Lunchbox shaming: recollections of school lunchtime by young Canadians of Asian descent

ABSTRACT

Children’s home-packed lunches to school reflect family’s culinary cultures, social locations, and unique food norms. At Canadian elementary schools, children of Asian heritage sometimes experience “lunchbox shaming” – feeling embarrassed for bringing foods that are seen deviant from dominant food norms. This study explored the recollections of school lunchtime by 25 young adults (aged 17–25 years) from three largest Asian ethnocultural groups (Chinese, Indian, and Filipino) in Toronto, Canada. Two parents of the participants also joined follow-up interviews to provide their insights. Our analysis focused on four layers of meanings at micro-level (personal experiences and emotions), meso-level (family food practices, school food environment), macro-level (socio-historical discourses), and interactional-level (researchers’ positionalities). Many participants recalled painful experiences being teased by classmates of their “stinky” lunch, throwing away homemade lunches, or asking parents to pack “normal” lunches to fit in. Conversely, a few shared positive memories of their lunches being praised and felt proud of their culinary heritage. Many reportedly felt a need to balance affiliation to both their home and school food cultures while growing up in Canada. We conclude by discussing the implications of the study findings for the ongoing debate on Canada’s national school food program and food literacy education.

KEYWORDS:

• Food shaming
• school food environment
• Asian immigrants
• diasporic foodway
• Greater toronto area
• Canada

Eddie: Okay. Fine. I threw my lunch away.

Eddie: I need White people lunch. That gets me a seat at the table. And then you get to change the rules. Represent, like nas says. I’m not trying to eat with the janitor for the rest of my life. I got big plans.

Fresh off the Boat Season 1 Episode 1 (Khan 2015)

Introduction

Celebrity chef Eddie Huang’s childhood memory inspired the popular sitcom series Fresh off the Boat by the American Broadcasting Companies (ABC). In the very first episode, young Eddie’s homemade fried noodle was teased by his classmates as “eating worms” which led him to throw away his lunch. Accused by his mother, Eddie pleaded with her to pack a “White people lunch” to “get a seat at the table” (Khan et al. 2015).

Young Eddie is not alone in facing microaggressions around homemade lunches at schools in North America. At Canadian elementary schools, where many students bring packed lunches from home, children from non-dominant culinary backgrounds sometimes feel stood out, ostracized, and embarrassed (Blanchet et al. 2017; Seko et al. 2021). A handful of media anecdotes have reported heart-breaking stories of school lunchtime, too. In August 2018, Toronto Star published a featured story titled “Tossing, hiding, or being shunned for ‘stinky’ school lunches” (Kwong 2018) focusing on the experiences of racialized people when they brought homemade lunch to school. Eight Torontonians shared stories of their school lunchtime that brought them shame. Notably, seven out of eight interviewees were from Asian backgrounds (i.e., Chinese, Cambodian, Filipino, Korean, and Vietnamese). Similarly, in May 2022, as part of Asian Heritage Month, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) produced a short documentary series titled “Lunchbox Dilemma” focusing on three Asian Canadians (two from Chinese, one from Korean background). They reported unpleasant childhood memories around their homemade school lunches and unconscious biases they felt toward their cultural heritage (Yú 2022).

Asian foods have historically embodied a distinct Otherness in White imaginary (Sugino 2021). In her analysis of a 1908 treatise written by two members of the American Federation of Labour, Mannur (2006) illuminates how the dictum “you are what you eat” was strategically deployed to distinguish White “hearty meat eaters” from Chinese “rice eaters.” Through the “Meat vs. Rice” metaphor, an anti-Asian sentiment was mobilized to attack Asian workers as degrading the integrity of the American workforce. Here, food worked as “a metonymic index for apprehending Asianness, and, by extension, how Asians cannot be seen as American” (Mannur 2006, 2). From the early nineteenth century to this day, argues Mannur, Americans of Asian descent continue to be linked to their culinary practices that constantly marginalizes them.

Despite food playing such a vital role in how Asian-ness is imagined in North America, little research has been conducted on how food shapes the lives of Canadians of Asian descent as they navigate domestic and public foodscapes. School is one of the institutional settings where cross-cultural food communication takes place every day. For most children, school provides the first opportunity for socializing outside their home that teaches them “appropriate” ways of thinking, acting, and eating in a public space. In countries such as France and Japan, national school meal programs work as an instrument of the states to produce the “gastro-citizens” who embody idealized culinary heritage (Moffat and Gendron 2019). Framing childhood nutrition as a public health and social welfare issue, these countries foster healthy, well-nourished citizens through standardized school meal programs, while enculturating children into a normative diet through the embodied act of eating (Alison 1991). Under the state’s biopolitical surveillance, little dietary accommodations for religious or cultural reasons are available, as “those whose diets do not conform to this notion of gastro-citizenship are considered lesser citizens” (Moffat and Gendron 2019, 2).

