Discussion The problem with Food culture in LN

I'm so tired of reading isekai novels where the protagonist transfers to a seemingly sophisticated world of magic or whatever that inexplicably don't have their own food culture. (Or board games, or high fashion, or whatever). The protagonist then proceed to save the world from its boring self. I'm sorry, but all humans seek out good food. It's built into the DNA literally. So why would a civilization that has magical carriages or grand soaring palaces or even a basic notion of cooking, not have good food? Maybe if the culture was very primitive or culturally poor they might not have advanced techniques or fancy flavorings, but I assure you, someone at some point would have experimented to make the best food they could.

Just once I want a protagonist to enter a new world and everything goes horribly wrong when he/she tries to cook with foreign ingredients.
Like, "oh! I found rice! Why don't you guys know the wonders of rice?" Proceeds to make rice like normal. Eats rice and starts retching violently. "Yeah, we don't eat "rice" because it's poisonous if you cook it. You twat, stop putting random things in your mouth."

The only light novel I know of that actually respects the food culture of a foreign world while still improving it is "Cooking with wild game." In that case, he's transported into a very primitive tribe of hunter/gatherers that are forced to surpress their food culture due to social/economic reasons. But even their terrible cooking is treated with respect to their circumstances. And their are people who have tried to make better, more palatable food. They were just confined by their (forced) lack of good ingredients.

Does anyone else know of any Novels that respect that being in a foreign worlds does not mean "culture needs to be fixed"?

 

Ah yes the famous rice, mayonnaise and soy sauce.

 

I certainly am heavier than a duck

 

dis no gud. tey dun have risu. wha am i t do. i kno. i mka ris an get sum pussy baos. jap is great an nanking wst tha bad

 

I can accept it if they have the concept of master and disciple around since those are secret passing of techniques but if they have a school system already intact they should have those food items. The only freebie that i give them are stuff that are not easy to get such as chocolate if they have weak transportation system since it might be popular one region with a complete monopoly but its hard to deliver it successfully

 

i really like how they called soft meat as Monta Feed....and wonder if the logic of weak jaws due to soft meat is true

 

OMEGA LUL

 

There's an interesting original novel that I've been reading where the author brought up that issue. Main character was able to introduce flavoring because luxury in that story is 'as much as possible'. So cooks put far too much seasoning into food to the point where it becomes bitter and unpalatable and people all think that these medicinal herbs when put in food will ruin it.

It's quiet amusing and somewhat logical, yet I still think shouldn't poor people put herbs/seasonings in food at moderation? On the other hand... those seasonings/herbs may be expensive as heck.

 

Willing to share the link?

 

Oh, yea sorry bout that.

https://honyakusite.wordpress.com/fluvia-dellarose-was-an-otome-games-villain/

 

Iirc in Kuma kuma kuma bear the only main dishes the main character introduces are stuff made with eggs, since they were considered a luxury item given that the chickens were supposedly hard to find or something, though the part that doesn't really make sense is why no one had thought to capture the chickens and build a coop until the bear showed up and did so. (Maybe the village was super secluded? Memory's unclear). She also introduces some other dishes made with foods thought to be poisonous, like potatoes, which some other people know are safe to eat but never really publicised the information for some reason.
The usual rice and soy sauce are imported from some other country with its own food culture.(the Japan-ish country, basically)
The rice trope does kind of annoy me admittedly, considering that the only reason rice even tastes good is because its been bred to do so over several generations. You would think a Japanese writer would know this. (Admittedly some novels admit this and have the protagonist try and breed their own, like Slime tensei if i remember correctly)

 

I can understand to some extent some foods can be recreated but wont have the same taste due to ingredients. Its possible someone has already discovered it but its a family secret and stays in within the family. then theres the means of communication and travel. alot of these places are in high fantasy where the common travel would take days to reach new cities or towns.

This is why i like the story of Genjitsushugi Yuusha no Oukoku Saikenki. A character spent his time looking for food and its the matter of just spreading the recipes. Cause it exist but the matter of influence and where to eat it.

