Why do people eat multicultural food?

Answer 1

Historically, people eat what they find around them - what grows near where they live, or what they hunt or farm.

Inevitably people will come from other regions - travelers, merchants, refugees and so on - and bring their own foods, flavors and cooking methods with them.

The local people will take ideas and tastes they like and adapt their own ways of cooking and eating to these new customs, so that over time their food culture will subtly change.

A good example is the way the European diet changed slowly at first but then radically over time with the importation by explorers of potatoes and tomatoes from the Americas. Imagine meals without tomatoes or potatoes today! Previous to, and since that time, food culture moved through Europe between countries and between regions within countries, again changing local dietary customs.

The same changes take place all the time, everywhere. The movement of food and cooking methods between peoples reflects what has always been a worldwide pattern which will always continue to alter and enrich the way we eat and what we eat.

Wealthy countries with an abundance of food and other resources will always attract migrants, who bring with them their own ways of using and growing food, and who adapt local foods to encompass their own specialties. New arrivals open new restaurants, which allow local people to experience new tastes and cultures, eating new foods and mixing with new people. Public eating-places thrive amazingly well; food and friendship are the great constants of human society and development.

We now call this constant flow and introduction of new ideas, cultures and flavors, multiculturalism, but it's been happening since the first primitive tribes and has continued unabated over many, many centuries, to the joy of those who love good food: practically everybody, in fact!