In countries without a national school food program including Canada, families may have more control over what they pack in their children’s lunchboxes. As a meal consumed outside the home, a home-packed lunch at school can play a key role for migrant families who wish to pass their culinary traditions down to their children growing up in the new country (Harman and Cappellini 2018). However, the dominant expectations around “good” and “healthy” food remain intact, exerting strong pressure on children and their families to adopt dominant food practices. Critical researchers have revealed how healthy school food initiatives impose normative discourses of “good” food by prioritizing foods from mainstream cultures over “unfamiliar” foods. Children from non-dominant ethnicities, religions, or working-class backgrounds may feel alienated because their home-packed lunches are not in tune with the norm (Cappellini, Harman, and Parsons 2018; Metcalfe et al. 2011). In their research with Australian families, Tanner and colleagues (2019) highlighted that within a predominantly Anglo-Western school food environment, children from non-dominant religious and ethnocultural backgrounds sometimes experience lunchbox shaming. Similarly, Karrebæk (2012) documented teachers’ surveillance over children’s lunches at a Danish elementary school where traditional food items (e.g., rye bread) were treated superior to what children from racialized backgrounds bring to school. Teachers executed their hierarchical privilege to enforce the mainstream diet while disregarding children’s cultural and personal preferences if at odds with the dominant understanding of healthy foods. Karrebæk (2012) argues that Danish food practices are simply regarded as better and more appropriate for Danish citizens. The adoption of dominant food practices is thus considered a signal of an immigrant family’s successful integration into the settled land, while their “home” foods are constantly treated with suspicion.

Everyday food practices of diasporic communities have been attracting scholarly attention as a site of identity formation, political contestation, and community building (Harman and Cappellini 2018; Omori 2017). For example, Chapman and Beagan have detailed how Punjabi immigrant families constantly negotiate their transnational food identities in Canada. The families’ everyday eating practices reflect “simultaneous attachment to their Indian-ness and their Canadian-ness, intersecting with their age, gender and class positions” (2013, 380). It is in these scholarly contexts of everyday diasporic food practices at school and home that our study aims to contribute.

Current study

The purpose of this study was to explore how Canadian young adults from Asian descent retrospectively describe their childhood experiences at school lunchtime. Prior to the present study, we conducted a pilot study with Japanese immigrant families in Toronto, Canada (Seko et al. 2021; Seko and Rahouma 2022). The findings indicated that children’s lunchboxes served as a conduit for passing the culinary traditions down to the next generation, through which mothers teach their children what “healthy” and “good” food looks like. However, some children experienced what Agaronov et al. (2019) call “food culture mismatch,” a discrepancy between home and school food practices. Although Japanese cuisine has increasingly been accepted in North America as one of the “hallmarks of the contemporary American food culture” (Cwiertka 2005, 256), Japanese homemade dishes are still seen as foreign and Othered at Canadian schools. Due to negative experiences at school and a fear of being further stood out at school, some children we interviewed stopped bringing Japanese cuisines to school (Seko et al. 2021).

Building on the pilot study, we expanded our focus to the top three largest Asian ethnocultural groups in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA): Chinese (including Hong Kongers¹), Indian, and Filipino. The GTA has been home to many new immigrants to Canada, with 35.9% of Canada’s overall immigrant populations settling in this region in 2016² (Statistics Canada 2017). Between 2011 and 2016, the foreign-born population in the GTA accounted for 46.1% of its total population, which was the highest share of newcomers across the nation. According to the 2016 Census, the top three countries of birth for immigrants to the GTA were China (including Hong Kong), India, and the Philippines, which marked 13.6%, 11.3%, and 7.1% of the total immigrant population in the GTA retrospectively (Statistics Canada 2017). According to the same Census, the top three countries of birth for newcomers who first obtained landed immigrant status in Canada between 2011 and 2016 were India (16.5%), China (including Hong Kong, 14.5%), and the Philippines (12.2%) (Statistics Canada 2017).

School food in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA)

In Canada, there are, to date, no nationally-funded school meal programs in place (Black et al. 2022). The Canadian government has delegated school food policies to the provinces that take responsibility for compulsory education under Canada’s constitution. Although all provinces have some school food policies, many elementary schools do not offer food programs or sales at all (Black et al. 2022). In the province of Ontario where this study took place, education is divided into three stages: early childhood education for children from birth to age four; elementary school for students from kindergarten to grade 8 (typically aged 4–14); and secondary school for students from grade 9 to 12 (typically aged 14–18). In the majority of publicly-funded elementary schools in the GTA, students either bring home-packed lunches to school or go home to eat lunch during lunchtime. Most elementary schools do not allow young students to go out to purchase lunch by themselves, while many secondary schools have cafeterias or food vendors that sell food. Secondary school students are also often permitted to leave the school perimeter during breaks to buy food for lunch. Given this structure, we focused on the participants’ recollections of elementary school lunchtime when they brought homemade lunches to school.

Methods

This qualitative exploratory study used a retrospective approach to center the voices of young Asian Canadians. Through participants’ recollections, we aimed to explore their experiences with bringing home-packed lunches to school, their perceptions of school food environments, and how they interpret the potential impacts of those childhood experiences in their current lives in Canada. Young adults aged 17–25 are in the beneficial position to reflect on their childhood while looking forward toward their adult future (Dahl 2016). Young adults can speak clearly and thoughtfully about how the childhood experiences at school have impacted their identities while they grew up in Canada as Canadians of Asian descent. Retrospective accounts shared by young adults provide nuanced insight into how childhood experiences at school lunchtime are interpreted at later developmental periods and what they would suggest for change.