Board games and fashion doesnt really make sense to me because these people should already have their own versions. What do kids do in their free time? Most of the time they'll invent their games. Hell nobles would also invest in and invent their own games too. Merchants would hella do that as well.

Fashion i honestly don't know much but i would assume there would be local fashion trends. You cant just show up with a kimono and everyone would be impressed with your fashion sense. Because fashion is also cultural and set by public acknowlegdement. Only one i could really accept in fashion is from the common sense of a dukes daughter because of silk dresses and it was introduced as a prototype.

 

I am also honestly quite tired of food masturbation Japanese novels. Not only there is usually no one who just doesn't like the food made by MC in those novels, but every darn teenager in Japan is also at a level of Gordon Ramsey. You got 15-18-year-olds making their own fermented foods, elaborate stews and all kinds of fancy dishes. I dare you to go find a teenager who can make curry or at least knows general process of how to ferment anything.
And the things where MC brings with him pretty basic engineering solutions to the problems in another world that existed for hundreds of years with many researchers working on them and no one came up with a solution? I mean things like pumps, twisted ropes and other basic things that existed for a few thousand years on Earth an yet in another world filled with magic people are just too stupid to come up with a basic pump or a lever system at the very least. Board games too... considering how long ago they were invented, it is honestly inconceivable that a society that existed for a few thousand years doesn't have one.
Honestly, this rant can go on pretty much forever with how these Japanese authors just jerk off at their own greatness....

 

First, I agree with you. This is just me trying to find explanation for this.

If that world is war-ridden(with magical beast, alien, dimensional-being, or human themselvs), then the denizen in this world would most likely spent most of their resourses and time to improve their strength. In a world, where you can kill people and get away with it, minority would spent their time research cutulral aspect. It doesn't mean that there is no one doing it at all(unless author overdo it), but campare to moden world, this aspect doesn't improve much.

But, yeah, from your examples, the authors probably overexaggerate it.

 

There's some historical precedent for the idea of period cooking being "bland and flavourless" but that's historical context in a world without the conveniences of magic. For example, in the middle ages in Europe, the staple food for most were cereals like barley and oats, which meant a lot of the poor class would be eating mostly porridge and gruel with a side of vegetables. Meat was considered a luxury food because 1) hunting game was a leisure sport so gamey meats were only eaten by the nobility and 2) the amount of land required to raise livestock like sheep and cows was huge, most poor commoner's couldn't afford it. So if they ate meat, it would be fowl meat like chickens, which has a smaller land and resource investment, but it's literally a "why kill the golden goose" situation, so they wouldn't be eating it commonly. Fish meat wasn't widespread because since there was no way to store the meat for transport, only places living near coastal and river fishing areas could eat it. Meat preservation techniques like smoking and pickling were time consume skill trades, and with the cost of transport, it meant that only richer folks could afford to eat meat on the regular. As for flavourings, especially places like the British isles tended to be very wet and cold, the environment isn't suited to growing spices that are commonly used in cooking, which need drier and hotter climates. So spices became an expensive import, and their usages was as much a sign of wealth as it was to just make food tastier.

But this is historical, normal world context. Lots of these stories have magic that is so widespread that it's become part of people's daily lives. Many people have access to magic, even small "daily life" spells, that could help with cooking and transporting. If people have the resources, and by all means (apart from the bizarrely necessary slavery that are abounds in these stories) almost all other aspects of quality of life tend to be higher in these magical medieval worlds than our real medieval history, there's not much justification except as an excuse for food jingoism.

For me the unrealistic aspect isn't that these people have bland and flavourless food. For me, it's this idea that people who spent their whole lives eating very simple and plain flavours and thus developed a palate for them, would immediately like the often overpowering flavours and acquired tastes of Japanese food. I live in a predominantly white country. I can tell you that even with a higher level of multicultural saturation than these stories, I've never met anyone who drank miso and liked it immediately. It's a very weird and unusual taste and moreover it has a strong taste, so while it is nice after you get used to it, the idea that people who spent their whole lives eating very lowkey flavours like bread and porridge would taste something like soy or miso and immediately like it is absurd. I feel more realistically, they'd be put off by it's strong and unusual taste, and the transmigrator would struggle in trying to convince people to give things a shot and slowly adjust to them.

