‘The Asian Kid With The Stinky Lunch’ Narrative Is A Pop Culture Trope, But It’s Still Worth Telling

If you’re part of the Asian American community and very online, you’re no doubt familiar with the “ethnic stinky lunch” narrative.

If you’re not familiar, the “stinky lunch” trope goes a little something like this: A kid brings something into the cafeteria that’s a different than the standard PB&J or ham sandwich ― beef bulgogi in Tupperware, for instance, or Spam musubi ― and is met with quizzical stares from classmates.

Sometimes the stares are accompanied by mean comments: “That stinks,” someone will mutter under their breath. “Gross.” Other kids will go straight for the jugular and say something, “Ugh, looks like you’re eating dog food.”

Reflecting on the experience years later, stories about stinky lunches usually end with the writer reclaiming the narrative and saying that now they’re proud of their cultural dishes: Sure, the smell was pungent, but their lunch tasted loads better than Kyle’s turkey and cheese Lunchable. Plus, in these post-Anthony Bourdain “No Reservations”-days, beef bulgogi is trendy and as commonplace as a Big Mac.

Many a personal essay has been written about overcoming the trauma of being the Asian kid with the stinky lunch. Eddie Huang devoted a whole episode of his sitcom “Fresh off the Boat” to the lead character wanting to bring in “white people lunch.”

Food-shaming along these lines is so common for Asian kids growing up in the U.S., that even homeschooled kids can’t escape it.

Jennifer LeMesurier is a Korean American who was adopted by white parents and was homeschooled most of her life, and she still has a story.

LeMesurier ― an associate professor of writing and rhetoric at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, and the author of “Inscrutable Eating: Asian Appetites and the Rhetorics of Racial Consumption” ― recalls going on a group trip with other homeschooled kids in first grade to Uwajimaya Asian Market in Seattle.

Though it was very much an “expand your horizons”-type of trip, LeMesurier said the minute the kids got to the tanks of live crabs and shellfish, the whole group erupted in a loud, collective squeal of “eww!”

“I remember I felt both confused as to why everyone else was being so rude, and embarrassed as the one Asian kid in the group,” she told HuffPost.

“Since I looked more like the people working behind the counter than my classmates, all of a sudden I didn’t know where my allegiance was supposed to be,” she said.

Getting food-shamed in the cafeteria has become such a canonical experience for Asian Americans in Western countries ― in many ways, it’s similar to the “all Asians look alike” shared experience ― some wonder if it’s time we retire conversations about it. It’s an easily digestible story and ends on a satisfying note, especially for white audiences: Asian food is now hip and embraced! It’s good we’ve moved past that!

But of course, there’s more to the Asian American experience than Asian food becoming popular. As Eater staff writer Jaya Saxena wrote in an essay for the site:

The lunchbox moment doesn’t require the reader to think about how class, religion, or caste could all change an immigrant’s experience. It doesn’t point out all the invisible ways immigrants and people of color are made to feel unwelcome. It doesn’t allow for muted or shifting feelings, or the complications of systemic racism. It’s just the hard clarity of Us v. Them, Shame v. Triumph, a white boy telling you you’re gross and a different white boy telling you he actually likes lumpia.

Others argue that there are more pressing issues of racism that Asian Americans, who are underrepresented in public office, management positions and in the media, are facing today. One in 10 Asian Americans lives in poverty, but their experiences tend to fall through the cracks since we’re more comfortable telling “Crazy Rich Asian” stories.

Grace M. Cho, a professor of sociology and anthropology at the CUNY College of Staten Island and the author of “Tastes Like War: A Memoir,” thinks it would be helpful for conversations about stinky lunches to segue into topics more complex. Now that there’s a greater appreciation among the general public for immigrant cuisines, we should be more comfortable engaging critically with thornier topics.

“While food is a very important aspect of culture, I do think we need to connect it to social and political issues,” she told HuffPost. “Is the cuisine just being appropriated or commodified while the people of that culture are still marginalized and their home countries are being ravaged by American foreign policy?”

She thinks the stinky lunch as a pop culture trope could be used as a way of hiding or minimizing these power dynamics.

Others argue that the “smelly lunch” narrative doesn’t truthfully represent the experiences of all Asians growing up in Northern America. We’re not a monolith, after all; in more racially and ethnically diverse areas ― with Trader Joe’s stores that carry kimchi and tteok bok ki ― a child of Asian descent today is just as likely to be envied if they bring in something from their culture.

Aydin Quach, a Ph.D. student in American Studies at the University of Southern California, grew up in Vancouver, Canada, and his experiences with “smelly” lunches largely invert the trope.

