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Showbiz
James Besanvalle
Oct 28, 2020
Image:
GBBO / Twitter
The Great British Bake Off has faced backlash for its inaugural “Japanese Week” with people slamming the episode as “ignorant and racist”.
The baking show set three Japanese-inspired challenges for the contestants on Tuesday’s episode – steam buns, a matcha mille crepe cake and a “kawaii” show-stopper round.
But during the steam bun challenge, some of the contestants used non-Japanese Asian-inspired flavours.
For example, one contestant made Chinese style pork buns while another used Indian-inspired ingredients like smoked paprika, mango chutney and apple sweetened lentil dahl.
And people thought it was “ignorant and racist”.
@sally_lindsay @JOJEHARVEY I am SO offended by tonight’s #GBBO So ignorant and racist. You’d think in the age -… https://t.co/oSV003hXNb— Naoko Mori 森尚子 (@Naoko Mori 森尚子) 1603833799
I get the feeling this episode won’t go down particularly well amongst Asian Americans when it gets screened on Net… https://t.co/nntf4pZag6— thedabney (@thedabney) 1603829558
this ep of gbbo was really not it 🥴 the research for japanese week felt very poor and kinda ignorant. there were so… https://t.co/uHcGWXjxzS— 🌸 this is a matt murdock stan account / 詠儀 🌸 (@🌸 this is a matt murdock stan account / 詠儀 🌸) 1603836239
#GBBO showing just how uncultured Britain actually is... Completely tone deaf and so ignorant.. #GreatBritishBakeOff #japaneseweek— AFlutterofPages (@AFlutterofPages) 1603833021
As well as cultural appropriation:
While another contestant was called out for decorating her steam buns as pandas – which are from China, not Japan.
But Pandas are from China, not Japan, bit racist really 😂 #GBBO— Deano (@Deano) 1603829432
Seems the #GBBO contestants need a geography lesson since pretty much every effort so far for Japanese week has not… https://t.co/6Myq1nBRkK— Chris Finch (@Chris Finch) 1603830299
GBBO has yet to publicly comment on the backlash.