The Pad Thai Stalemate: Why Foreign Food Philosophies are Undervalued in Modern Diet Culture

Diet culture in the West is centered around shame; shame so pervasive that we have been induced into a moral conundrum of what the ‘right’ foods are for us; should we be eating vegan, eating like our ancestors, eating ‘clean’? Rumours circulate until each ingredient we used to love as children is demonized. Orange juice rots your teeth. Cereal is full of sugar. Eating a big breakfast is necessary to lose weight, but eating a large dinner will keep you obese forever. Nowadays, we are fed constant contradictions, until we are sick with uncertainty over what will benefit our body, until our perplexed and deprived brain bubbles over, and we find ourselves reaching for the phone to call the greasy takeout down the road, just to finally indulge in some flavour. This cycle of restrict-then-binge has been a trait of Western diet culture since time immemorial; eating wholefoods with no oils or dressings day-in-day-out until boredom drives you into craving the dirtiest burger you can find. 

However, the West loves to romanticise the eating rituals and ingredients of other cultures, as a way of resolving our issues through the insight of healthier, thinner countries. Cultural eating principles are co-opted into the Western health conversation, and often misinterpreted to fit our bizarre health criteria; Japanese food becomes synonymous with vegan sushi, Hawaii is now known for its vitamin-packed Poke bowls, the Middle East has provided us with hummus to cover our salads with, and yet we ignore the fundamentals that drive these contrasting cuisines. The Western interpretation can be highly inventive in ways of restricting intake of ‘bad foods’, but the key to the health benefits we are so hungrily snatching at is in the cultural principles behind the dishes and eating rituals, the rudimental thought process and generational concepts fuelling the way other cultures approach food and wellness. 

In the age of social media and globalisation, Asian and Middle Eastern cuisines have been spotlit as healthier, fresher and better for our aches and pains; the boom of veganism in the West hijacked Indian cuisine as its accomplice, and soon, the West pigeon-holed the eating principles as either an oily takeaway purchase, or a clean red lentil dahl and turmeric latte with anti-inflammatory qualities. A country so vast that it accommodates twenty-two languages over 718 districts, so expansive that each state has variants of laws, ethnicities and hierarchies - this is the country we in the West have reduced down to a Vindaloo on a Friday night, or testing out The Guardian’s new vegan bombay potato recipe on Monday when the diet begins again. The binary between junk food and the health cure is a false dichotomy, missing the most essential part of the puzzle; the way Indian people eat.

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The worst victim of the West’s delirious grab at being both multi-cultural and healthy is Japanese cuisine, again a culture so diverse and rich in its traditions around food, with variants across the many bays, cities and islands. In recent years, Okinawa has been greedily snatched up as the poster-girl for health and wellness due to the island’s large population of centenarians. What is their secret? Rather than researching, reading about the engrained principles of Xi Gong, gardening everyday, an integrated community, along with food focused largely around purple sweet potatoes and fresh fish, Western translations of the more rural Japanese cuisines cries ‘sushi!’. ‘The Japanese are healthy and live for so long, we should eat sushi!’. Sushi is great for weight loss, and the rice with fresh fish, ginger and seaweed is a haven for micronutrients. But not the way we consume it. Platters of California rolls, enough to feed a small village, drench in spicy mayo or soy sauce, followed by tempura and sake; is this what the Okinawans are doing to maintain peak mental and physical health? A traditional Japanese diet follows the eating principles of small portions of rice with an assortment of at least five small side dishes so that you are never over-full, but have consumed a large variety of nutrients from vegetables, fermented foods, fish and broth. It is said that Okinawans eat up to 18 different foods every day in very small quantities. It sounds extreme but it is balanced, something we struggle so much to achieve in the polarities of Western lifestyle.

Creating an eating program focused on shedding pounds has been done countless times, and often leaves little room for true originality; the narrative tends to often fall flatly into ‘just-eat-these-four-pulses-and-raw-fruit-and-you-can-be-7-stone-like-me’. The monotonous drone of ‘clean eating’ is the simple pick-me-up option when you’ve been feeling heavy, full of stodge and - the oh so familiar - shame.  To be passionate about food, and to attempt to lose weight often contradicts one another, as you cannot enjoy a decadent meal full of oils and spices when the diet food we are sold relies on its blandness to sell as ‘healthy’. With a focus around truly relishing in not only the taste of the food, but the preparation, blogs such as Rachel Redlaw’s Tiniest Thai Diet Revolution show Western audiences how to cook authentic and Thai-inspired dishes based around Thai eating principles of balancing flavours, medicinal qualities and smaller plates, whilst treating yourself to the feeling of luxurious food, which sustains the eating habits. 