 

Well NU only contain asian Light/Web novel, most of people in there eat rice for daily basis.

 

I hadn't thought of that aspect. The fact that the locals all seem to love the japanese cuisine. I do medieval re-enactment and you'd be surprised how flavorful the recipes could be. Though exotic spices were expensive and rare, home grown herbs were abundant. But like you said, someone who'd eaten nothing like japanese cooking probably wouldn't find it palatable at first. I remember the first time I tried mochi. I found the texture extremely disgusting. Chewy and fluffy and weird. I got used to it but it was not love at first bite. Same with Okonomiyaki. It was not a pleasant first experience at all.

 

Thank you

 

You're mistaken, take a look at most of african countries. When your homegrown potato taste is stronger than most of the imported flavorless shit (including meat) what do you think they will do ? Add spices. A lot.

 

*Head Tilt*
You make a little less sense than you may think.

Humans in these otherworlds might not be like us Earthlings

Whoever said all these otherworld humanish lifeforms were exactly the same as Earth humans? Some of them in the novels where death is "all around them" yet you barely ever read someone dying might not even have a heart! or atleast what we would see as a heart.

Survival higher priority than evolving the cooking industry and markets

Arnt most of these other worlds in middle ages like settings? Dont they have monsters n crap that could fart and blow away a village albeit monsters of that class are fairly rare in most novels but wolves (with some magical element mixed in like wind wolves or such), goblins, orcs, trolls, dragons, scarily oversized spiders and other things that are a bit higher up on the "gotta take care of" list then advances in cooking?

Chemical free ingredients

A good fresh all natural veggie has got to taste better than these chemically altered things iv grown up on.

...So yeah, im totally with you man! These people in other worlds need to change up their priorities and get to advancing their food culture so when I die and cross over I can have all the food types of this world in ANOTHER WORLD! Dont forget the MSG and rat poison seasonings!

Look I get it, I do. I get annoyed with authors ranting about wanting their food culture in another world via their character and I just stick a post-it note on the novel highlighting the author is some % of brain dead. I would assume any country in any world has its own food culture and at varying levels based on..well my above post and to what degrees they have those other things to look into. If its some Galactic Empire spanning several galaxies and they dont even have something similar to ketchup, im pretty sure id kill myself in hopes of going somewhere better. But if its some place thats middle ages with more violent issues to attend to, im pretty sure id go along the lines of "yeah, slaying the monster hordes is a much better use of your time than trying to figure out the right combination of ingredients to make a sauce to put on already good food." and if I couldnt accept that, id be a Japanese MC in another world and not myself and hope id hang JP MC self to correct the problem.

For the record..
Isekai Yururi Kikou ~Raising Children While Being an Adventurer~
explains away the reasoning behind there being a lack of food culture advancement as there being perfectly edible and delicious food just hanging on trees and easily pulled from the ground, so food gets barely any advancement and even the Gods are kinda annoyed at it but apparently too lazy to step in to do anything about it (or didnt know how to do it themselves so couldnt really get grumpy about it? iunno that part is blank). Apparently no food guru appeared and said "I wander what would happen if......" (EDIT: or any/all that happened to appear wondered if poison+poison=not poison and died)

Cause lets face it...would YOU think to drink that white stuff coming from a cow's oversized external bladder with lotta little dicks if no one else had before? Or eating that plant? If no one steps forward to be the guinea pig (or gets forced into the role) we wouldnt be as advanced as we are in our food or medicine cultures either.

Still kinda curious what the first milk drinker was thinking..."I hope this isnt poisonous!" is my guess while someone else had a pointy and sharp object aimed at em.