“I remember many of my friends and me opening our lunchboxes to dumplings with vinegar, to kimchi, to spring rolls with fish sauce, curry and naan, and many of our non-Asian classmates being not just very curious, but also jealous of our lunch menus,” said Quach, who’s of Chinese, Bruneian, Malaysian and Vietnamese descent.

When it came time for class parties and the classroom was given a food choice, the students overwhelmingly always asked for Asian food.

“I remember many times in school where moms would bring in trays of spring rolls along with a big bucket of fish sauce for the class,” he said. “Other times, it would be lumpia. Sometimes, it was an array of dosas.”

As refreshing as that is, Quach still thinks conversations about this topic ― clichéd as they might come across to some ― are worth sharing.

He still remembers how it made him feel the one time he was called out for bringing something “stinky” ― in his case, dumplings with vinegar.

“I got very self-conscious, and when the teacher wasn’t looking, I would discreetly throw my food out into the trash,” he said. “I proceeded to do this for a week until the same kid who said my food was stinky said he wanted to try my lunch and then said he loved it.”

Even so, that experience of throwing out his food, starving the rest of the school day and then lying to his parents that he’d finished his food has stuck with Quach.

“It made me feel physically sick and also took a toll on my mental health even at that young an age,” he said. “It hurts kids when they hear that because they start developing very dissonant experiences with their food, with their bodies, and with their families.”

Kids are smart, Quach said, and can read between the lines and know that something smelly means that there is some other, more exacting message being conveyed.

Food and the experience of eating is so intimate ― the idea that “you are what you eat” is relevant here ― that negative comments like these can easily cut to the quick.

Alex, a Vietnamese American who asked to use his first name only for privacy and who goes by @sadguyalex online, said he often felt othered when bringing in things like thịt kho or sườn ram (think caramelized and braised pork with rice), spring rolls/gỏi cuốn, chả lụa and rice with whatever leftover vegetable and meats were available from dinner the night before.

Most comments were from kids with harmless curiosity about his food, but other remarks embarrassed him. (“Why would you eat something that smells?” or “That looks gross to me.”)

“Learning that others have preconceptions about you, and possibly negative ones, when you’re still trying to piece together your identity when you’re a kid can be equally memorable and devastating,” he said.

Given those lived experiences, he still thinks there’s value in sharing “stinky lunch” stories, even if people on Twitter are sick of them.

“I also feel like a lot of times we can end up discussing topics like the smelly lunch thing from a really academic angle that can feel closed off, inaccessible, and condescending,” Alex said.

“I think it’s just nice to keep in mind that there are people in the community who might not know as much as you or can’t articulate their thoughts as eloquently as you, or just need a place to start off,” he said. “Maybe that starting place is the stinky lunch narrative, and they should have the space to do that.”

Plus, the sad truth is that kids are still getting bullied for their ethnic lunches, even in today’s more multicultural world. Not everyone lives on the coasts with huge H Marts where Asian ingredients are readily available.

Even adults still get singled out when they bring leftovers in at work. U.K. writer Natali Simmonds distinctly remembers a Chinese colleague of hers being told by management to stop heating her food in the microwave as it was “stinking out the office.”

The incident hit home because Simmonds, the daughter of Spanish immigrants, got side-eyed when she’d bring in her bagged lunches of salami, olives and pate.

“We’ve evolved considerably in the last 20 years when it comes to accepting others ― be it their religion, ethnicity, sexuality or lifestyle choices ― but it doesn’t take much to make someone feel ‘othered,’” she told HuffPost. “Pointing out someone’s food will do that.”

She and others we spoke to think we can still talk about smelly lunch microaggressions while engaging critically with meatier topics. There’s room for both conversations, and we may even be discounting how relevant stinky lunch discussions are.

“The recent spike in hate crimes against Asian Americans during the height of COVID [shows] how easy it was for many to equate Asian eaters with disease and danger,” LeMesurier said.

Pandemic-era stigma ended up costing Asian restaurants $7.4 billion in lost revenue, a 2023 study published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour found.

“Are we asking if the ‘stinky lunch’ trope is tired because the narrative is getting in the way of seeing other social issues? Or are we dismissing racist beliefs because it’s ‘kid stuff’ and therefore not that big of a deal?” the professor said.

Plus, she added, even if it is a fading issue or a pop culture trope, that doesn’t mean past moments of shame around food that happened to people’s grandparents, parents and countless other immigrants don’t deserve to be heard.

“Food and identity are deeply intertwined, both as matters of personal identity and as how others perceive us,” LeMesurier said. “How we talk about both matters a lot.”