Food and nutrition
Holly High and Penny van Esterick
As submitted to Routledge, March 14th, 2025.
Abstract
This chapter discusses core concepts, characteristics and constraints regarding Lao food and nutrition, focusing primarily on food in Lao PDR in all its ethnic diversity, the closely related Thai-Lao food of northeast Thailand and food among the Lao diaspora since 1975. It illustrates food’s role in forming and maintaining relationships, such as infant nutrition, families and households, commensality and elder care, and the special role food plays in ritual, religion and health. We describe typical sources of food, preparation techniques and meals, and the evolution of these, often very localised, foods into a cuisine that is now widely known and respected domestically and internationally. We conclude with comments about the shocks to food systems in Laos.
Calling home through the rice steamer
In August 2021, prominent traditional Lao folk singer, Mi Saiphusam, released a song entitled ‘Calling my child to return to Laos’ (Saiphusam 2021). At the time of writing this chapter, the video had over a million views. The song was inspired by a COVID-19 related crisis: thousands of Lao labourers, suddenly unemployed, were flocking home to Laos. Border points and quarantine centres were quickly overrun, and Laos soon saw its most serious outbreak of the disease up to that point. Mi Saiphusam narrated a Lao mother’s yearning for a migrant daughter’s return. The daughter, hard-working and honest, had only wanted to send money home to her parents. Now unemployed and caught up in the flood of returning labourers, she could not be contacted by phone. So, in the song, the mother sends a heartfelt message to her through a rice steamer (apparently a widespread method of communication before the advent of telephones). Through the rice steamer, Mi Saiphusam tells her daughter: ‘the wind blows gently in the green banana leaves at dusk … our village is better than it was: lay a trap and catch a fish, tend the fields and eat rice.’ Imagining the day the daughter finally arrives home, she sings:
‘We will tie your wrist in ritual, call your souls, my dearest. Come eat rice noodles with uncles and aunts, come eat frog curry, red ant egg ceviche, and dipping sauce made of pungent beetles. I have made it for you, I wait for my child’ (Saiphusam 2021).
The accompanying video overlays footage of the singer—a kind-faced, matronly woman—against bucolic scenes of rural Laos. These are spliced with contrasting images from Bangkok and the crowded border points.
Food—particularly specialities tied to a locality and unlikely to be available in a city or shop—appear here as the expression of a mother’s love, of home and of Laos. Among the images Mi Saiphusam uses to entice the daughter home are praise of the government (the song is quite propagandistic) and images of family, but images of food are by far the most detailed, dwelt upon and striking. In this example, it is food that makes Laos so unique and compelling, and that makes it home. This chapter on Lao food and nutrition, using ‘Lao’ in the broadest sense, encompassing the ethnically diverse Lao PDR and the international diaspora of these ethnicities.
First foods, staple foods, shared foods
Lao PDR has a strong culture of breastfeeding infants. Breastfeeding is a common sight in public places such as markets, although it is more circumscribed in other public venues, such as government offices. Some ethnicities discard the colostrum, believing it to be harmful to the baby. In these cases, it is common for an infant’s first feedings to instead be from another lactating woman who nurses the child until the birth mother’s milk comes in. Typically, such a woman lives close by, or even in the same house as, the infant. By feeding another’s child as well as her own, she underscores how children are raised through the creation and deepening of relationships not only with parents, but with wider groups such as households, neighbourhoods and villages. This practice is highly dependent on ethnicity, and some ethnicities view breastfeeding from multiple women as a danger to the soul-stuff of the infant (Collomb 2011). For many infants, breastmilk is not the first substance they taste. Directly after birth, rites often involve offering the newborn tiny quantities of the foodstuffs shared by other people attending the birth, including a drop of rice alcohol. Even infants who breastfeed are typically offered secondary foods, such a pre-chewed rice, relatively early, usually in extremely small portions, perhaps as a symbolic gesture, including the child in wider circles of commensality (High 2014). This is important, because the sharing of foodstuffs is often the very substance of one’s most significant relationships, most especially household and kinship relations. An infant’s first feeding on rice is a cherished milestone and arguably an important step in the infant acquiring personhood.