The data collection took place between June 2021 to January 2022. All interviews were held remotely via Zoom teleconferencing software. To stimulate the conversation, we employed an image-elicitation technique by using Google Jamboard, a digital interactive whiteboard that allows real-time collaboration. In image-elicited interviews, images, such as photographs, drawings, or maps, are used as a means of generating richer and deeper conversations (Searle and Shulha 2016). Images offer concrete talking points and encourage active participant engagement. In our interviews, Google Jamboard was a serendipitously nimble platform that led participants to search and post photos of cuisines and ingredients via Google Images, draw sketches of the lunchboxes (containers) they brought to school, and add anything they wished to communicate visually. Using a semi-structured interview guide, we asked participants to reflect on their typical elementary school lunches, their school food environment, and any memorable experiences at school lunchtime while collaboratively doodling on the Google Jamboard. Each interview lasted about 60–70 minutes. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed using an AI-based transcription software, then manually verified by one of the research team members.

Recruitment

Prior to the recruitment, the study received ethics approval from our institutional research ethics boards (REB#: 2021–047). Given the exploratory nature of the study, a convenience sampling strategy was used. We distributed study flyers through Chinese, Indian, and Filipino student associations at our affiliated universities and other postsecondary institutions across the GTA, local community organizations serving Chinese, Indian and Filipino ethnocultural communities in the GTA, social media groups dedicated to these three ethnocultural groups, and the research team’s professional and personal networks. Study participants were also asked to share the study information with those who may be eligible for the research. Participants met the study inclusion criteria if they were: 1) between the ages of 17–25 years; 2) had at least one parent who immigrated to Canada from China (including Hong Kong), India, or the Philippines; 3) had attended elementary school in the GTA at least one year; and 4) had brought food from their family’s culture to elementary school for lunch. Their parents or family members who have packed school lunches when they were young were also invited to join a follow-up interview with their children. To ensure representative sampling, we strived to recruit 6–10 participants from each of three ethnocultural groups (i.e., Chinese, Indian, or Filipino).

Data analysis

A multi-cycle thematic coding was employed to inductively generate themes. Four members of the research team first independently read five to six transcripts each to immerse themselves in the data. They shared emergent codes from the readings at team meetings, then read another set of five to six transcripts with the initial codes in mind. The second round of reading led us to refine the initial codes and add new codes to the data analysis. Throughout the initial coding process, we held multiple team meetings to ensure investigator triangulation and if there was any discrepancy, discussed until a consensus was achieved.

Following the two rounds of initial coding, the lead author, in collaboration with the second author, adapted Pamphilon’s (1999) Zoom Model to weave codes into themes to synthesize participants’ stories. The Zoom Model draws on a metaphor of camera lens to incorporate analysis on four levels of meaning: the micro, the meso, the macro, and the interactional. The micro-zoom focuses on the oral and visual dimensions of storytelling including participants’ emotions. The meso-zoom reveals the personal elements and values that shape the process of storytelling. The macro-zoom unpacks the sociocultural, spatiotemporal dimensions of personal narratives, including collective meanings that influence individual experiences. The final interactional-zoom features the researcher-participant dynamics, paying attention to the role of the researcher and how their interpretative role and subjectivities have influenced the participants’ responses or behaviors (Pamphilon 1999).

In this study, we applied the Zoom Model to close in on the participants’ recollections of lunchtime experiences at school (the micro), zoom out to their family structures and school environments (the meso), then explore wider sociocultural, political discourses shaping the phenomenon of lunchbox shaming (the macro). The macro-zoom also focused on cohort similarities and differences (Pamphilon 1999) to illuminate cohort norms (i.e., shared within the same ethnocultural group) in comparison with elements unique to the individuals. The interactional-zoom was applied to reflect on our positionality, subjectivities, and biases that influenced the data collection and analysis. After completing the analysis, we shared preliminary research findings with research participants and asked them for their feedback using an anonymous online survey. Three participants joined this member-checking process and confirmed that the analysis accurately represented their experiences. Their comments were integrated into the final analysis.

Findings

Participant demographics

A total of 25 participants aged 17–25 years (mean age: 21.1 years old) took part in our study. Nineteen participants self-identified as female, five as male, and one preferred not to answer.³ Seven participants self-identified as coming from Chinese background, eight from Indian background, and ten from Filipino background. Two people self-identified both with Chinese and Filipino heritages (i.e., biracial). Most participants (n = 20) had both parents migrated to Canada, while five had either mother (n = 3) or father (n = 2) having migrated from China, India, or the Philippines. Along with young adult participants, two parents joined a follow-up interview with their children to add their insight. One parent immigrated from India, while the other immigrated from the Philippines.

Of the 25 young adult participants, 12 were born in Canada, and 13 migrated to Canada before the age of 12 years old. Twenty-three were Canadian citizens, and two held permanent resident status in Canada. In terms of household demographics, 16 identified as growing up in a double-parent household, five in a multi-generational household, three in a single-parent household, and one from a single-parent and multi-generational household (i.e., their household demographic changed during their elementary school period). With respect to their family’s economic backgrounds, 17 participants self-identified as growing up in a middle-income family, seven in a low-income family, and one preferred not to answer. All participants attended elementary school in the GTA for at least two years.

The micro-zoom: desire to fit in

Our analysis started with the innermost, micro-layer (participants’ personal experiences and emotions), then zoomed out to the outer layers. A salient theme identified at the micro-level was a desire to fit in. Many participants recalled being teased by classmates for the smell, texture, or appearance of their homemade food from their family’s cultural background. Particularly, smell was brought up by several participants across all three ethnocultural groups as a factor of receiving unwanted attention. Some participants received direct comments from their peers such as: “ew”, “what is that?”, or “why does it smell like that?” Others reportedly experienced more indirect messages through weird stares from their peers.

