Family traditions are a wonderful thing. They help you stay in touch with your relatives, and they give you something fun to look forward to throughout the year. While some family members might only get together once a year for the winter holidays, others see each other far more often—every week. Doubtless, the best way to bring everyone together is through good food!

However, no matter how much you love each other, some small arguments are inevitable. Some of them might even be about the food you all eat together. When you’re making a meal for your nearest and dearest, you can come under quite a lot of stress. You want to make everyone happy. And it can sting if you realize that someone isn’t enjoying themselves.

Redditor u/Such-Ad5600, who lives in Canada and is proud of his Italian heritage, went viral on the AITA subreddit after sharing a spot of family drama at the dinner table. He shared how he and his family take turns to cook dinner for each other every Sunday. However, things got a bit out of hand when his sister’s boyfriend wanted to put some hot sauce on the authentic Italian food. Scroll down to read the full story and to see how the internet reacted to it.

We’ve reached out to u/Such-Ad5600 via Reddit, and we’ll update the article once we hear back from him.

Bored Panda also got in touch with celebrated pie artist Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin, the founder of Pies Are Awesome and a published author, to hear her thoughts on the reasons why food is so central to family traditions, as well as how to deal with criticism in the kitchen in a healthy, mature way. Read on for our interview with her.

When it comes to food, everyone has slightly different tastes

Image credits: Sticker Mule (not the actual photo)

A man who made authentic Italian dishes for his family got into an argument with his sister’s boyfriend, who wanted to add hot sauce to spice things up

Image credits: Masson-Simon (not the actual photo)

The man later revealed what food he had made

Credits: Such-Ad5600

Pie artist Jessica was kind enough to answer Bored Panda’s questions about the role that food plays in family traditions, as well as how we should all react if someone doesn’t enjoy our food as much as we would like them to.

“As long as there have been humans, there have been shared meal times. Everyone has to eat. Whether your job was hunting the animals, foraging or tending crops, or preparing the food for consumption, everyone contributed to the family/social group’s sustenance. And logistically, given early limitations of food storage, it made sense for everyone in the group to eat together at the same time. This made mealtimes the natural candidate for sharing stories, information, teaching, planning, etc. As a result, the food we share during these times of cultural exchange becomes inextricably entwined with that culture,” she explained that cooking and eating united people no matter what.

“We associate our feelings and memories of those exchanges with the flavors, aromas, colors, textures, and even sounds of the particular foods and recipes of our cultural group. This was true in ‘caveman times,’ and it’s true today. That sense of belonging we feel with our ‘tribe’ is anchored by the visceral sensory input of our shared recipes. Nowhere else is this more in evidence than in the instant wave of nostalgia that hits us when we are reunited with a special dish popular at our cherished family celebrations.” All of us have special dishes like this and even just thinking about what your parents or grandparents used to make when you were a kid is bound to bring a smile to your face.

The reality is that it hurts if someone doesn’t enjoy our food. It’s something that many of us instinctively feel if we spot a frown or someone leaving half the dish uneaten. Pie artist Jessica told us that something we all have to be aware of is that everyone’s palate is different, just like their everyone’s cultural experience with food.

“It can take time and exposure to certain flavor combinations to fully appreciate them… So while it may be frustrating to encounter criticism or resistance to one’s ‘speciality’ in the kitchen, try not to take it personally!”

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According to Jessica, if the criticism is coming from someone who’s a casual acquaintance who you’re unlikely to see ever again, you could let comments about your food being ‘bland’ slide. However, if it’s a family member or a close friend, you might find it worth the effort to make the case why your dish works as is, without any major changes.

“Something I have personally witnessed, coming from a family with many vegetarians without a big love of spice, is that people used to ‘big flavors’ have a harder time processing the subtle flavors in simply prepared ingredients,” Jessica opened up to Bored Panda.

“They may need to go on a bit of a sugar/salt/spice detox for a while before they can truly appreciate how delicious the simple roasted vegetable with just a little high-quality oil is. But it’s there! And with patience, they can find it and learn to appreciate it. But only a close friend is going to be willing to take the time to come on that journey with you…”

Jessica said that you should consider yourself blessed if you’ve got more than one or two friends in your life who would be willing to skip eating salt and sugar for a week so they can “re-taste your wok-fried tofu and pea shoots with an unadulterated palate.”

The specific family traditions themselves aren’t as important as the fact that you’re all regularly getting together, keeping in touch, and strengthening the bonds with one another. Traditions help give families a sense of who they are.

Your tradition might not be Sunday dinner—it might be Saturday brunch. Or getting together to watch a [insert name of favorite sport] game every month at the local pub. Or going on a fortnightly hike in the hills. Or something entirely different and incredibly goofy. There are so many ways to spend quality time with your loved ones. And the only limit is your imagination.

However, it would be naive to assume that every single moment that you spend with your relatives is going to be idyllic. Far from it! It’s natural to butt heads with the people we’re around constantly. Everyone has slightly different boundaries. By spending time with others, someone will naturally end up stepping over some of them. The discussions and arguments that follow are a way to clarify and (re)establish those boundaries.

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So, from the story that was shared on the AITA subreddit, we can make the assumption that u/Such-Ad5600 values family, effort, and genuine authenticity when it comes to food. On the flip side, his sister’s boyfriend probably values personal freedom, honesty, and eating food in the way that he enjoys the most rather than keeping up appearances.

Some internet users thought that the author of the post might have overreacted and was in the wrong

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The redditors who read the story had a range of different opinions. Some thought that pretty much everyone was in the wrong here, and criticized the OP for ‘policing’ how others ate food, as well as the boyfriend for escalating the conflict.

Others, however, thought that the author of the post might have been acting a bit too pretentious and shouldn’t have been offended that his style of cooking wasn’t to everyone’s liking. Some redditors even started discussing the core of Italian hospitality, and how it might not be just about the food, but also about “the comfort of your guests.” Others still thought that there was no room for ‘gatekeeping’ food.

We’ve written before on Bored Panda about how gatekeeping used to be a way for human beings to survive in the past. We used to live in tribes and gatekeeping, as well as suspicion of outsiders, was what helped prevent potential threats to the collective. Things are different now in modern times, however, many of us still have that instinct.

However, being kind to strangers has a lot of positive effects. Not only does it make us feel good in the moment (our brains are also hard-wired for being social and kind, not just wary of potential threats), it helps us lead a happier life. Seeing others happy makes us happy, too. And being happy about food is one of the best things ever.

Meanwhile, other readers thought that pretty much everyone was to blame for the escalation and the drama

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Some people were actually on the chef’s side. Here’s what they had to say

Meanwhile, some internet users accused the author of the post of racism, here’s how he responded to them

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