Rice is a particularly symbolic food for marking such a milestone. Laos has the highest per capita production and consumption of sticky rice, or glutinous rice, in the world (Schiller et al. 2006, v). Ideally suited to survive droughts, floods and poor soils, around 85 percent of over 3,000 varieties in the country are glutinous (see Chapter 14, ‘Livelihoods’). Much rice in Laos is grown by smallholders who cooperate in household groups to produce rice for consumption and (if possible) for sale. There are two main forms of rice cultivation used by householders in Laos: wet rice, where fields are flooded for part of the growing season, and upland or dry rice. Notably, these forms of cultivation often coexist; wet rice is not limited to the lowland valleys and upland rice is not limited to the highlands. Wet rice involves ploughing and harrowing flooded and bunded fields. Seed is usually sprouted in a nursery field before being transplanted. Upland rice involves clearing a piece of land that has lain fallow for at least a few years allowing the forest and fertility of the soil to regenerate (traditionally, among some ethnic groups that relied heavily on upland crops, fallows were left for at least 25 years). Cleared vegetation is left to dry, then burnt, with rice planted directly in the ash using dibble planting. Rice is rarely grown as a monocrop in upland fields, but rather interspersed with other important foods such as maize, pumpkin, taro, cassava, chillies and sesame. Lowland fields likewise are typically biodiverse, offering foods other than the main crop, such as frogs, crickets, rats, crabs and fingerling fish. In both wet and upland fields, mature rice is harvested, dried, threshed and stored. Most rural houses have a granary, with architectural styles varying between ethnicities. Rice is stored in the husk until needed for consumption. Many remote households still mill rice in a mortar, but those who can access a mechanical mill usually prefer the convenience. Prior to milling, the grain must be dried again, often spread on a tarpaulin in the sunlight.
Glutinous rice absorbs very little water during cooking, compared to non-glutinous varieties, and is therefore soaked and steamed rather than boiled. It is usually women who cook (sometimes men take over during ritual events, such as sacrifices). Early mornings typically see a woman—archetypally, a mother—as the first household member to rise as she steams the rice which has been soaking overnight. The uneaten rice from the previous day is mixed in with the new grains. Once cooked, rice is turned to release the steam and then placed in woven bamboo containers (tipkhao). In rural villages, Lao school children typically set off for school with a book bag on one shoulder and a tipkhao close behind it.
The Lao language associates the word ‘rice’ with the very idea of food. A common conversation, equivalent to ‘how are you?’ in English, is to ask, ‘Have you eaten rice yet?’ and then, ‘What did you eat with the rice?’ It is unusual to eat alone and a common saying holds that food eaten alone does not taste good. When sitting down to a meal, common courtesy involves inviting one and all to join the meal: ‘Come and eat’ is a common refrain heard in rural Laos. Collectively produced, rice is collectively consumed, and Lao cuisine is particularly well adapted to meals that are shared.
The Lao concept of commensality is perhaps best captured by the word liang (cf. Van Esterik 1996). This word has a wide semantic range. It is the most important word for expressing ideas of nurture, feeding and raising, adopting or fostering a child (for instance, a mother liangs her child) and animal husbandry, but it can also be used to describe throwing a party, hosting guests and sacrifice. It can also be used to indicate patron-client relationships, or the gifts offered to a powerful spirit. A common theme that runs through all these meanings is a transfer of foods in a dyad (host feeds guest, propitiant feeds spirit, parent feeds child, smallholder feeds domestic animal). Food is shared in these dyads, but this is not typically a sharing between equals.
Anthropologists have argued that kinship is usually a metaphor based in the sharing of some kind of common substance: depending on the culture, this substance may be thought of as blood, DNA, a shared totemic animal, or a common ancestor. When relationships are thought of through the idea of liang, the shared common substance is often food. A Lao household may include non-relatives as well as those who are related by blood or marriage; it is just as likely to exclude relatives as well. What makes the household a social unit is the regular sharing of meals. Through sharing food regularly, household members deepen their interrelatedness. Very often in Laos one’s most important kin are those one shares meals with.
The Lao word for family (khopkhua) is a compound word that includes the word for ‘hearth.’ Inside a Lao kitchen one is likely to find at least one hearth. In the countryside, these may burn wood or charcoal. Typically, the hearth is built on an area of earth and ash that sits above the wood or bamboo floorboards. Above it may be a woven tray holding items for smoking—such as dried fish, dried chillies and maize. The kitchen will also have a good supply of MSG, some coarse salt and sometimes a little sugar, fresh herbs and produce from the garden. Oil can be difficult to come by, depending on the locality. Some villagers render their own from pig fat, but this is a luxury not always on hand. Commercial vegetable oils are an increasingly popular but expensive option for those who can access them. Signs of traditional means of food preservation such as fermenting, salting, sun drying and steaming would be visible in a Lao kitchen, including bamboo shaped into various implements (skewers, trays, baskets). Other handicrafts likely to be visible in a Lao kitchen are black-smithed implements, such as bowls, spoons and knives. In upland areas impacted by US bombardment, many of these are made from unexploded ordnance (UXO) scrap. In these areas, cooking implements such as cauldrons and fermenting jars can have very high value and may be gifted at weddings, illnesses or deaths.