[My lunch was] always like packed in the thermos (thermostat container). When I opened it, it just smelled pretty bad and that made me feel really embarrassed about it… what I enjoyed in my elementary school years was just having like a simple sandwich, like a very basic, westernized lunch. (Y15)

Receiving unpleasant comments on their foods made the participants feel embarrassed about their “home” foods. Many reported they were not able to stand up and tell their classmates their lunches were not smelly or weird. While some tried to explain what was in their homemade lunches, they felt unsure how to explain the unique ingredients used or did not know how to translate food names into English. As a result, some resorted to hiding their lunches under the table while eating, gobbling down the food as fast as they could, or dumping their lunches in the garbage. One participant, who could not open her lunchbox due to a fear of being teased, ended up bringing the untouched lunch home, threw the food down the toilet, and clogged it.

To fit in at school, some participants preferred a “normal” lunch that would not attract derogatory remarks from their classmates. Participants commonly mentioned sandwich, pizza, or Lunchables⁴ as “normal” and “acceptable” lunches as opposed to homemade hot meals in a thermos. Some pleaded with their parents to pack “normal” lunch similar to what the majority of their classmates brought to school:

[I was] like, “Mom, why? Can’t you just pack me a sandwich? Or can we just pick up one of those Lunchables on the way home from school? Like why?” Because … I guess I wanted to seem more normal. And I wanted to feel accepted. (Y08)

However, the degree to which participants had negotiated with their families what to pack in their school lunch depended on multiple factors including individual personality, family dynamic, and the family’s socioeconomic status. Some never told their families about shaming experiences at school to avoid potential confrontations or making their families worry about them. Others recalled that their families were hesitant to indulge in packaged foods during their early days of settlement in Canada because these foods were expensive. Bringing dinner leftovers in a thermos was a time- and cost-efficient solution for these families, as purchasing packaged food for school lunch would add an extra burden to the family’s already strained food budget. Two participants noted that they were aware of the financial challenges facing their family during the early days in Canada and thus felt hesitant to ask their parents to purchase additional food items (e.g., sandwich bread, ham, cheese) that were not part of their everyday diet. One of the participants noted that there were many competing priorities for new immigrant families in Canada, and their families needed to prioritize their budget over unfamiliar food items.

[During the early days in Canada] fitting in was never one of the priorities for us at that time. It was about like, survival was one of the priorities back then, right? Learning new culture and all that was after if we had the money. (Y10)

Some participants considered that negative school lunchtime experiences had long-term impacts on their relationship with food. Two noted that negative comments from classmates about the smell of their lunch had “traumatized” them emotionally (Y17, Y25) and made them dislike foods from their family’s cultural backgrounds altogether. Y17 reportedly skipped many lunches during Grades 1 to 6, which she thought may have influenced her physical growth.

I’m still shorter than my mom … My mom always thought I would be able to grow taller than her like my sister. But I think that maybe because I skipped so many meals at school and starved myself at such a young age, maybe that’s why … (Y17)

Although many recalled unpleasant experiences at school lunchtime, a handful of participants shared positive memories when their foods, such as snacks, were admired by classmates. Snacks often acted as a low-stake currency in intercultural food exchange at school. One participant recalled a proud moment when her Filipino snack (a cream cracker sandwich) gained popularity among their peers:

I just remember during snack time, people would ask like, “Hey [Y15]! Did you bring those mini little pancakes [cream cracker sandwich]?” I’d be like, “Yeah, I did!” And then like, we would all just like share it, and that would be like a really cute and awesome moment. (Y15)

Another person mentioned that she sometimes exchanged a whole lunch with a friend who longed for homemade Indian food:

One of my other friends, she was also Indian, but she usually didn’t enjoy her lunch much … she said like, “Oh, my parents would pack me the same thing every day,” which was usually like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So I’d exchange my food with her sometimes. (Y01)

Similarly, in a follow-up interview, a parent recalled a compliment her child received from her teacher about her lunch. When she packed Hakka noodles in her child’s lunch, the teacher commented that the lunch “looks so good and healthy” and asked for the recipe. This experience made the parent feel proud and confident in packing homemade food in the child’s school lunchbox.

The meso-zoom: food culture mismatch

Zooming out from the micro- to the meso-level, participant narratives indicate that school food environments were not always congruent with their family food practices. Many participants experienced the “food culture mismatch” (Agaronov, Entwistle, and May Leung 2019) between food norms that their families embrace and the foodway normalized at school.

One salient family food norm shared by many participants was food should be eaten warm which was informed by the family’s understanding of healthy food. For example, packing raw vegetables and fruits in children’s school lunches appeared counterintuitive to some families. Three participants from Chinese backgrounds commented that eating uncooked vegetables would not constitute healthy eating in their households. One mentioned that her grandparents living in China “would not understand eating raw lettuce, like in salad” (Y07), because they generally avoid eating uncooked vegetables and unpeeled fruits. However, many participants recalled that they eventually brought unpeeled fruits and vegetable sticks to school as snacks because these items were encouraged by teachers as healthy snacks. Accordingly, their families started adding new kinds of fruits and vegetables (e.g., apples, bananas, carrot sticks) to their routine grocery list.

