There’s a quiet violence in the way a dish becomes famous. It begins with a whisper among travelers, a photograph that catches the light just so, a mention in a glossy magazine. Then come the reinterpretations, the pop-ups in cities oceans away, the ingredient swaps that make it “accessible.” By the time a food trend reaches its zenith, the original is often hollowed out back home—forgotten by the young, abandoned for more convenient options, or priced out of the hands that shaped it. I’ve watched this happen in my own country, and it breaks my heart in a way that’s both deeply personal and stubbornly political.
I grew up in a small town in the Philippines where the morning air smelled of pan de sal and woodsmoke. My grandmother made kakanin—those sticky, jewel-toned rice cakes—not for festivals or Instagram, but because Tuesday just felt like a bibingka day. The ingredients came from the market she walked to, the coconut milk squeezed by hands she trusted. Today, in Manila’s trendy neighborhoods, you can find deconstructed versions of those same cakes, plated with gold leaf and sold for the price of a week’s groceries. Meanwhile, in my grandmother’s village, the young people have left for call centers, and the art of making kakanin from scratch is fading. The trend has moved on, but it took something irreplaceable with it.
The Mechanics of Culinary Extraction
This isn’t just a Filipino story. It’s a pattern that repeats wherever a local food becomes a global sensation. The mechanics are almost always the same: a dish is “discovered” by outsiders, celebrated for its authenticity, then adapted for palates and wallets far from its source. Demand rises, ingredients become commodities, and the original context—the grandmothers, the street vendors, the specific soil and climate—is slowly erased. What was once a living, breathing part of a community becomes a hollowed-out symbol, a ghost on a menu.
Take quinoa in Bolivia and Peru. For centuries, this tiny seed was a staple, a resilient crop thriving in the high-altitude plains where little else would grow. It was woven into daily life, a food of sustenance and ritual. Then the global North declared it a superfood. Prices tripled between 2006 and 2013. Suddenly, the people who had cultivated and consumed quinoa for generations couldn’t afford it. They turned to cheaper, processed imports, and malnutrition rose in the very regions that produced this nutritional powerhouse. The trend brought wealth to some, but it also brought a profound loss of food sovereignty. The quinoa on the shelves of London and New York was no longer the same grain that had nourished the Andes; it had become a commodity, stripped of its story.
I saw a similar thing happen with ube, the purple yam that anchors so many Filipino desserts. For years, it was our quiet treasure, the heart of halaya and halo-halo. Then, around 2016, the world went mad for its vivid hue. Ube donuts, ube lattes, ube croissants appeared everywhere from Los Angeles to Sydney. At first, I felt a swell of pride. But as the trend grew, I noticed a shift. The ube in those trendy creations was often a pale imitation—artificial flavoring and purple food coloring standing in for the real, earthy tuber. The demand drove up the price of genuine ube back home, making it harder for small sari-sari stores and home cooks to afford. The trend, in its rush to celebrate the color, forgot the taste, the texture, the very root of the thing.
The Erasure of Context and Craft
When a food trend disappears from its place of origin, what’s lost isn’t just an ingredient. It’s the knowledge of how to grow it in a specific microclimate, the hands that know exactly when the rice is pounded to the right consistency, the stories told while stirring a pot for hours. It’s the social fabric that holds a community together. In Oaxaca, Mexico, the global craze for mezcal has transformed the spirit from a local, artisanal product into an international luxury. While this has brought money into some communities, it has also led to the industrialization of production, the depletion of wild agave, and the erosion of the traditional palenques where small-batch mezcal was made with painstaking care. The trend has created a market for “authentic” mezcal, but the very definition of authenticity is being rewritten by forces outside the community.
This is the paradox of the food trend: it celebrates the local while simultaneously destroying it. The language of food media often frames these dishes as “discoveries,” as if they were hidden treasures waiting for a Western explorer to unearth them. But they were never hidden. They were simply part of a different world, a world where food is not a trend but a way of life. When we extract a dish from that world, we often leave behind the people who made it meaningful. We take the flavor but not the farmer, the recipe but not the ritual.
I remember visiting a small fishing village in Batangas, Philippines, known for its tawilis—a freshwater sardine found only in Taal Lake. It was a humble fish, often fried to a crisp and eaten with rice and a squeeze of calamansi. For generations, it was the taste of home. Then it became a must-try for food tourists. Restaurants in Manila started featuring it. The demand soared, and the lake was overfished. Today, tawilis is endangered. The trend moved on to the next exotic ingredient, but the village was left with depleted waters and a silence where the fishermen’s songs used to be.
The Slow Violence of Abandonment
The disappearance of a food trend from its origin is rarely a sudden event. It’s a slow violence, a gradual erosion that’s easy to miss if you’re not paying attention. It starts with a shift in local tastes. Young people, exposed to global food culture through their phones, begin to see their traditional foods as “old-fashioned” or “poor people’s food.” They crave burgers, fried chicken, anything that feels modern. The elders, who hold the knowledge, grow older. When they pass, their recipes often die with them, because no one thought to ask, to write it down, to value it as something worth preserving.
This is compounded by economic pressures. As a dish becomes trendy, the raw materials become more valuable as exports than as local food. Farmers are incentivized to sell to the global market, leaving less for local consumption. The dish becomes a luxury in its own home. In some cases, the land itself is converted to grow the trendy crop for export, displacing other traditional foods and reducing biodiversity. The landscape of a place, its very ecology, is reshaped by a craving on the other side of the world.
