grocery stores often offer very limited choices for those with special diets. In US public schools, for example, private groups and parent associations took primary responsibility for making sure students had access to lunches until 1946, when The National School Lunch Act was made official (Avey, 2015). Over the past 70 years parental and political concerns about nutrition inspired changes in school lunch programs and college dining hall menu selections, but students who require special diets still are not well served by these programs (Olfert et al., 2022). The same can be said for workplace cafeterias, restaurants, the US military and, in smaller US cities and rural areas, even grocery stores (Fischer, 2016; Brokmeier, 2012).
US children and adults who, for religious, ethnic, and/or health reasons require a special diet often find their dietary needs are not met in institutional settings. Researchers have paid scant attention to this phenomenon. In this study, South Asian immigrants and Southeast Asian resettled refugees living in a Midwestern state voluntarily participated in oral history interviews as part of a larger study investigating migration perspectives. Those interviewees who mentioned food and/or dietary acculturation issues in their narratives were selected as participants. Here their stories can be told.