Tofu in Comic Strips: Butt of Jokes, Tool of Satire, Agent of Change?

When I told award-winning author Michael Ruhlman that I was
writing a book about tofu, he asked why? “I hate tofu,” he said. That was back
in 2010. If you read Michael’s blog, you know that I recently changed his mind.
Michael is by far not the average bear but he decided to give tofu a try. He made
it, cooked it, and liked it.  

Maybe because I’ve been on the tofu trail for the past few
years but it seems like more Americans are opening up to the possibilities of
having tofu in their diets. I base that not just on food trend stats but cross-reference
the numbers with a powerful source: comic strips.

I regularly read them, for social commentary and giggles. The
daily comics section is one of the reasons why we hold on to our local so-so
newspaper subscription and are ambivalent about getting the New York Times. Well, actually, the comics
and horoscopes are primarily why we keep subscribing.

Back to the comics. Most of the tofu-related comic strips
that I’ve seen have sarcastic, negative takes on tofu, like the one at the top of
this post. Hardy har har. We’ve heard that one before, annoying tofu-loving vegetarians at restaurants. So yesterday, so 2008.

This past month, something changed. Three (3!) syndicated comic
strips have had something involving tofu. I kid you not. In fact, two tofu-related
comic strips appeared on the same Sunday.

The first one blew my mind away because the artist, Dan Piraro
selected four iconic ethnic foods and included tofu, with a nod to Hunan. While
Piraro is a vegan, it’s not like he’s making a statement about going meatless.
There was a hot dog in this Bizarro cartoon:

It was as if Piraro and fellow cartoonist Wiley Miller were
having a tofu duel that Sunday. Wiley took a culinary jab at tofu in this Non Sequitir
strip:

His message was something like, “Beware, tofu can be made to
look delicious and inviting but at the end of the line, it’s still tofu, a plot
by wicked vegans.” Tofu, you’ve come a long way, baby. You can be as tantalizing
as candy to kids!

I clipped those two cartoons and looked up where else tofu
had been comically portrayed. Since it’s an election year, tofu was attached to
the Obama White House:

“Let them eat tofu” is satirically pitched as being similar to Marie
Antoinette’s supposed “Qu'ils mangent de la brioche." The message is that First Lady Michelle Obama is oblivious
to American reality and is forcing her food whim on the public. (And yes, Marie
may have said let them eat buttery leavened bread, not cake.)

I googled “Let them eat tofu” and
found out that it’s a phrase used to frame liberals as being out of touch and
wanting to create policy based on their points of view. I’m sure there are conservatives
who eat tofu (Vietnamese-Americans, due to the war experience, tend to vote
Republican) and policy is often made based on personal beliefs. Tofu and
brioche as equals? I think not. They are different animals and are special in
their own right.

Who would have thunk that tofu would
be used for political satire? I realized that I had a tough row to hoe in
writing a book about tofu’s delicious potential, but I didn’t think that political
acrimony would stand in my way.

Yesterday’s newspaper showered a
little love on tofu via this Rhymes
with Orange comic strip by Hillary Price:

Her message was that if you’re
cutting back on meat eating, work tofu into your diet. You don’t have to quit
meat to eat tofu. Just try some. Go rogue and step off the ‘meaten’ path for a spell.

Which brings me back to Ruhlman. What
he wrote about in his Asian Tofu post was the idea of eating tofu with a little meat, how making a traditional Asian
dish that combined tofu with meat was a great way to get satisfying flavor with
less animal protein.  

For so long in the West, tofu has
been misunderstood as a hippie, vegetarian, vegan, bland, yucky, mystery food loaded with notions of deprivation. It was relegated to the margins, pegged as the butt of jokes, used as a tool of
satire.

But with a desire for more healthy and sustainable eating, perhaps tofu can also be an agent of change? Unless you’re allergic
to soy, there’s probably a little room for tofu in your diet. It’s mostly a
matter of figuring out what you like to do with it. 

If you come across tofu-related comic
strips, send them my way. Here are a few to peruse: Mother
Goose and Grim | Opus | Get Fuzzy

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