Food Theory: The Undercover Mission of Thai Food!

if you ask me there's only one thing better than thai food and that's the names of the thai restaurants that serve the food i mean come on tongue tied appetizing tie hard with vengeance i didn't even make that one up that was just plain fun tie the knot coat and tie up is that a food restaurant anyway these restaurants are speaking my dad language i want to eat at all of these places like this one thai pods oh no no i don't wanna eat that don't wanna risk demonetization [Music] hello internet welcome to food theory the show that's more enticing than a mango sticky rice dessert drenched in coconut cream syrup friends one of the reasons i started a channel to talk about food is that it's universally relatable not everyone watches the same movies not everyone plays or even owns the means to play the same video games but everyone has got to eat but what makes food even more exciting is that it's a unique outlet for cultural expression it's rarely the case that any countries regions or heck even individual families approach food the same way food is just a huge carrier for culture for instance if you live in the great melting pot that's the united states the foods that are popular here largely reflect both the local culture and cultural heritage of the people that live there new york style pizza and chicago style pizza are things because both cities have huge italian american populations and you have a number of major u.s cities like new york san francisco and seattle that have chinatown districts where chinese cuisine obviously is gonna feature heavily and then there's the fact that mexican americans make up nearly one quarter of the us's population so it's really no surprise that chinese mexican and italian are the three most popular ethnic cuisines in the united states but then we get down to the fourth entry on the list and we discover ourselves a bit of an outlier thai food now while the us has certainly welcomed its fair share of thai immigrants over the years thai cuisine really seems to be punching way above its weight class in terms of popularity because while thai restaurants might be catching on big in the u.s there isn't really a big thai population to match it in 2018 it was estimated that there were around 5 300 thai restaurants in the u.s when u.s census data reported only 300 000 thai people in the u.s that's a ratio of 57 thai american people for every thai restaurant for comparison look at the ratio of mexican american people 36.6 million to mexican restaurants in the same year 54 000. that gives us a ratio of 678 mexican americans for every mexican restaurant things get even weirder though when you look at where in america thai restaurants are really taken off for example the city of fairbanks alaska has a population of only 32 000 but with a whopping 24 thai restaurants the city seems to be absolutely obsessed with thai food so you might expect it to be a thai immigration hub but if you look at the census data that's not the case in fact the thai population in fairbanks is so small that ethnic groups that make up only 0.35 of the population are listed ahead of it in the census data and bring up these examples because they point to something that bucks historic trends america's multi-ethnic food culture has in pretty much every case been the result of different ethnic groups from around the world coming to america and bringing their food with them but here we have an exceptional case of thai food showing up even when thai people aren't so i gotta ask what's really going on here and the answer is gastro diplomacy nope that's not the name of new pokemon it's managing international relations by way of food that's right the prevalence of thai restaurants in the u.s is the result of a deliberate effort by thailand's government to win the hearts and minds of the american people and here's the thing theorists it's working as a matter of fact it is working big time so i get it all this foreign government gastro diplomacy stuff kind of sounds like it would be a half-baked parody of a conspiracy theory but it's a hundred percent true according to medium.com quote the thai government has funded and supported thousands of restaurants around the world that make authentic thai food through the global thai program one of the earliest instances of reporting on this came in the wall street journal back in 2001 at the time thailand's deputy commerce minister detailed an ambitious plan to launch more than 3 000 restaurants worldwide he described the plan saying quote we want to be like the mcdonald's of thai food now when thailand's deputy commerce minister is talking about wanting to bring a mcdonald's-like approach to exporting thai food worldwide it's probably not talking about mcdonald's culinary style but rather the idea of standardization mcdonald's whether you love it or hate it is something that's predictable it's affordable it's consistent i can walk into a mcdonald's in nigeria order chicken mcnuggets when i bite into it you know what it's going to taste like it's going to taste like home the point of having a brand like mcdonald's is letting people know what they can expect unless you're in greece and you try their mick gyro and it mix sucks i mean it's the same reason why all food theory thumbnails use the same font and have the same logo in the corner it's about presenting you with something familiar something recognizable a consistent experience and the planners in charge of thailand's gastro diplomacy efforts decided that if thai food was really going to catch on worldwide then thai restaurants needed to deliver a consistent experience dr mark padumpa a professor of asian and asian american studies at university of nevada las vegas describes it like this they train chefs