Street food

Street food is ready-to-eat food or drink sold in a street or other public place, such as a market or fair, by a hawker or vendor, often from a portable stall.^[1] While some street foods are regional, many are not, having spread beyond their region of origin. Most street foods are also classed as both finger food and fast food, and are cheaper on average than restaurant meals. According to a 2007 study from the Food and Agriculture Organization, 2.5 billion people eat street food every day.^[2]

Today, people may purchase street food for a number of reasons including "ethnic taste, nostalgia, and the opportunity to eat quickly obtained, reaonably priced and flavorful food in a sociable setting."^[3] Historically, in places such as ancient Rome, street food was purchased because urban poor did not have kitchens in their homes.

History

Small fried fish were a street food in ancient Greece,^[4] although Theophrastus held the custom of street food in low regard.^[5]Evidence of a large number of street food vendors were discovered during the excavation of Pompeii.^[6] Street food was widely utilized by poor urban residents of ancient Rome whose tenement homes did not have ovens or hearths,^[7] with chickpea soup being one of the common meals,^[8] along with bread and grain paste.^[9] In ancient China, where street foods generally catered to the poor, wealthy residents would send servants to buy street foods and bring meals back for their masters to eat in their homes.^[7]

A traveling Florentine reported in the late 1300s that in Cairo, people carried picnic cloths made of raw hide to spread on the streets and eat their meals of lamb kebabs, rice and fritters that they had purchased from street vendors.^[10] In Renaissance Turkey, many crossroads saw vendors selling "fragrant bites of hot meat", including chicken and lamb that had been spit roasted.^[11]

Aztec marketplaces had vendors that sold beverages such as atolli ("a gruel made from maize dough"), almost 50 types of tamales (with ingredients that ranged from the meat of turkey, rabbit, gopher, frog, and fish to fruits, eggs, and maize flowers),^[12] as well as insects and stews.^[13] After Spanish colonization of Peru and importation of European food stocks like wheat, sugarcane and livestock, most commoners continued primarily to eat their traditional diets, but did add grilled beef hearts sold by street vendors.^[14]Some of Lima's 19th century street vendors such as "Erasmo, the 'negro' sango vendor" and Na Aguedita are still remembered today.^[15]

During the American Colonial period, street vendors sold "pepper pot soup" (tripe) "oysters, roasted corn ears, fruit and sweets," with oysters being a low-priced commodity until the 1910s when overfishing caused prices to rise.^[16] As of 1707, after previous restrictions that had limited their operating hours, street food vendors had been banned in New York City.^[17] Many women of African descent made their living selling street foods in America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; with products ranging from fruit, cakes and nuts in Savannah, to coffee, biscuits, pralines and other sweets in New Orleans.^[18] In the 1800s street food vendors in Transylvania sold gingerbread-nuts, cream mixed with corn, and bacon and other meat fried on tops of ceramic vessels with hot coals inside.^[19]

French fries probably originated as a street food consisting of fried strips of potato in Paris in the 1840s.^[20] Cracker Jack started as one of many street food exhibits at the Columbian Exposition.^[21] Street foods in Victorian London included tripe, pea soup, pea pods in butter, whelk, prawns and jellied eels.^[22]

Originally brought to Japan by Chinese immigrants about a hundred years ago, ramen began as a street food for laborers and students, but soon became a "national dish" and even acquired regional variations.^[23] The street food culture of South East Asia today was heavily influenced by coolie workers imported from China during the late 1800s.^[24] In Thailand, although street food did not become popular among native Thai people until the early 1960s when the urban population began to grow rapidly,^[25] by the 1970s it had "displaced home-cooking."^[26]

A food stall in Seoul, South Korea. Steamed corn, grilled chestnuts and tteok (white rice cake), dried persimmons, cuttlefish, squid, octopus and filefish.

Street food around the world

Street food vending is found around the world, but has variations within both regions and cultures.^[27] For example, Dorling Kindersley describes the street food of Viet Nam as being "fresh and lighter than many of the cuisines in the area" and "draw[ing] heavily on herbs, chile peppers and lime", while street food of Thailand is "fiery" and "pungent with shrimp paste ... and fish sauce" with New York City's signature street food being the hot dog, although the offerings in New York also range from "spicy Middle Eastern falafel or Jamaican jerk chicken to Belgian waffles"^[28] In Hawaii, the local street food tradition of "Plate Lunch" (rice, macaroni salad and a portion of meat) was inspired by the bento of the Japanese who had been brought to Hawaii as plantation workers.^[29]

Cultural and economic aspects

Differences in culture, social stratification and history have resulted in different patterns how family street vendor enterprises are traditionally created and run in different areas of the world.^[30] For example, few women are street vendors in Bangladesh, but women predominate in the trade in Nigeria and Thailand.^[31] Doreen Fernandez says that Filipino cultural attitudes towards meals is one "cultural factor operating in the street food phenomenon" in the Philippines because eating "food out in the open, in the market or street or field" is "not at odds with the meal indoors or at home" where "there is no special room for dining".^[19]

Walking on the street while eating is considered rude in some cultures,^[32] such as Japan.^[33] In India, Henrike Donner wrote about a "marked distinction between food that could be eaten outside, especially by women," and the food prepared and eaten at home; with some non-Indian food being too "strange" or tied too closely to non-vegetarian preparation methods to be made at home.^[34]

In Tanzania's Dar es Salaam region, street food vendors produce economic benefits beyond their families by purchasing local fresh foods which has led to a proliferation of urban gardens and small scale farms.^[35] In the United States, street food vendors are credited with supporting New York City's rapid growth by supplying meals for the city's merchants and workers.^[36] Proprietors of street food in the United States have had a goal of upward mobility, moving from selling on the street to their own shops.^[3] However, in Mexico, an increase in street vendors has been seen as a sign of deteriorating economic conditions in which food vending is the only employment opportunity that unskilled labor who have migrated from rural areas to urban areas are able to find.^[13]

In 2002, Coca Cola reported that China, India and Nigeria were some of its fastest growing markets; markets where the company's expansion efforts included training and equipping mobile street vendors to sell its products.^[35]

Health and safety

Despite concerns about contamination at street food vendors, the incidence of such is low with multiple studies showing rates comparable to restaurants.^[37]

As early as the 14th century, government officials oversaw street food vendor activities.^[10]

With the increasing pace of globalization and tourism, the safety of street food has become one of the major concerns of public health, and a focus for governments and scientists to raise public awarenesses.^{[38][39][40][41]} In the United Kingdom, the FSA provides comprehensive guidances of food safety for the vendors, traders and retailers of the street food sector.^[42] Other effective ways of enhancing the safety of street foods are through mystery shopping programs, through training and rewarding programs to vendors, through regulatory governing and membership management programs, or through technical testing programs.^{[43][44][45][46][47]} In 2002 a sampling of 511 street foods in Ghana by the World Health Organization showed that most had microbial counts within the accepted limits,^[48] and a different sampling of 15 street foods in Calcutta showed that they were "nutritionally well balanced", providing roughly 200Kcal of energy per rupee of cost.^[49]

In the late 1990s the United Nations and other organizations began to recognize that street vendors had been an underutilized method of delivering fortified foods to populations and in 2007, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization recommended considering methods of adding nutrients and supplements to street foods that are commonly consumed by the particular culture.^[37]