Generally, the family’s preference for hot meals did not align well with the Canadian school food environment designed for cold and light meals that are quick to consume. Many participants reported they did not have access to microwave ovens at school. Even those who had access to a microwave seldom chose to warm up their lunches due to fear of potential food smell attracting unwanted attention, potential long wait time, or inconvenience of asking for teacher permission to use the microwave. Instead, many brought lunches to school in a thermos to keep food warm until lunchtime. However, when they opened the thermos, the steam from within the containers sometimes drew unwanted attention from classmates. To cover the steam, one person came up with a “creative solution” (Y24) around Grade 5 when she started packing her own lunch in the morning. Unlike her father who usually put rice on the bottom and the main dish at the top of a thermos, she devised to put rice on top of the main dish to keep steam from exiting to mitigate the potential smell.

Another food norm was a fulsome meal isn’t complete without rice and main dish. This sentiment was shared mainly by those from Filipino and Chinese backgrounds that mandate having rice or other carbohydrate products as the main staples of every meal. A few commented that they found it “weird” when their classmates brought “snackish food” (Y20) such as crackers and cheese for lunch, because these food items would not consist of a fulsome meal for them. One participant who immigrated to Canada from the Philippines had a culture shock when she noticed none of her classmates brought rice for lunch.

“I was confused. Like, why aren’t you guys eating rice? Like, I don’t understand, we have rice every day. But nobody had rice.” [at school] (Y05)

Likewise, another participant recalled an unpleasant comment made by a classmate:

I remember an experience when I was in Grade 8. For us, we eat, like for Filipinos, we eat rice with literally everything … we also eat rice and eggs together … One of my peers, from Portuguese background, he was like surprised. He actually said “ew, are you eating rice with egg?” And I was like, “What do you mean? That’s like a normal thing.” (Y04)

Despite the mismatch the participants experienced between their home and school food environments, there was a shared consensus that homemade foods are healthier and more nutritious than store-bought meals. Homemade lunches symbolize a bonding experience connecting children and families outside their homes. Many participants shared memories of cooking with their families, or the hearty aroma of soup simmered at the back of the stove during family dinners. They appreciated that their families packed home-cooked meals for lunch despite their busy schedules and financial hardship during their early days in Canada. One parent who participated in a follow-up interview said packing store-bought food for lunch would be considered “lazy” and “unhealthy” compared to hearty meals cooked at home.

Through the meso-zoom, school demographics appeared to have a decisive impact on the degree to which participants experienced food culture mismatch. Lunchbox shaming experiences were more prevalent at culturally homogenous schools where participants found themselves among the small numbers of students from ethnocultural minority backgrounds. Participants who went to school where most of their classmates were from a similar ethnocultural background as themselves reported little shaming experiences at lunchtime. Their homemade dishes were accepted and adored by peers, while they too, understood peers’ lunches that minimized tensions between home and school food cultures. For example, a person from a Filipino family who went to a school where most students were from Filipino cultural backgrounds remembered “a little potluck” (Y12) she had with her classmates at lunchtime. She traded her lumpia (Filipino spring rolls) with a friend’s pancit (stir-fried noodle) or shared Filipino snacks her grandparents sent from the Philippines. The experience was fun and memorable. In such an environment, the conversations around lunch were often filled with positive curiosity rather than hostility:

I remember, during lunchtime when I was in the classroom, you go around, and you just ask people, “what are you having for lunch?” And regardless of what it is like, “Oh, that looks delicious.” … Just asking questions about that and just being as non-judgmental as possible, I think it was very important. (Y12)

Similarly, a few participants from schools that had relatively diverse ethnocultural demographics noticed that many classmates brought foods from their family’s culture for lunch. Some participants who transferred from a school where they were part of an ethnocultural minority to a school with more ethnocultural diversity reported experiencing “a 180-degree change” (Y21).

When we moved to [the new school], after about a year [following immigration to Canada], I found [the new school] was more diverse. So my friends were not necessarily Indian, but like East Asians, so they were more accepting and more aware, like culturally aware of the different types of foods. (Y01)

However, it is worth noting that some experienced lunchbox shaming at school where their ethnocultural group constituted the majority. One participant from an Indian immigrant family observed a classmate from the same cultural background bringing Indian food and eating with their hands during lunchtime. Although the classmate did not face any negative reaction from peers, the participant still felt “insecure” (Y02) bringing homemade Indian food to school due to the fear of standing out by eating with hands. Another person (Y10) commented that right after she immigrated from India at the age of 12, her lunch was teased by classmates from the same ethnocultural background as hers. Her homeroom teacher noticed that Y10 had received unwanted attention and had a conversation with the rest of the class. Afterwards, her classmates stopped teasing her about her lunch, which consequently improved her school experience. Nonetheless, interventions by teachers or other adult staff members at school were reportedly rare among our participants. Only one person (Y10) stated that her homeroom teacher stayed with the class during lunch; most remembered that lunch monitors (school staff members or parent volunteers) supervised lunch and recess periods while their classroom teachers were on break.

The macro-zoom: systemic othering in multiculturalism

Zooming out to the macro-level, our analysis unraveled large socio-cultural factors that shaped participants’ experiences. The notion of a “normal” lunch emerged again at this level, signaling systemic Othering many participants have faced and internalized over time. Across the three ethnocultural groups, homemade meals were often called by others “exotic” or “ethnic” foods distinct from “normal” school lunches. Participant narratives revealed an established link between the notion of normalcy and Whiteness, as the words “normal food” and “White food” or “Western food” were often used interchangeably. When asked what “cultural food” meant to them, most participants named traditional cuisine from their family’s background. For many participants, “cultural foods” would not include sandwich, pasta, or Lunchables, because these were “the mainstream Western food” (Y04) at school that “do not require explanation” (Y25). One participant recalled that when she brought a sandwich to school, one of her classmates commented “Oh, you finally brought a normal lunch” (Y07).

