People’s favorite foods and drinks are thanks to immigrants

By Gwyn Wright via SWNS

Immigration patterns are reflected in people’s favorite food and drink, according to a new study using Facebook data.

Researchers believe people’s favorite fare in a particular country reflects the range of countries from which immigrants have moved there.

The study, led by researchers in Germany, claims Facebook data can be used to measure the amount of cultural similarity between countries.

Researchers have long known that immigration may play a role in shaping cultural similarities between different nations.

Previous research has used surveys to compare cultures- but surveys are costly, difficult to apply to a large number of countries and not always reliable.

For the study, researchers used Facebook data on the top 50 food and drink preferences in a given country as measured by the Facebook Advertising Platform.

The researchers used their method to look at 16 countries, and found food and drink preferences tend to align with countries from which the most immigrants came.

Countries with fewer immigrants including Russia, Turkey, Indonesia and Japan stand out from the others.

Asymmetry between countries was also unearthed by the researchers – for example, the top 50 foods and drinks from Mexico are more popular in the US than the top 50 American foods are in Mexico.

This discrepancy reflects the fact the US has far more Mexican immigrants than Mexico does American immigrants.

The researchers say their work suggests immigrants shape the culture of the country to which they move.

Future research could repurpose the method used in the study to examine cultural links in areas other than food and drink.

Lead study author Carolina Vieira said: “This study suggests that immigrants indeed help shape the culture of their destination country.

"Future research could refine the new method outlined in this study or repurpose it to examine and compare other interests beyond food and drink.

"We analyzed data from Facebook users about their food and drink preferences to measure the cultural similarity between 16 countries.

“When compared with official migration data, we observe that countries with more immigrants show a higher cultural similarity between the origin and destination countries.”

The findings were published in the open access journal PLoS ONE.