The topic of national identity comes up frequently when we travel, particularly when it comes to displaying our home country’s flag. As it turns out, the debate surrounding flags is even more “consuming” than we first thought, especially when the flags happen to be made out of food.
In honor of this October’s upcoming Sydney International Food Festival, the event’s organizers have arranged to have the flag of each participating country re-created using that nation’s unique local food products and recipes. See the flag to the right (from Australia)? It’s been remade as a meat pie, a food favorite from Down Under. Greece on the other hand, was composed entirely of olives and feta cheese. And how about Japan? It’s been constructed as a circular piece of pinkish-red sushi on a bed of rice.
Even as the boundaries of our home countries are blurred by travel, foods remain one of the few reliable reminders of what it is that makes the places we visit so undeniably unique. Flags, in similar fashion, offer the visual equivalent of a unique food, declaring the unique characteristics of each country. Yet increasingly we find the foods of just about any cuisine available anywhere we happen to be in the world. As it turns out, “deliciousness” knows no political or geographical boundaries – food is one topic we all seem agree upon.
[Via Metafilter]