Food and Drink Politics

He Saw It Through A Different Lens, You Know

August 18, 2025 by David 100 Comments

From the pages of Metro, some highly emotional news:

It was endless – and deeply unsettling. I genuinely felt shaken and that emotion caught me off guard. I picked up the phone and called my mother in Jordan…

As soon as I heard her voice, I started sobbing. She heard me sniffling and, in true tough-love fashion, said, “Ah, you must’ve caught a cold from that British weather?” “Yes, Mama,” I mumbled. “Just a cold.” I couldn’t bring myself to verbalise my shock and disgust because I didn’t yet have the words to describe it.

I do now, though. My mind couldn’t wrap itself around the idea that my culture – houmous – was being culturally appropriated. It makes me sick.

I’ll give you a moment to steady yourselves. What with the brutality of it all. Namely, a supermarket aisle with – and I quote,

An entire shelf stacked with all kinds of wild, colourful houmous.

Apparently mere proximity to such a thing – again, a shelf of houmous in a supermarket – can traumatise grown men of a progressive persuasion. Including Mr Amro Tabari, whose dip-induced agonising unfolds before you now:

I grew up in Jordan but my family is actually from Palestine. Before I was born, they were forced to flee in 1948 and we became refugees.

No, the relevance escapes me, too. Perhaps something will be made of this later, given sufficient contrivance.

Despite this, I had a happy childhood with my parents and older sister. Throughout it all, houmous was a staple. In fact, we’d have it as a family every Friday as part of a breakfast ritual. Mum would make it from scratch and we’d sit around the table sharing it.

I go for the red pepper variety, myself. Hey, I’m just sharing, too.

It wasn’t until I moved to the UK in 2013 to pursue a Master’s Degree in Renewable Energy that I began to see houmous through a different lens.

No laughing at the back. This is a tearful tale.

In supermarkets, I was stunned: all different types of houmous ‘fusions’ – many without chickpeas at all.

Stunned by houmous options. When not sobbing, I mean, or filled with a sickening outrage. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, Mr Tabari’s emotions, or professed emotions, incline towards the operatic. One might say baffling.

Sure, culinary innovation is great. But sometimes what looks like fusion is actually confusion – or worse, erasure.

I suspect an explanation of a sort may be looming.

The reason I felt so shocked in that supermarket aisle was because I was lamenting what had become of my culture. My houmous. To me, houmous isn’t just a recipe; it’s an identity rooted in the Levant, long before modern political borders were drawn.

Ah, the aforementioned contrivance. Houmous as a political identity. I think this is where the credulous are meant to feel guilty, or deferential, or something.

Once I realised how far houmous had been taken from its roots, I turned to a Lebanese-Palestinian friend of mine and asked for his mother’s recipe… Now I try to share my authentic houmous with anyone and everyone I meet – and they love it. In Brighton, where I live, café baristas, flower shop owners, food critics, and even fellow amateur theatre actors have all tried it. They all listen to me when I tell them about the history of houmous, what it means to me.

I would guess that at least some of those baristas, flower shop owners and amateur theatre actors are just being polite. Not everyone needs a sermon with their dip. Even in Brighton.

I have even made huge pots of it and brought it to pro-Palestine marches with me.

You see, that’s where we’re going. Because of course we are. He’s had photos done and everything.

Whenever I offer my houmous to people, they often ask me: “What’s your secret?” “Palestinian love,” I reply with a smile.

This is starting to sound like one of those fabulist anecdotes in which the speaker is supposedly always being asked, “But how do you cope with being so slim and pretty and loved by everyone?”

Houmous… tells stories across generations. When it’s commercialised without context or origin, something sacred is lost.

One more time. Dip.

It feels that houmous is colonised, butchered, brutalised. When heritage is repackaged and resold – especially while communities tied to it are struggling – it becomes an insult. It’s not just houmous; it’s history, belonging, and pride.

And finally, inevitably, the demand:

Stop the cultural appropriation.

Or you could just, you know, dial back the pretentious, self-involved whining. Three or four notches should do it.

Update, via the comments:

John D quotes this bold claim,

my culture – houmous

And adds, drily,

My culture – teabags.

Liz asks,

How do these clowns even make it through the day?

It does seem to involve a lot of needless drama. Such that one can be traumatised and outraged, reduced to sobbing, by the availability of a savoury dip. It all sounds exhausting. And I think we’re expected to admire this emotional self-indulgence and the cack-handed attempt to manipulate.

And ComputerLabRat speaks for many with this:

Ye gods these people are tiresome.

I suppose we might, in theory, feel sorry for Mr Tabari, whose time in leftist circles has led him to believe that his self-involved dramas are a basis for being taken seriously. As someone for whom houmous is an identity and a basis for attention and deference. Someone who invokes the alleged injury of “cultural appropriation” and consequently bursting into tears, as if this would be a good look. A basis for status and applause.

I mean, to imagine that this is the look to go for, in a national newspaper, where people can see, does suggest a level of loserdom.




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