A Lao meal is presented not sequentially but all at same: the dishes accompanying the rice are presented on a circular dish or woven basket tray called a phakhao. Placed at the centre of a circle of diners, there are seldom individual plates, cutlery or even soup bowls. Soups, a staple of Lao meals, can be stretched to feed extra people in times of shortage or unexpected guests. People take what they want from the phakhao usually using their hands. Meals are easily personalised with the use of condiments. In contrast to Thai food, chillies often appear on their own, as an extra option for those who like spicy food, or as part of a dipping sauce or chaeo. Even in an everyday, domestic meal, the highest-ranking people usually eat first, with women and children sometimes waiting until more senior people are done, and then eating what has been left on the phakhao.
Feeding is an important means of showing care for elders in their old age. The biography of Thongvin Phomvihan, who was a housewife in the 1950s, describes creating one phakhao for her father-in-law who liked Vietnamese food, and a separate one for her mother-in-law, and another for all the other household members, with a total of nine phakhao produced each day. She explains that she carried out this burdensome task because ‘she did not want her husband’s relatives to think she was incapable or look down on her as a nationalist or a rural person’ (Duangxai 1992, 69–70). Care for elders extends beyond death. The recently departed may be described as ‘hungry.’ Lao Buddhists may save for years in preparation for a ‘distribution’ of rice where their deceased parents are at last fed. This involves a ritual feeding of Buddhist monks, as well as a lavish meal for guests. Uplanders, too, feed ancestors: buffalo sacrifice, for instance, is often intended as a meal for a deceased relative thought to be ‘hungry’ and is also the occasion of a feast for family, friends and neighbours. At these events, spirits (of houses, villages, and other places) are also offered some of the meal. The spirits can be liang (fed, hosted, nurtured, cared for) and this is an important aspect of animistic ritual activity in Laos. Feeding is also an important part of Theravada Buddhist ritual (Van Esterik 1986). In Theravada communities, Buddhist ceremony (with attendant meals and feeding of the monks) marks out the cycle of days, seasons and years, as well as certain special occasions in a life cycle (especially death and ordinations).
Other moments of a life are marked by non-Buddhist ceremony, most notably those related to marriage, the arrival of new children, travel and moving house. Integral to many of these rituals is a practice known as baci, sukhuan and phuk khaen where the soul-stuff or khuan is returned to and/or secured to individuals. Loss of souls causes illness, misfortune or death. The baci refers to the conical tree structure made on particularly important occasions, constructed of banana leaves and flowers, decorated with the lengths of white string used later in the ceremony. The baci structure may feature auspicious rice, a pig’s head, fruit, alcohol, eggs, bananas and other delicacies used to attract the spirits (see Chapter 9, ‘Religious Culture’). Sukhuan refers to the part of the ritual where the souls are ‘called’ through ritual chanting and the tossing of rice, often by a ritual specialist. The recitations usually include references to food and eating (there are seventeen different recitations for calling the souls, each for different occasions, and some have more reference to food than the others) (Sila 2014, 1–29). The phuk khaen refers to tying the white strings around the wrist to secure the souls to the body, often to the accompaniment of spoken wishes or verses. This is usually followed by a lavish meal consumed by all in attendance, perhaps featuring the animals (cows, buffalo, chickens) slaughtered for the occasion. However, phuk khaen can also be simple affairs, involving only some string and the recitations.
Some important rituals are directed at rice itself, and these illustrate the close relationship between rice and household relationships. In Champasak, the annual bun bang fai (rocket festival) aims to bring on the rain and thus allow the rice growing season to commence (High 2006). It involves explicit imagery of human genitalia, explicitly linking rice to human sexuality and fecundity. In the past, in years of severe drought, one remedy was to parade a female cat around the village in a cage. Onlookers were invited to throw water on the cat, and her howling was thought to bring on the rain, evoking images of a female cat’s howling during feline intercourse. Semen is a kind of ‘water’ in many ethnic languages of the region. Some Tai have been documented planting a sharpened stake with an image of human female genitals on top and male genitals below it (notably, in much of this imagery, the latter is horizontal unlike the verticality of much phallic imagery elsewhere) (Van An and Crystal 2003). Lao Tai ethnicities often refer to the ripening grain as the ‘pregnancy’ of a feminised rice spirit mae kosuk, while the Khmu imagine the rice spirit as a ‘child’ that results from the work of the productive season, with the female head of the responsible household imagined as the ‘mother’ of the rice (Suksavang et al 2006).