Participants who immigrated to Canada at an older age reportedly experienced a greater degree of mismatch between their homemade lunch and what classmates brought to school than those who immigrated at a younger age (i.e., 4 years old or younger) and those who were born in Canada. These individuals noticed that their peers from similar ethnocultural backgrounds did not always share their culinary practice. One person who immigrated from China at the age of six commented:

I can see that [my classmates] are Chinese. And they speak fluent English. And they eat everything else that everybody else is eating. And you’re like, oh, are they also from China? Or are they from here? And they’re all born here. They are really white-washed and they blend in really well. (Y17)

Contrarily, a few participants born in Canada noted that their food practices were sometimes seen as inauthentic by peers who grew up in the country of their ethnocultural origin. One participant born into an Indian immigrant family spoke about the experience of “reverse shaming” (Y19) when he was teased by peers for eating flavored yogurt instead of dahi (curd) with paratha (flatbread).

It was fine when I was in [a suburb city], which was when I was from grade one to four, and when I came to Toronto there’s a lot more Indian people here and they started making fun of me because I’m not doing it the right way … I prefer dahi, it actually tastes more genuine. (Y19)

Participant narratives also indicated a considerable impact of cultural diversity discourse operated through school curricula. Five participants recalled that their schools provided students with an opportunity to learn about diverse food cultures as part of class assignments or school-sponsored events. One person mentioned that their Grade 6 teacher incorporated the topic of foods from diverse cultures into a social studies class. Students worked in groups to research the history and culture of a country assigned to them, then prepared food commonly eaten in the country, and presented their findings to class at a potluck day.

My teacher organized this potluck, where students can bring food from their culture, and I remember needing to do a presentation on the food, which was lumpia. And I also remember working on this project with my friend who’s not Filipino … he liked the food that I brought … I remember that experience, like being very fun and very positive. (Y22)

Others also remembered Multicultural Night or Food Fairs hosted by their schools where they brought food from their family’s culture and shared it with others. Sometimes families and community members were invited to host a booth representing their cultural backgrounds and served dishes from their culture. These experiences made participants feel connected to their family’s culinary culture and learned about their peers’ cultural backgrounds, too. Those who had similar events at high school wished their elementary schools had a culturally informed curriculum for pupils.

Nevertheless, there was a shared recognition among the participants that homemade foods would look and taste very different from dishes served at restaurants or food festivals aimed at the general public. When given an opportunity to share foods from their cultural backgrounds at school (e.g., Multicultural Night), some participants thus took a cautious approach to avoid offering food that could appear “too exotic” (Y23); instead, they strategically chose foods they thought authentic but acceptable by peers and adults from different cultural backgrounds than theirs.

“For culture day (at school), of course I had to sign up for Filipino food … And I always asked my mom, “Oh, make lumpia but make sure they’re just really tame… no beansprouts, because I don’t think people would know what a beansprout is … I guess when I think of cultural food, and particularly in that school setting, for me, it really meant, kind of sanitizing and diluting the actual culture to a more palatable to … Western palate, I suppose.” (Y23)

Y23 further noted that her choice of lumpia for the culture day event was informed by the wide recognition of Chinese spring rolls in Canada that would make her Filipino dish “tame” and, therefore, acceptable. At the same time, however, her request to avoid beansprouts suggested a felt need to “dilute” the actual culture so that her home foods would appear “palatable to the Western palate.”

The interactional zoom: message to younger self

Pamphilon’s, 1999 interactional-zoom asks researchers to address, not hold aside, their own subjectivities. Admittedly, lunchbox shaming is a matter very close to our hearts. All coauthors of this paper self-identified as having migrated to Canada themselves or growing up in Canada as a child of immigrant parents. Four team members had lived experience going to elementary or secondary schools in the GTA, and the other two had children attending or having attended elementary schools in the GTA. Three of us were from the same ethnocultural backgrounds as our research participants (i.e., two from Chinese and one from Indian backgrounds).

As we listened to the participants’ recollections, we recalled our own memories of microaggression we faced or witnessed at Canadian schools as a child or a parent. We related to, felt with them, and expressed compassion to participants. It could be argued that our emotion – our own pain, cultural pride, and anger against lunchbox shaming – was communicated to the participants even through our body language and influenced the direction of storytelling. During our recurrent team meetings, we intentionally “bracketed” (Tufford and Newman 2012) our preconceptions by mindfully acknowledging our a priori assumptions. We were particularly cautious of the words “we/our/us” when describing emergent themes to avoid being self-centered, and instead used the “I” voice to remain self-aware of our individual responses and diverse positionalities. In addition to nurturing our reflexivity, our team strived to foster an open, dialogical atmosphere where all members were encouraged to share their perspectives and respectfully disagree with others. This collaborative experience was invaluable for us to refrain from privileging our role through “objective invisibility” (1999 396), while visualizing our own assumptions, values, and biases.

Through the interactional-zoom, we became eager to know what the participants would suggest for change in improving Canadian school food environments. At the end of each interview, we asked participants if they could go back in time, what they would tell their younger self about their school lunch. Some commented that they would reassure their younger selves that “your food is not smelly” (Y23) or tell them to “embrace your food and educate others” (Y06). Others would remind their younger selves of parental care and love packed in lunchboxes by telling: “your dad worked really hard for that” (Y14). An overarching message was to encourage children to embrace and feel proud of their own culinary heritage and family food culture by realizing, in the words of one participant, “it’s okay to be different” (Y10).

