Stealing Buddha's Dinner

The title for today's blog post is that of a book all incoming freshman students at Purdue are being asked to read before start of classes this coming fall. In anticipation of this requirement, faculty across Purdue are being asked to integrate the book into their course in one way, shape, form or manner. The book is based on a memoir by Bich Minh Nguyen, who travelled here to the states with her family as a young girl when the Vietnam war came to a crashing halt when the remaining American soldiers left Saigon. I am sure you boomers out there can remember those images as South Vietnamese citizens clamored to get out of their country as the North Vietnamese invaded the country.

I dutifully picked up the book to read it and found that I quite enjoyed it so recommending it today. The book provided great insights as to how someone copes with the clash of cultures that occur when someone makes their home in the USA. The aspect of the book that I found most interesting was the impact that large food conglomerates had on the author when she first came to the United States which made her question the foods and recipes native to her culture that were served at home compared to those being sold constantly via television ads or eaten by neighbor and friends. If you are up to date on the climbing obesity rates in the US, based on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the author's experience also makes the case for the role that food marketing is having (negatively) on those born in the USA, too.

To obtain the book, here is full information:
Bich Minh Nguyen (2007). Stealing Buddha's Dinner. Viking Penguin, USA. ISBN 978-0-14-311303-4 (ppbk).

To learn more about the obesity trends in the US, visit: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html