they export them to like everywhere to open restaurants and to work in restaurants you know it's to stimulate tourism to thailand but it's also to try to standardize thai taste around the world because the government also feels like the different kinds of thai food around the world has given it somewhat of a bad name and so they're trying to standardize this this thai flavor and you know it's part of their economic national development plan now that last part about this being part of thailand's economic national development plan is the important part because trying to get the world hooked on your nation's food isn't just something that you do for the funsies after all there's a reason that we led this story by talking about the country's deputy commerce minister thailand's culinary exports are responsible for sizeable contributions to the thailand economy take for example the fact that in 2001 thailand was earning more than six billion dollars a year from food related exports with the biggest boom coming from the growth of herbs and spices like kefir lime leaves and galangal roots the sort of plants that are native to thailand and that aren't usually dietary staples for people in america see when more thai restaurants open abroad they're not just spreading thai culture and improving the image of the country they're also creating lots of businesses that import their ingredients directly from thailand and they get people in those countries hooked on flavors that they won't be able to satisfy without buying them directly from the source and this right here is the commercial brilliance of the thai government strategy they're not sticklers about presenting authentic thai dishes to the rest of the world they're more concerned with presenting the general flavors and ingredients from thai culture this allows them to present a more easily accessible version of thai cuisine specifically one that is way less spicy as the deputy commerce minister describes the relationship americans have with certain thai dishes like tom yum soup quote it's supposed to be spicy very spicy but in america they make it mild maybe they like it that way but it's not traditional tom yum anymore see in the same way that fortune cookies and chop suey are associated with chinese food despite both being american creations hai restaurants have developed their own westernized versions of thai food that aren't necessarily representative of the food that you'd actually get if you ordered the same dish in a restaurant in bangkok but here's the good news for those of you who are hoping for a real authentic taste to thailand even if the thai food that restaurants are serving up to americans may not be giving you the real authentic thai experience it's been improving over time especially with the increased accessibility of ingredients for example prior to the 1970s most thai food made in america wasn't made the same way it was in thailand simply because a lot of the ingredients like fish sauce and kefir lime leaves weren't easily accessible in north america but since then north america has started to import produce from thailand and many other parts of southeast asia not just as a culinary import but as an agricultural product as early as the 1990s there have been more and more cases of thai owned produce companies growing southeast asian produce in california and mexico which has only continued to trend upward that means it's getting easier for thai restaurants that do want to go for an authentic presentation to create the same flavors that you'd find in the country of origin from the perspective of the thai government though doesn't matter after all revenue is revenue and if the restaurant effort is ultimately in the interest of gastro diplomacy the main goal is that when americans drive to the thai restaurant at their local strip mall they leave with an overall favorable impression that makes them ever so slightly more predisposed to spend money on goods from thailand or maybe one day make it a vacation destination so whenever you find yourself booking plane tickets to thailand stop for a moment to consider the fact that the thai government successfully manipulated your stomach to get you there but hey that's just a theory a food theory bon appetit you know as someone whose job prioritizes eating whole christmas trees and infusing mountain dew into pizza dough stay tuned for that one friends it's safe to assume that i do not get all of the essential vitamins and minerals one needs to be a functioning human being that is why i use and am super grateful to today's sponsor ritual vitamins ritual is the obsessively researched and transparently made multivitamin that helps people like me fill in the gaps in their diets they make it fast and easy to get high quality nutrients like vitamin a d omega-3 and zinc by delivering vitamins straight to your door they're essential for min multivitamin the one that i take provides 10 nutrients that support a strong foundation for your health in two easy to take capsules and those capsules are delightfully minty in flavor it's pretty cool actually so on the days where the only thing in my stomach is 16 different 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Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 2,391,776

Keywords: thai food, thailand, thai, thai food recipes, thai food cooking, thai food mukbang, mukbang thailand, mukbang thai, thai food street, thai street food, thai restaurant, thai recipes, thai red curry recipe, thailand travel, thailand tour, food theory, food theorists, matpat, secret, tourism, travel, food, recipe, game theory, film theory, eat the menu, binging with babish, delish, food tik tok, tik tok food, best thai food

Id: tOnuw6vnP7Y

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Sat May 15 2021