Almost all cultures have food traditions related to the ending of a year and the beginning of the next. Some are unique to single cultures and others are more cross-cultural. Although many New Year’s traditional foods are symbols of good luck, health and prosperity, they also provide many benefits important to maintaining or improving health.
To explore this diversity, there may be no better place than Hawaii, a melting pot of cuisines and food customs.
For example, fish in many forms plays a key role in New Year celebrations for multiple cultures. Sashimi (sliced raw fish) and kamaboko (fish cake) are considered essential for many outside of the Japanese community that originated the tradition. Contemporary Hawaiian culture offers lomi salmon, while the Polish share pickled herring. These traditional fish foods provide a number of important essential nutrients such as high-quality protein and the fatty acids needed for healthy eyes and optimal brain function.
Roasted suckling pig, a New Year’s Eve tradition in countries as far-flung as Austria and Cuba, is among traditional proteins rich in a number of essential B vitamins, in addition to protein.
Celebrations in the southern U.S. states include black-eyed peas as a symbol of good luck, most notably in the beans-and-rice Hoppin’ John dish. Lentils are of special significance in the New Year’s traditions of India and Italy. Their flat, round shape is considered similar to coins, so foods containing lentils are thought to contribute to prosperity and good fortune. Both legumes are good sources of protein, dietary fiber and a few essential B vitamins.
Soups are another New Year’s essential for some cultures. Of course, soups can include a great variety of foods, and that translates into health.
Chinese immigrants introduced jook (a rice porridge soup with a protein source such as turkey or dried bean curd). It’s hearty, and there are many variations on the ingredients, with common components being chicken, salted duck eggs and pickled vegetables.
Korean traditions include tteokguk, a rice soup made with beef broth and including thinly sliced rice cakes or dumplings, along with meat and vegetables. The traditional Japanese New Year soup, ozoni, commonly includes daikon, kamaboko and slices of mochi in a dashi or chicken broth.
The inclusion of a source of animal protein in these soups helps the body absorb some of the important plant-based minerals, such as iron.
The Japanese also have a tradition of creating stacked sweet mochi cakes, called kagami. A round cake is topped with a smaller cake and then with an orange or tangerine, with the stack symbolizing generations. Traditionalists pound their own mochi rice with one person pounding while another turns it. The timing is critical to avoid pounding fingers into the rice!
Another Japanese tradition is to consume long buckwheat noodles, toshikoshi soba, at midnight on New Year’s Eve. But don’t cut them! They must be slurped at their full length to properly symbolize long life. Of course, grains provide both energy and a set of micronutrients needed for health.
Greens and grapes are other traditions: Green leafy vegetables symbolize money and grapes symbolize coins. Eating 12 grapes at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve is said to bring prosperity for those of Portuguese, Mexican and Filipino ancestry. Similarly, pomegranates have special reverence in many Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries as a symbol of prosperity and ambition.
These fruits and vegetables are known to provide phytochemicals with antioxidant benefits, along with vitamin C, folate and beta carotene (pro-vitamin A), all essential for health.
As for purely Hawaiian traditions, according to Sam ‘Ohu Gon III, senior scientist and cultural adviser for The Nature Conservancy of Hawaii, “During the annual makahiki procession around the island, the bearer of the akua loa, the tall wooden god-figure of Lono with its hanging white kapa, stopped at each ahupuaa boundary for offerings from that ahapuaa, and at each stop, the bearer was fed kulolo (a taro and coconut treat), kalua pig and given a drink of awa.
“During the makahiki, a season of peace, games and celebration of the fertility of the land, feasts were a natural part of the season,” Gon added. Clearly, times have changed, but many in Hawaii continue to enjoy these traditional foods in their celebrations of the New Year.
In New Year’s foods throughout cultures, the recurrent theme of prosperity is represented by a variety of foods from various food groups. In general, New Year’s foods associated with luck and long life are savory — some lean, others not. Vegetables and proteins are strongly represented, with most sweets coming from fruits.
The take-home message may be that eating for health is all about incorporating a wide variety of foods daily throughout the year to improve the odds of consuming all of the essential nutrients and health-promoting food components.
Although the link to healthfulness may not be obvious when in the midst of a holiday feast, it is clear that the traditions associated with a thriving new year also have many ties to a thriving nutritional lifestyle.
Alan Titchenal, Ph.D., C.N.S., and Joannie Dobbs, Ph.D., C.N.S., are nutritionists in the Department of Human Nutrition, Food and Animal Sciences, College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Dobbs also works with University Health Services.