Collective, household-based food preparation and eating are basic to Lao culinary and ritual practices. Larger collectives such as villages or offices commonly build on these traditions of commensality. Socialist concepts and practices have, over time, developed a Lao flavour, and one aspect of this is the important role of food in everyday statecraft. When government officials visit rural and remote villages, they often expect the villagers to host them. The resulting meals can create important moments when the key political concept of samakkhi (solidarity) is not only extolled but physically experienced. The political and gender dimensions of this ‘solidarity’ bear mentioning: those able to happily share food without worrying about their own food security, and those able to enjoy the conviviality of hosting rather than cooking and serving, are the most able to participate directly in this kind of ‘solidarity.’ Drunkenness is more tolerated among men than women, and more tolerated among leaders and well-off men than among those classed as ‘poor.’ Therefore, it is most often men of relatively well-positioned houses who are the most able to relax and enjoy the conviviality of shared food and alcohol.
Lao food as a cuisine
A number of written texts describe Lao cuisine: the last chef of the royal palace of Luang Prabang included a number of handwritten Lao recipes (Phia Sing 1981), particularly ones for fish dishes (Davidson 1975). Dorothy Culloty (2010) includes recipes from Tai Lue, Tai Dam and Tai Yuan and Akha. Dara Kanlanya penned a recipe book including Lao idiom and common expressions about food (2013). Mostly, however, the cuisines of Laos are transmitted through embodied techniques and know-how, and the inculcation of individual and regional tastes passed down within families and ethnicities. In general, Lao food is fresh and seasonal. The taste register stresses sour and bitter more than sweet or hot. In the past, sweetness would come from wild honey or palm sugar. A high value is placed on fresh ingredients. Sources of protein, such as eggs, fish and meat, are extended through incorporation into salads and soups. These are usually accompanied by generous bunches of herbs and raw vegetables. Diners who want to add flavour do so with chaeo, pungent herbs, chillies, mint and bitter greens. A Lao farmer might mix sticky rice with cassava and flavour it with a dish of fermented fish (padaek), some fresh greens, chaeo and a soup. Better known named dishes are also associated with Thai-Lao food in northeast Thailand such as grilled chicken (kai nyang) and lap, a spicy meat mixture flavoured with mint and roasted rice powder.
Laos is extremely ethnically diverse (see Chapter 6, ‘Inter-Ethnic Relations’) and food habits loom large in the construction of ethnic stereotypes. Michael Herzfeld (2016, 31) refers to this as ‘gastro-essentialism,’ where there is the temptation to claim an eternal authenticity for a constantly changing pattern of practices. For Lao food, this essentialism includes glutinous or sticky rice and fermented fish products, including padaek, along with a number of easily exoticized items such as roasted grasshoppers and red ants which add a sour taste to soups. However, such clichés can obscure more than they reveal. Not all groups in Lao PDR grow and consume sticky rice, and fermented fish products like padaek are more common close to the Mekong River. In the northern uplands, river fish are eaten fresh or dried, and in the uplands, the staple cultivated in the fields may be maize, manioc, or millet, with sticky rice a rare luxury.
Common throughout this diversity, however, is the link between food, locality and seasonality. Lao PDR is a landlocked country of steep hills, heavy forests and lowland and upland valleys suitable for wet rice cultivation (see Chapter 3, ‘Places’). The warmth is conducive to abundant tropical fruits, such as papaya, mango, custard apple and coconut. Many Lao smallholders cultivate both fields (for staple crops) and gardens (fruits, vegetables and feed for domestic animals). The southeast monsoon brings heavy rains from May to October. The seasons (wet, cool and hot) bring with them different tastes and scarcities, as well as different phases of agricultural work. The wet season, the growing season for rice and other key crops, is a time of scarcity and hard work; July and August are also the months of retreat in the temples of the Theravada communities—a quiet, homebound time of duties. In the uplands, many people spend the season of work close to their fields in field houses for months, leaving the villages virtually deserted. Some upland villages are completely cut off when roads and paths become unpassable in the wet season, which can contribute to hunger.