I think of the açaí bowls of Brazil. In the Amazon, açaí was once a staple, a dark, earthy pulp eaten with fish or tapioca, a source of energy for the working day. It was not a sweet, Instagrammable breakfast. But as the global market for frozen açaí exploded, the local food culture shifted. The price of açaí in Belém soared, and the traditional savory preparations became harder to find. The trend created a new, sweetened version of açaí for export, a version that is now re-imported back to Brazil, changing local tastes. The original, the one that fueled generations of Amazonians, is becoming a memory.
What We Lose When a Dish Becomes a Ghost
So, what exactly do we lose? We lose biodiversity. When a single crop or dish is elevated to trend status, it often leads to monoculture, which makes our food system more fragile. We lose cultural memory. A recipe is more than a list of ingredients; it’s a repository of history, of migration, of adaptation to a specific place. When that recipe is no longer made, a chapter of human experience is closed. We lose community. The act of making and sharing traditional food is a social glue. It creates bonds between generations, between neighbors, between the living and the ancestors. When that act ceases, the community frays.
But perhaps most painfully, we lose a sense of belonging. Food is one of the most intimate ways we know who we are. It tells us where we come from and to whom we are connected. When a dish disappears from its home, it’s not just a meal that’s lost; it’s a piece of identity. For the diaspora, this loss is particularly acute. We cling to the tastes of our homeland as a lifeline, a way to remain tethered to a place we may no longer be able to return to. When those tastes are diluted or commercialized, we feel the ground shift beneath us. We become unmoored.
I have sat in Filipino restaurants abroad where the adobo is made with chicken breast and a splash of soy sauce, missing the vinegar’s sharp bite and the long, slow simmer that renders the meat tender and the sauce deeply savory. I have eaten it politely, but inside I was grieving. Not for the dish itself, but for what it represented: a connection to my mother’s kitchen, to the humid afternoons of my childhood, to a lineage of cooks who understood that patience is the most important ingredient. The trendy version was efficient, but it was soulless. It had forgotten why we cook in the first place.
Can We Savor Without Stealing?
This is not a call to stop exploring food. Curiosity is a beautiful thing, and the exchange of culinary ideas can be a source of joy and connection. But we must learn to savor without stealing. We must approach the foods of other cultures with humility, not entitlement. This means asking different questions. Instead of “How can I make this at home with ingredients from my supermarket?” we might ask, “Who made this dish, and what does it mean to them?” Instead of seeking out the “best” or “most authentic” version as judged by our own standards, we might ask, “Where is this dish still a living tradition, and how can I support the people who keep it alive?”
Supporting food at its source means paying a fair price, but it also means respecting the context. It means eating the dish where it’s made, in the way it’s meant to be eaten, without demanding substitutions or adaptations. It means listening to the stories of the people who make it, and sharing those stories with the same care you would share a family secret. It means recognizing that some foods are not for us to take, that some knowledge is sacred and not meant for commodification. It means understanding that the survival of a dish is tied to the survival of a community, and that our choices as eaters can either sustain or erode that community.
There are small, hopeful signs. Movements for food sovereignty are growing, led by indigenous communities and small farmers who are reclaiming their food systems. Seed banks and oral history projects are preserving not just the genetics of traditional crops, but the stories and techniques that go with them. Young chefs in places like Oaxaca and Manila are returning to their grandmothers’ kitchens, not to mine them for trends, but to learn and to carry forward a legacy. They are cooking for their own communities, on their own terms, and in doing so, they are reminding us that food is not just fuel or fashion. It is memory, it is resistance, it is love.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do traditional foods disappear when they become trendy?
When a local dish becomes a global trend, the demand for its key ingredients often skyrockets. This can lead to overharvesting, industrial farming, and a shift from local consumption to export. As prices rise, the people who created the dish can no longer afford to make it. At the same time, younger generations may abandon traditional foods in favor of more “modern” or convenient options, leading to a loss of culinary knowledge and cultural practices.
How does the global food trend affect the environment of the place of origin?
The environmental impact can be severe. To meet global demand, farmers may switch to monoculture, which depletes soil nutrients and reduces biodiversity. Overfishing or overharvesting of a trendy ingredient can lead to species endangerment, as seen with the tawilis fish in the Philippines. The carbon footprint also increases as a once-local food is shipped around the world, and traditional, sustainable farming methods are often replaced by intensive, chemical-dependent practices.
What can I do as a traveler or home cook to be more respectful of food origins?
Start by learning the story behind the dish. When you travel, eat at locally owned establishments and ask about the history of the food. Pay a fair price and avoid haggling over something that took hours or days to prepare. At home, seek out ingredients from producers who use traditional methods and pay fair wages. Most importantly, share the stories of the people and places behind the food, not just the recipe. Remember that you are a guest at a table that has been set for generations, and your role is to honor that, not to take it over.
Is it wrong to enjoy trendy foods from other cultures?
Enjoying food from other cultures is not inherently wrong; it’s a way to connect with the world. The problem arises when that enjoyment fuels a system that extracts value from a community without giving back, or when it reduces a complex culinary tradition to a single, simplified “trend.” The key is to approach with respect and awareness: understand where the food comes from, who made it, and what it means to them. Whenever possible, support the people at the source, and be mindful that your enjoyment does not come at their expense.