Cultural appropriation of food Who and what would define cultural authenticity? If a dominant culture is making money off of their version of some elements in a minority culture, would that be considered a rip-off? Cultural authenticity is only determined by the group that has the roots in it? For example, there are a lot of "fake" Japanese restaurants in other countries. They don't use Japanese chefs or chefs who studied in Japan. They often serve creative and strange sushi that Japanese people are not able to invent. It's not authentic sushi, but some culturally ignorant people that's what Japanese eat in Japan. And it tastes fine anyway. Another example, there are some fake Italian dishes in Japan. One of them is "Napolitan" spaghetti with ketchup sauce, onions, green pepper and ham. Obviously it was invented in Japan. It was invented because back in the day, Japan was so poor that tomatoes were very expensive. What do you think?