The dry season after the harvest is a time of plenty, communal festivals and travel. Paths between villages are repaired and used for frequent trips to join festivities or visit relatives. Younger people might go to work on the coffee harvest or elsewhere. Secondary crops, such as watermelon and pineapple, may be grown during this time and the riverbanks exposed by the falling waters are fertile grounds for seasonal gardens. Buffalo that assisted in ploughing the wet fields may then be turned loose to graze on the stubble of the harvested rice. In the uplands, buffalo are not used as work animals, but are reserved for ritual purposes, left to run wild in the steep valleys until needed. Domestic animals also often include poultry, pigs and cattle, although among many communities it would be unseemly to view these strictly as food. Rather, these are animals reserved for sacrifice and only on ritual occasions would they be consumed.
Wild foods from the forest include wild yams, cassava and taro. These require know how: where to find them, how to harvest them and how to remove any poisons, if necessary. Once harvested, cassava tubers are very perishable and hard to store. Cassava tubers have high carbohydrate content and are a good source of potassium, iron, magnesium, Vitamin C and other vitamins. Other wild foods include ferns, leaves, bamboo shoots and honey. These add unique tastes to everyday meals as well as nutrients not always available in cultivated plants (Jacquat 1990). Mushrooms, both fresh and dried, wild and cultivated, are used in salads and soups. Surplus wild foods may be sold on roadsides for cash. Many forest foods are unavailable in urban markets, due to difficulties in transport as well as declining access to forests (see Chapter 19, ‘Forests and Forestry’). Travellers from Lao towns and cities often value the chance to buy a rare treat from such roadside stalls. Certain localities are associated with delicacies from that area: the river weed (khaiphaen) of Luang Phrabang and Luang Nam Tha, for instance (see Van Esterik 2006). Travellers to more remote areas may seek out wildlife such as turtles, deer, bamboo rat and palm civets which may be valued as foods because they are thought to transmit to the consumer some of the potency of the forest itself (Singh 2012, 75).
Fish is a key ingredient of Lao cuisine. The giant catfish, pa beuk, is native to the Mekong River and iconic of lowland Lao food. Traditionally, the seasonal rise and fall of the Mekong would bring different seasons of fishing opportunities. When the river reached its lowest point towards the end of the dry season, fish stranded from the mainstream of the river in ponds could be caught in massive quantities. Villages often cooperated to make sure each household had an equal opportunity to bring home part of the bounty. Today, fish stocks in some areas are falling rapidly due to damming along the Mekong and its tributaries (see Chapter 20, ‘Water and Hydropower’). The pa beuk was rare to the point of extinction, but today numbers are again increasing. Still protected in the wild, pa beuk fingerlings can now be purchased on Facebook and raised in home ponds. Fish may be dried, smoked, or boiled in soups.
Fermentation is widely used to preserve food. Along the Mekong, large catches of fish are commonly fermented to make fish sauce or fermented fish paste (padaek). Rice husks along with salt break down the fish. Special ceramic jars that absorb the odour are used for this purpose. Unfamiliar strong smells and food textures may not be appealing to many westerners (Van Esterik 2011). Prince Phetsarath recounts his efforts to import fish sauce and dried fish to France when he was a student there in 1909, and the shock of the French official who thought the items were rotten, and who was only convinced to allow the imports when the Prince pointed out the similarity in odour with some French cheeses (‘3349’ 1978, 18). Southeast Asian diaspora may speak longingly of the taste of local versions of padaek recalled nostalgically from their homeland. Fermented soybean paste adds a sour/astringent taste to Shan and Lao dishes. In the uplands, fish may be mixed with salt and set to ferment in hollow tubes of bamboo (lam). In the lowlands, fermented rice noodles (khaopun) are sold at festivals or at meals offered by households hosting a ritual event. These are served with a pork and fish sauce, or a local variant.
Fermented liquor made from rice, corn, millet or other grainsplays a key role in many celebrations, as consumption of alcohol creates links between the living and the dead, humans and spirits, and guests and hosts. Some ethnicities keep alcohol in heirloom jars, and in the past it was a necessary ingredient for oath taking and reserved for ritual occasions. Producing rice liquor (lao Lao) used to be a household enterprise, but more recently, rice liquor is purchased from local entrepreneurs who grow special glutinous rice specifically for this purpose. Steamed sticky rice is fermented with balls of yeast for about a week when it is then distilled and consumed.Today, alcohol is drunk even when there is no ritual occasion. A shot of rice whisky has become an important part of everyday conviviality, and a common feature of village-level official events, such as hosting visiting government officials. Locally produced commercial beers such as Beer Lao are popular with middle class consumers in towns and cities and with tourists, but too expensive to be an everyday item for most villagers.
