So of course there are exceptions but generally you don’t just sit down to a bowl of plain white rice as an entire meal outside of specific circumstances. If it isn’t integrated to a dish such as curry rice or various porridges, it may be served under foods like egg, vegetables, sauces, meats etc. which impart flavor to the rice. You generally are served or take your serving(s) of rice and eat them with another dish. The texture and flavor of rice often compliments or balances out other dishes with strong flavor. Foods with particularly strong flavors or high levels of spice can be mellowed by being combined with other foods. This is seen in many cultures which have spicy or flavorful foods around the world.
It is also the case, as in many other cultures and especially in cuisine traditions from before mass agriculture and commercial livestock etc. that more flavorful foods or meats were often harder to get and more expensive or precious.
So it is very common in cuisine of the world to see certain flavorful ingredients “filled out” with more abundant and often cheaper ingredients.
Processed grains like rices, breads, noodles etc. are commonly used this way to “absorb” flavor from other ingredients. Broths and stews are a classic food used to “stretch” ingredients and create dishes that have more flavor than might otherwise be practical for the ingredients in hand to produce the required servings.
While it isn’t unheard of or anything- it’s a bit like someone sitting down and eating a plate of plain spaghetti or fettuccini noodles, generally speaking when such noodles are served they are part of a dish or intended to be eaten with sauces or other foods as part of a meal. We can say the same of crackers- people do eat crackers by themselves sometimes for various reasons and crackers are often served separately, but usually they are eaten along with other foods.
Now, I’m not going to say it’s right to generalize an entire groups tastes like saying “this group likes bland food” etc- but I am going to say that generally when someone says that a culture has a tendency for certain types of food they are referring to the cuisine on the whole.
For example, the United States tends to have on the whole very sweet cuisine and most people born into the USA culture tend to have a taste for sweeter foods than much of the rest of the globe.
Rice and noodles are two common staples in many types of asian cuisine but they hardly reflect the bulk of cuisine from any particular asian culture let alone an entire general grouping. There is also a matter when we speak of the foods or traditional foods of a culture, of regions and demographics.
Certain foods are generally more common with wealthier people or traditionally so, and many times less wealthy people who often make up the majority of a group, may have very different eating habits.
If we examine traditional foods and compare them, we often have to distinguish when comparing foods from different demographics. Generally speaking if you compare what royalty or the equivalent tended to eat in a period for one culture to what was more common “peasant food” or “street food” etc- it isn’t inherently a fair comparison, but we have to remember that all sorts of things impact this. In one place and time for example, it may have been illegal or unrealistic for peasants to have venison. Such animals may have belonged to a ruler or land owner by default. In another place and time, hunting may have been the way of things for peasants and thusly venison may have been a peasant meal.
A fun example is that in the United States, lobster was so common on the east coast in places that is was considered a very low class food. It was served to prisoners and eaten by those who couldn’t afford “better food.” Of course in the modern day lobster is generally considered a higher end food item and usually commands a premium price. If US prisons began serving lobster at every meal there would likely be some outrage. Often times how hard to get or the general cost of a food dictate its status and thusly who in a society is more likely to eat it. Pizza has a story like this. The Tomato is not an “old world” vegetable, it was brought to Europe after expositions started to return from the Americas. It was actually viewed in general with suspicion and linked to witches and evil or seen as a poison etc. So tomatoes weren’t super popular for a bit there.
Anyhow they became part of lower income cuisine and street food in parts of Italy. I’ll leave out details and chop this down but basically they caught on a bit and then after the tomato was brought to Italy from the Americas and Italians started making dishes with tomatoes, Italians started to immigrate to the Americas and bring their tomato dishes with them. Tomatoes were in the new world, over time things like dairy and meat were plentiful and cheap as well. So with new ingredients and with some ingredients they were used to being cheap being hard to get or expensive, and some ingredients that they were used to being hard to get and expenses being plentiful and cheap… Italian American cuisine became its own thing. Italian Americans and loved ones back home would share some stuff across the ocean and Italian American cuisine would then find its way back to Italy.
Then the post war period had American and foreign troops stationed in Italy returning with hankerings and approximations of the foods they’d had in Italy which helped fuel a U.S. boom in such foods and US influence and popularity post war would fuel some places in Europe to adopt Americanized versions of their own native cuisines! It’s this big old cyclical thing. So anyway- we do have to be a bit mindful of various extenuating factors and such when we examine and compare cuisines and food traditions etc.
It is also the case, as in many other cultures and especially in cuisine traditions from before mass agriculture and commercial livestock etc. that more flavorful foods or meats were often harder to get and more expensive or precious.
Processed grains like rices, breads, noodles etc. are commonly used this way to “absorb” flavor from other ingredients. Broths and stews are a classic food used to “stretch” ingredients and create dishes that have more flavor than might otherwise be practical for the ingredients in hand to produce the required servings.
While it isn’t unheard of or anything- it’s a bit like someone sitting down and eating a plate of plain spaghetti or fettuccini noodles, generally speaking when such noodles are served they are part of a dish or intended to be eaten with sauces or other foods as part of a meal. We can say the same of crackers- people do eat crackers by themselves sometimes for various reasons and crackers are often served separately, but usually they are eaten along with other foods.
For example, the United States tends to have on the whole very sweet cuisine and most people born into the USA culture tend to have a taste for sweeter foods than much of the rest of the globe.
Rice and noodles are two common staples in many types of asian cuisine but they hardly reflect the bulk of cuisine from any particular asian culture let alone an entire general grouping. There is also a matter when we speak of the foods or traditional foods of a culture, of regions and demographics.
If we examine traditional foods and compare them, we often have to distinguish when comparing foods from different demographics. Generally speaking if you compare what royalty or the equivalent tended to eat in a period for one culture to what was more common “peasant food” or “street food” etc- it isn’t inherently a fair comparison, but we have to remember that all sorts of things impact this. In one place and time for example, it may have been illegal or unrealistic for peasants to have venison. Such animals may have belonged to a ruler or land owner by default. In another place and time, hunting may have been the way of things for peasants and thusly venison may have been a peasant meal.