We then collaborated with an artist to create a painting featuring participants’ messages to their younger selves. The painting titled “It’s okay to be different” (Figure 1) represented an imaginary school lunchtime scene where eight characters eat and share their foods. The process of painting was filmed and edited into a 3-minute time-lapse video with voiceovers of interview quotes. The video was published on YouTube (https://youtu.be/zdK4ZZigf0k) to reach out to a broader audience.

Figure 1. “It’s okay to be different” a research-based painting made by Sae Kimura.

A watercolour cartoon of a group of eight animals with their desks put together, happily chatting while enjoying their lunches.

Discussion

Our study explored the phenomenon of lunchbox shaming through recollections of school lunchtime by young Canadians of Asian descent. Two parents’ perspectives were collected to add depth to young adults’ retrospective narratives. Pamphilon’s (1999) Zoom Model was used to unravel how individual experiences with school lunches have intersected with family food practices, school food environments, and larger socio-cultural discourses about healthy food. Many participants reportedly experienced subtle to salient lunchbox shaming when they brought food from their family’s culture to school. Those negative experiences at school lunchtime had a profound impact on their relationship with their “home” food, as well as on their identities. By eating food labeled as deviant by their classmates, some participants internalized a feeling of non-belongingness and felt pressured to fit in by bringing “normal” lunches to school. Some pleaded with parents to pack a “White people lunch,” while others creatively modified the way homemade dishes were packed in a thermos (i.e., by putting rice on top of the main dish to cover food odors).

Similar to our pilot study with Japanese immigrant families in Canada (Seko et al. 2021), the present study illuminated that food practice deemed “normal” at school is not always congruent with Asian immigrant families’ food practices. Family norms for hot and fulsome meals often contested with light cold lunches normalized at Canadian schools; raw vegetables and unpeeled fruits promoted as healthy food at school appeared foreign to some families. These “food cultural mismatches” (Agaronov, Entwistle, and May Leung 2019) had behavioral and emotional consequences including wasting home-packed lunches and disliking foods from the family’s background altogether. However, the degree to which the participants would feel comfortable in bringing food from their family’s culture to school depended on multiple factors including their personality, school demographics, and the interventions by teachers and other adults at school – or lack thereof. Indeed, unlike previous studies that discovered the role teachers played in surveilling the content of children’s school lunches (Karrebæk 2012; Tanner et al. 2019), participant recollections of teacher’s presence were minimal in our study.

It is noteworthy that while participants in our study were from three different Asian immigrant groups (i.e., Chinese, Indian, Filipino), their experiences were very similar. The desire to fit in, food cultural mismatches, and experiences with systemic Othering were expressed commonly across the three groups, except for slight differences in family food norms. The strong inter-group similarities were intriguing as each ethnocultural group differs in its cultural heritage, specific circumstances and timing of migration, and resources and networks available to them during the settlement. That being said, although we were interested in these three ethnocultural groups as representing the GTA’s Asian immigrant population, it is important to recognize that this qualitative study was an exploratory one with a small sample size that could not represent the depth and width of the population of interest. We were aware that within each ethnocultural group, there are a significant amount of cultural, racial, linguistic, religious, political, and other diversities. The experiences of individuals can also be very different depending on factors such as school demographics, family dynamics, socio-economic status, and education. Our findings thus must be interpreted with this vast intra-group heterogeneity in mind.

Our findings confirmed that school is a powerful cultural assimilator for migrant children and their families to Canada (Blanchet et al. 2018) in that children’s exposure to dominant Canadian foodways at school had a considerable influence on food practices at home. Participants’ recollections suggested that families managed to maintain a diet from their home country, while gradually adapting to a “Canadian” diet to adjust to their life in the new country. Even though there was a shared preference for homemade meals as a healthier and preferable option than “Western” foods, families eventually incorporated new food items such as bread, raw vegetables, and fruits, due to their children’s reluctance to bring “cultural” foods for lunch and based on their acquired understanding of what constitutes healthy food in Canada. However, for families facing financial strains associated with migration, incorporating new food items into their daily eating habits is not always an easy task. Although we had limited insight about the extent to which the participants’ parents prioritized traditional eating habits in their early days of settlement in Canada, it might be difficult for them to continue providing traditional foods to families if traditional food items were less accessible than dominant foods (see for example, Blanchet et al. 2018). Future studies can explore more deeply into migrant parents’ and caregivers’ perspectives on school lunches and what factors play a role in their everyday lunch making.

The study title “lunchbox shaming” itself could likely have attracted participants who were willing to share negative memories around school lunchtime. However, we were pleasantly surprised by a handful of participants sharing favorable memories of school lunchtime. Those participants happily recalled genuine curiosity and compliments on their lunches from classmates or a heart-warming memory of sharing their food with friends. Aside from school demographics, one element that contributed to positive lunchtime experiences was cultural diversity curricula facilitated by teachers and schools. These educational interventions encouraged students to gain cultural pride and understanding of their own and other cultures. However, although well-intentioned, cultural diversity projects at school could force some students to modify their home food for audiences who are not familiar with their food culture. Stiffler’s (2014) discussion on self-Orientalism can be drawn here to explain their intent to present their home food as authentic yet “palatable to Western palate” (Y23). By providing “ethnically coded food” (Stiffler 2014, 125) that tames and sanitizes differences, some participants have engaged in a strategic performance of perceived ethnocultural identity. To perform an expected ethnocultural identity through foods at school thus is not only about holding onto traditional foodway, but also performing Canadian-ness in the depoliticized space of multiculturalism. This stands in intriguing contrast to a Canadian-born participant’s recollection of “reverse shaming” by classmates who immigrated from India. Even though the participant considered himself engaging in authentic food practice by eating homemade Indian foods, his flavored yogurt would not replace dahi that has a more “genuine” flavor.

