Hawaii: Local Food

Beginning in the 1920s and 1930s, certain forces began to produce a creole food, Local Food. (It is worth setting this in the context of other sugar islands in the Caribbean, also Mauritius and Fiji.) One was the arrival of home economists trained largely at the Columbia Teachers College in New York. These women recorded the diet of the Japanese, established the food values of Hawaiian foods and a range of tropical fruits, and trained large numbers of home economics teachers and school cafeteria managers. Surprisingly sympathetic to the different ethnic foods of the islands, they urged brown rice (a complete failure), milk (successful though at the expense of the digestive systems of the Asian adults who do not tolerate lactose), and ensured that the food in the public school system was an all-American diet of hamburger, meat loaf, Salisbury steak, and mashed potatoes. Back in the islands, the necessity to show allegiance to America meant that many ethnic customs—costume, religious observances, language schools, and food—were dropped.