There is a continuity between food and medicine, particularly in the category of soups and tonic drinks. It is common for individuals in Laos to follow diets that are highly tailored to their specific health needs: this reflects both recent biomedical advice (such as foods with high ‘vitamins’) but also Ayurvedic principles about the importance of food in balancing the humours of a body (heat, cold and so on). In this view, diets are highly individuated. Herbal medicines are part of health maintenance systems, not simply treatments for specific diseases (see Chapter 30, ‘Health’). They can be taken in alcohol, water or rice water, swallowed in pill form or rubbed on the body. In Lao PDR, communities are even more dependent on traditional herbal medicines since few people outside of cities have access to consistent primary health care. Herbal saunas are particularly popular with women. Most striking are the number of products used in each concoction; common ingredients include chillies, red ginger, sesame oil, cotton seed, opium, bark, leaves, roots and ground snail shells. Because of the rich biodiversity of the country, Laos also attracts bio-prospectors from pharmaceutical companies based in industrial countries. The Research Institute of Medicinal Plants in Lao PDR has permitted collectors to seek out plants and information from traditional healers for the purpose of developing new drugs to combat COVID-19, malaria, cancer, HIV/AIDS and diseases of the central nervous system. One healer in Lao PDR knew recipes to cure goitre, ear infections, epilepsy, beriberi, food poisoning, weakness of pregnancy or recovery after birth, cough, infected wound, fever, shock, cramps, heart palpitations, skin abscesses, headaches, hernia, constipation and diarrhoea.[1]
Shocks to Lao Cuisine
Laos has had a tumultuous history, including invasion and depopulation by Siam, colonisation by France and intensive bombardment by the United States (see Chapter 2, ‘The Past’). This tumult has frequently caused shocks to Laos’s food systems. For instance, when the French were attempting to assert control over the Annamite Cordillera of Indochina, they enforced blockades targeting salt: this is a key ingredient in highland cuisines, essential for nutrition and many forms of fermentation and food preservation. Many upland groups depended exclusively on trade to obtain salt. The French blockades caused widespread suffering and malnutrition. Early Indochinese independence activists organised marches to obtain salt for the highlanders; this became a celebrated moment in the mobilisation of highlanders into the independence movement (High 2021).
The United States dropped more bombs over Laos per capita than any other bombardment in the history of aerial warfare. The borderlands to Laos’s east and south, as well as the Plain of Jars, were particularly heavily targeted. The bombardment included explosives, defoliants and napalm. Often, any sign of life—including gardens and domestic animals—were particularly targeted. A recent collection of recollections from Lao survivors of the war includes numerous descriptions of the starvation caused by the bombardment. One man explained: ‘American spraying of poisons was really heavy in 1967, such that in Samoi District there was no vegetation, nothing. Even the cassava was dead. Many people died from starvation’(PTPCC 2012, 75).
Hunger continued after the war. One Lao mother—a revolutionary who became a civil servant in Vientiane and raised three children there—recalled: ‘at the age when the most important things for my young children were food, play and study, they ate not their full, played not to their liking, and studied not to their full potential’ (Saengkham 2015, 105). The victorious Lao People’s Revolutionary Party prioritised food security, conceived of as national self-sufficiency. This goal was to be achieved through modernisation and solidarity. At first, collectivisation of agriculture was the favoured method, following examples from other socialist countries and the successful production of foods for the war effort in the liberated zones during the war years. Prime Minister Kaysone Phomvihane announced that the goal was to advance directly to socialism without transitioning through the market economy. Post-war conditions in Laos, however, presented many problems for this plan and in 1988 Kaysone Phomvihane announced a ‘change in direction’: namely, passing through the market economy first before advancing towards socialism. This was intended to create ‘a commercial economy, expanded agricultural, handicrafts, and light industry production, and open markets everywhere, even remote mountains, so that the standard of living would improve step by step, and would not be any different whether in the city or the plains’ (Duangxai 1992, 122). Throughout this transition, the Party continued to emphasise the modernisation of agriculture, with increasing investments in irrigation, hydropower schemes and agribusiness (see Chapters 20 and 21, ‘Water’ and ‘Commodity Crops’). Some of these ‘mega investments’ have caused shocks to existing food systems, particularly when large amounts of forest have become unavailable for food production or foraging, and when dams along the Mekong and its tributaries dramatically reduced fish stocks.