Furthermore, participants’ nuanced claim of culinary authenticity at school indicates the complexity of cultural diversity curricula. In Ontario, there has been a growing interest in serving culturally appropriate food in institutional settings including primary schools. However, this well-intentioned discussion may perpetuate the idea of dominant food culture as the norm. For example, the Ontario Ministry of Education’s school food guide for teachers presents pictures of Asian food items (e.g., bok choi) as an example of “food and beverages from different cultures” (Ontario Ministry of Education 2011, 18). Although the educational and societal benefits associated with welcoming diverse food cultures into school contexts are well recognized (Stapleton 2022), the framing of certain foods as coming “from different cultures” can subtly shape the ways in which foods are normalized at school. In her ethnographic research on culturally sensitive curriculum in Ontario, Chan (2007) warns not to assume that immigrant students and their families always wish to have their home cultures recognized in the school context. Arguing that these curricula could actively shape – rather than represent – students’ ethnic identities, Chan emphasizes the need to “find ways in which practices, and policies supporting these practices, can be informed by the lived experiences of students on diverse school landscapes” (2007, 190).

Study limitations

A limitation pertinent to this study is its reliance on retrospective accounts, which cannot rule out the possibility of inaccurate memory recall. However, this study explored how young Canadians of Asian descent reflect on their childhood memories and make meaning of those experiences in their current lives. Their messages to younger self were only attainable through a retrospective design. A future study can directly approach elementary school children and their parents and compare their current experiences with that of young adults who participated in this study.

The other limitation stemmed from our focus on the three largest Asian ethnocultural communities in the GTA. During the study recruitment, we received inquiries from people who self-identified as having immigrated from other countries (e.g., Pakistan, Bangladesh). Future research would benefit from expanding the study scope to include more diverse immigrant populations and closely explore the inter- and intra-group similarities and differences.

Conclusion

Children’s home-packed lunch to school embodies intersecting discourses of parenting, family food traditions, multiculturalism, health, and identities. Young Asian Canadians we interviewed recalled that the Canadian school food environment did not always welcome their home food practices. Many of them felt the need to balance affiliation to both their home and school food cultures as they grew up in Canada, which placed an emotional and financial toll on themselves and their families.

Our findings have salient implications to the current discussion on Canada’s national school meal program. Canada is one of the few affluent countries that does not have a nationally funded school food program (Black et al. 2022). Due to a widening economic disparity and increasing concern with childhood nutrition, the call for a national intervention to children’s foodways has been steadily growing. However, the current debates center predominantly on the nutritional benefits of such programs, leaving little consideration of food as an identity maker. When envisioning a national school meal program, it is imperative to acknowledge that these programs can be a conduit of ideology through which norms around “healthy” and “normal” eating are communicated to children and their families (Allison 1991; Moffat and Gendron 2019). School food pedagogies shape and influence food-related desires and aspirations of children and their families (Pike and Leahy 2012), which may widen the gap between home and school food cultures identified in the present study. If Canada is going to establish a universal school meal program, the program should reflect diverse food cultures students grow accustomed to at home.

Relatedly, our study confirmed that schools can provide a unique space for cross-cultural communication where culinary appropriation, food acculturation, and (re)construction of culinary heritage take place on a daily basis. There is a potential to build the capacity of teachers to integrate the topic of cultural food literacy into their pedagogical practice and encourage students to explore how food conveys social meanings and what it means to eat healthily. Such a cultural food literacy program, along with existing curriculum on cultural diversity and inclusion, would help children understand family choices, feel cultural pride, and diverse ethnocultural foodways flourishing in Canada.

Acknowledgements

Our sincere thanks to research participants who generously shared their stories. We are thankful to Sae Kimura (artist) and Kiana Tagabing (video editor) for making the knowledge mobilization video “It’s okay to be different.” We also appreciate our two collaborators Drs. Jacqui Gingras and Jessica Mudry for their continuous support. This research is funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Insight Development Grant (2020–2022, Principal Investigator: Yukari Seko).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences [430-2020-00507].

Notes

1. According to Statistics Canada’s Standard Classification of Countries and Areas of Interest (SCCAI) 2019, China and Hong Kong (the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China) are considered as separate entities. For this study, we included people who had at least one parent having immigrated to Canada from both China and Hong Kong if they self-identify with Chinese ethnocultural backgrounds.

2. We refer to the 2016 Census data here, rather than the most recent 2021 census data, to reflect on the GTA demographics when most study participants were at elementary school. It is worth mentioning that since 2011 the top three countries of birth for immigrants to the GTA have consistently been China, India, and the Philippines. This tendency remained in the most recent census (Statistics Canada, 2021).

3. At the beginning of each interview, we asked participants their pronouns. Pronouns accompanied with participant quotes in this paper were self-reported by interview participants.

4. Lunchable is a prepackaged meal originally manufactured by Kraft Heinz. A typical Lunchable box contains a few pieces of crackers, slices of ham and cheese.