Just as much as food can bring people together, it can also be a polarizing topic. Recent heated debates in the US and UK around issues of cultural appropriation suggest otherwise. Celebrity chefs, including Britain’s Gordon Ramsay and Andrew Zimmern from the US, have been accused of laying claim to having better knowledge or skill in cooking regional dishes than local people do. New York restaurant Lucky Lee's also created a furore earlier this year when it advertised itself as providing “clean” Chinese food that wouldn’t make people feel "bloated and icky the next day," with critics accusing the owners of racism and a lack of understanding of Chinese food.

Food is closely linked to identity — and identity is linked to power structures. Chinese-Americans have been particularly vocal in talking about how alienated they have often felt from mainstream US culture growing up, and how Chinese food served as both an important link with their Chinese heritage and a notable marker of difference. Historically, much of the emigration from China to the US starting in the late 19th Century was restricted to restaurateurs, who then had to adapt their food to suit American tastes — often thickening sauces and adding extra salt because that was what their American clients liked. "Very few Americans realize or know that China probably had the most sophisticated food culture in the world at least 500 years before the French did," says Krishnendu Ray, a sociologist and professor of food studies at New York University.

It’s also a question of who profits from a cuisine’s popularity: As food editor Dakota Kim points out, there are often significant discrepancies in the ease of starting a business — including securing bank loans, finding a space to open your business, marketing and publicity — based on the background of the business owners. Someone with wealth and connections living in a rich country may easily open a trendy food cart selling Mexican tortillas, but if their knowledge of how to cook the food has been gleaned from Mexican abuelas who share the information without charge but see none of the profit, is this really fair?

Understanding and respect are the key ingredients: The answer, says a thoughtful Guardian editorial on the subject, is not to advocate a rigid adherence to “authenticity,” but to be genuinely interested and respectful when cooking food from other cultures, and to be sensitive about a dish’s origins when you experiment with it. Kim goes a step further by calling on those who benefit the most from power structures to acknowledge their privilege, and consider shining the spotlight on others who have not had their advantages — by directing publicity or bringing more customers their way, for example.