Self-sufficiency in food continues to be a goal to the current day. In addition to the pressures on food production mentioned above, food shortages also continue to be caused by floods, droughts and major storms. In many villages, smallholders measure their food security by how many months they eat their own rice. Very few have enough for the entire year. For the remainder of the year, they use a combination of intermittent waged work, remittances and natural resources, such as forests and rivers, to get by (see Chapter 14, ‘Livelihoods’). During and after the war, many people in remote and rural Laos were displaced or elected to relocate. People living in new environments may not know where to access wild foods in their new area, or the methods required to remove poisons. Older people may prefer the bitter and sour tastes of wild foods, while the younger generation may be accustomed to the sweetness and saltiness of the processed foods that are more widely available in larger settlements. Vendors used to bring bananas to Lao schools to sell to school children, but most now offer processed foods in plastic wrappers.
Partnerships with international development agencies and NGOs fostered a pronounced concern with poverty through the 1990s and 2000s, which has developed more recently into a concern with malnutrition. Children under five are regularly measured against WHO growth charts. In 2017, 63 percent were considered either moderately or severely stunted (Ministry of Health 2017). Before COVID-19, 20 percent of households faced serious food insecurity. Rice contributed more than 70 percent of calories consumed. In the past, a tendency to emphasise increasing rice production, and to equate food sufficiency with rice sufficiency, overlooked the complexity of food systems and dietary needs in the country, particularly in the uplands. In 2007, a report on food insecurity was released (WFP 2007) documenting very high levels of hunger in Laos. Since then, with concerted effort, significant declines have been tracked in undernourishment, stunting, and child mortality. The Global Hunger Index ranked hunger in Laos as ‘alarming’ in 2000, but only ‘moderate’ in 2023. Falling 28 points on that index, Lao PDR has one of the fastest falling rates of hunger in the world (Global Hunger Index, 2023).
Between 1975 and 1986, about 400,000 Lao fled as refugees from a country of less than four million. Most crossed the Mekong and were housed in refugee camps in Thailand until they could be resettled in third countries in North America, Australia and Europe. Once settled, some families started Lao restaurants in major cities, but the demand was low since the cuisine was not well known. Historian Anthony Reid (2015, 420) wrote that ‘Only Southeast Asian food has so far been carried triumphantly around the world by its own people.’ However, in the case of Lao food, the story is more complicated. Internationally, everyone knows Thai food—one of the most popular Asian food genres in North America and Europe in recent decades—and many are familiar with Vietnamese food. Yet, they may be less familiar with Lao food, in spite of the fact that outside of Lao PDR, their favourite Thai food may well have been made and served by Lao immigrants and advertised as Thai or Thai-Lao food. Lao meals are often considered simple and rustic compared to Thai or Vietnamese meals. The dishes are certainly less sweet and feature more bitter herbs and sour tastes. Lao meals are harder to replicate outside of Laos because of their reliance on seasonal aromatic herbs and wild greens that are hard to import into other countries and difficult to replace in Lao recipes. That said, Lao cuisine is gaining more global recognition, and many global cities now boast at least one Lao restaurant. Most also have an Asian grocery store selling glutinous rice. Eating this iconic food, Lao diaspora and others who have tasted and enjoyed Lao food, can—like the mother described in Mi Saiphusam’s song which opened this chapter—recall images of Laos through the rice steamer.
References
‘3349.’ 1978. Iron Man of Laos: Prince Phetsarath Ratanavongsa, edited by David K. Wyatt, translated by John B. Murdoch. Data Paper number 110. Ithaca, New York: Southeast Asia Program, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University.
Collomb, Natasha. 2011. ‘Jouer à Apprendre. Spécificités des Apprentissages de la Petit Enfance et de leur Rôle dans la Fabrication et la Maturation des Personnes chez les T’ai Dam (Ban Nakham, Nord-Laos).’ PhD diss., Université de Nanterre.
Van An, Vi, and Eric Crystal. ‘Rice Harvest Rituals in Two Highland Tai Communities in Vietnam.’ In The Art of Rice: Spirit and Sustenance in Asia, edited by Roy W. Hamilton, 119–31. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 2003.
Culloty, Dorothy. 2010. Food from Northern Laos. Pokuru, New Zealand: Galangal Press.
Dara Kanlanya (Pa La). 2013. Kin Ngai Ngai [Easy meals]. Vientiane: Dokked publishing.
Davidson, Alan. 1975. Fish and Fish Dishes of Laos. Rutland, Vermont: Charles Tuttle Inc.
Delforge, Isabelle. 2001. ‘Laos at the Crossroads.’ Seedling 18, GRAIN Publications. https://grain.org/article/entries/315-laos-at-the-crossroads
Duangxai Luangphasi. 1992. Thongvin Phomvihan: Xivit Lae Kankhuanvai Viakngan Nai Khabuan Vivat Pavatsat Khong Pathet Lao [Thongvin Phomvihan: Life, Activities and Work in the Historical Evolution of the Lao Nation]. Vientiane: Lao Youth Distributions.