Not only Rachel Redlaw has found the Thai diet to be revolutionary in its mental and physical impacts; Thai Table Blog is run by both Thai chefs, such as Natty, who was raised alongside her grandmother’s traditional Thai style before moving to the US and collaborating with US Nationals on the Siam Weight Loss Diet. This seems to have helped fuel a trend in the West of Thai holiday weight loss boot camps, where individuals go for up to 9 months to Thailand to train army-style workouts and martial arts, along with the local cuisine.

Thai cuisine historically has placed emphasis on lightly prepared dishes with attention to detail in the texture, colour and taste, coupled with the medicinal qualities of the food. Traditional Thai cookery involved mainly stewing, baking and grilling to retain the qualities of the ingredients, but once the ancient Chinese settled in Thailand approximately 1,400 years ago, popular techniques such as stir-frying and deep-frying became far more common, with dishes such as khao pad (fried rice) and pad thai (fried noodles) originating from the Chinese influence. Practicing Buddhism in a poor country has led to the resourcefulness of its inhabitants; Thais are well-known culinarily for adapting dishes by replacing ingredients often and utilising any food available through honouring of the privilege. In the Western landscape of cutting food groups and restriction, the more privileged one is, the more likely they are to have a plethora of foods they do not touch. From traditional Thai principles, resourcefulness and using what you have to cook from scratch is key to the way of life. Medicinal qualities are highly valued, with the use of ginger, garlic, galangal and many other roots and herbs to increase life expectancy and overall health.

It seems that the key ingredient to Rachel’s eating program is the balancing of flavours. For a diet that is low in sugar, fat and gluten, it sustains healthy weight loss through the eradication of primary Western sources of energy, but incorporates Thai flavours and fresh ingredients that do not act as substitutes (we have all seen the ‘using a bell pepper to make a sandwich’ trend, right? Absurd.). Rachel talks often on The Tiniest Thai blog about the balancing of flavours in thai cooking: salty, sour, sweet and spicy. Dishes such as Som Tam Mamuang shows off this flavour combination through the sourness of the green unripe mango and zesty lime against the briny hit of the naam plaa fish sauce. This - matched with the heat of Thai dragon chillies and the soothing sweetness of the white sugar - plays by the rules of real Thai food. 

Moving away from just the Thai red, Thai green, Pad Thai stalemate of the Western takeout, Rachel introduced many on her platform to Yam Plaa, ‘weeping tiger’ steaks, drunken noodles; dishes so often brushed over on a restaurant menu are now a ‘diet’ food. Through sharing the benefits of a Thai-style diet on her blog, some of the participants have lost up to 4 stone. It is about following the deeper roots of the eating style, not just the rough outline of the flavours. Eating chicken satay and drinking herbal teas is not going to aid weight loss, but following the traditional perspective of food as medicine, food as communal, food as something to be enjoyed, the angle shifts. As established, it is not enough to lust after the diet of another culture with no understanding of the motives and history that drives it. But perhaps, with a focused understanding and sustainable habit in place of cooking, preparing and eating differently, it can move from a fad diet under the guise of multiculturalism, and move into a beneficial lifestyle.

The shallow love affair between the West and Eastern cuisine is as passionate as ever; with no true insight into the importance of the lifestyle around the dishes, the West will continue to shriek hysterically from the rooftops about their love for miso soup and poke bowls, feeling more and more multicultural with each Instagram story of their Vietnamese pho order or homemade Thai salad bowls. Portions will remain colossal, mild flavours drowned out with copious soy sauce additions and we will remain puzzled as to why we don’t feel magically better. With our love-and-hate, fuel-and-fast relationship with food that currently prevails, we are a far reach from integrating our eating habits as a holistic, medicinal and enjoyable tool for balance in our lives. Until we do, it’s vegan sushi on Monday, and takeaway by Thursday... Anyone fancy a Pad Thai?

Mia Purcell

New to food writing, Mia has worked in kitchens and speciality coffee for eight years, developing a passion for not only cooking, but researching and writing about food. She specialises in East Asian cuisine, and the constantly evolving globalised palette. Alongside writing, Mia runs a handmade chocolate truffle business online and studies MA Media and International Development at UEA. To see more from her business, visit @one9onetruffles on Instagram.