Global Hunger Index. ‘Lao PDR.’ Accessed on February 28, 2024. https://www.globalhungerindex.org/laos.html.
High, Holly. 2006. ‘“Join Together, Work Together, for the Common Good – Solidarity”: Village Formation Processes in the Rural South of Laos.’ Sojourn 21 (1): 22–45. https://doi.org/10.1353/soj.2006.0006.
_____. 2013. ‘Experimental Consensus: Negotiating with the Irrigating State in the South of Laos.’ Asian Studies Review 37 (4): 491–508. https://doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2013.794188.
_____. 2014. Fields of Desire: Poverty and Policy in Laos. Fields of Desire: Poverty and Policy in Laos. Singapore: NUS PRESS.
_____. 2021. Projectland: Life in a Lao Socialist Model Village. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
_____. 2022. Stone Masters: Power Encounters in Mainland Southeast Asia. Singapore: NUS Press.
Jacquat, Christiane. 1990. Plants from the Markets of Thailand. Bangkok: DK Books.
Krahn, Jutta. 2005. ‘The Contemporary and Traditional Food System of the Katu in the Sekong Province, Lao PDR.’ PhD diss., Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität.
Ministry of Health. 2017. National Strategy and Action Plan for Integrated Services on Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health 2016-2025. Vientiane: Government of Lao PDR.
Mus, Paul, David P. Chandler, and Ian W. Mabbett. 2011. India Seen from the East: Indian and Indigenous Cults in Champa. Rev. ed. Caulfield Vic: Monash University Press.
Phia Sing. 1981. Traditional Recipes of Laos. London: Prospect Books.
PTPCC (Propaganda and Training Party Central Committee). 2012. Tam Hoi Pavatsat Seupsan Munseua Bon Senthang Ho Chi Ming Nai Pheun Phaendin Lao [History and Legacy of the Ho Chi Minh Trail]. Vientiane: PTPCC.
Reid, Anthony. 2015. A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Saengkham Deuansavan. 2015. Koet Luk Nyam Songkham [Giving Birth During the War]. In Doenthang Su Huachai Khong Pathet [Journey into the Heartland], 85–90. Vientiane: Dokked Publishing.
Saiphusam, Mi. 2021. ລຳລ່ອງ: ເອີ້ນລູກຄືນລາວ ລຳໂດຍ: ມີ່ ສາຍພູຊຳ. YouTube video, August 15. 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEU_G57UT2.
Schiller, J.M., M.B. Chanphengxay, B. Linquist, and S. Appa Rao (eds). 2006. Rice in Laos. Manila: International Rice Research Institute.
Sila Viravong. 2014. Kansukhuan Khamsutkhuan [Basi Rituals]. In Papheni Lao [Lao Customs], 1–29. Vientiane: Dokked publishing.
Singh, Sarinda. 2012. Natural Potency and Political Power: Forests and State Authority in Contemporary Laos. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Suksavang Simana and Elisabeth Preisig. 2006. ‘Rice-based Traditions and Rituals of the Kmhmu.’’ In Rice in Laos, edited by J.M. Schiller, M.B. Chanphengxay, B. Linquist, and S. Appa Rao, 79–106. Manila: International Rice Research Institute.
Van Esterik, Penny. 1986. ‘Feeding their Faith: Recipe Knowledge among Thai Buddhist Women.’ Food and Foodways 1 (1): 198–215. https://doi-org.ezproxy-b.deakin.edu.au/10.1080/07409710.1985.9961884.
_____. 1996. ‘Nurturance and Reciprocity in Thai Studies.’ In State Power and Culture in Thailand, edited by E. Paul Durrenberger, 22–46. New Haven: Yale Southeast Asia Studies.
_____. 2008. Food Culture in Southeast Asia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
_____. 2006. ‘From Hunger Foods to Heritage Foods: Challenges to Food Localization in Lao PDR.’ In Fast Food/Slow Food: The Cultural Economy of the Global Food System, edited by Richard Wilk, 83–96. Lanham, Md.: Altimira Press.
_____. 2011. ‘Revisiting Lao Food: Pain and Commensality.’ In Food: Ethnographic Encounters, edited by Leo Coleman, 59–68. London: Berg Press.
World Food Programme (WFP). 2007. Lao PDR: Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis, World Food Programme, Vientiane, Lao PDR.
[1] This is from a hand-written note that the first author found in a box of papers in the Sage collection, Arizona State University.