Imagine Kylie Kwong sprinkling salt over her stir fries Salt Bae-style, or Anthony Bourdain parroting Madhur Jaffrey’s insights on yellow daal. It would be hard to visualise, precisely because of how far from reality it is. 

I’d like to think anyone who grew up watching aspirational food personalities from the early to mid-2000s likely has some sense of what originality in food journalism means. Some of these people are global icons, and they definitely wouldn’t be part of that league if every second episode of their respective TV shows was a ripoff. 

It’s a little saddening that a lot of journalism, especially print, has moved towards not just justifying but also normalising plagiarism. It’s also baffling that the elite world sees handbag knockoffs as cheap, but plagiarism as acceptable. I am of the firm opinion that journalism shouldn’t even appear on the list of potential professions for anyone who sees ethical demarcations as too much to grapple with. Compromised ethical boundaries is what gossip columns are for.

Back in May, the Financial Times published quite the shocker: a piece that justified plagiarism, specifically within recipe writing. “The demand for novelty in a burgeoning market means plagiarism can be a real issue. There’s a widely accepted rule in my industry that states a recipe becomes original when it is 20 per cent different from any other recipe, but this isn’t based on any legally binding edict; it is a rumour that has evolved into a rule of thumb,” the writer droned on in what seemed like a desperate attempt to prove their own rightness. Ethicality has never been a prerequisite for laws anywhere in the world. And compromising originality just because it’s not legally binding is a massive disservice to any work that’s otherwise expected to have meaning.

While I had seen metaphors crafted by me used here and there before, it wasn’t until I really cemented my identity as a brown food writer in a white-majority country that I began to see plagiarism in more shameless forms. The sneakiness with which my insights were being lifted, without so much as being properly paraphrased, was evident to me. It was also evident to me that this was being done in underhanded ways, so that if I called it out, other people might feel confused about whether it was really as bad as it appeared to be. Let’s just say my sniffers are sharper than most people's and leave the bit about underhandedness at that.

Speaking in the capacity of a journalist who has been writing for over a decade and editing for nearly half that time, I pick up on tone and voice well enough to know who a writer is even when a piece is anonymous (this has left mouths hanging open on more than a few occasions). Sneakiness doesn’t escape me, and so I won’t let myself be gaslit. White writers need to stop plagiarising my work.

The most disappointing aspect of plagiarism isn’t personal. It’s a sense of rage that can only come with feeling a certain loyalty to the profession. As pop-psychology and pseudoscience sink deeper into people’s minds, it’s more important than ever to protect journalism from being reduced to an easily digestible, scroll-friendly meme. Upholding traditional values within the profession is only the bare minimum. 

Turned Tables shines a spotlight on the pervasive racism within the food writing industry in Ireland and beyond, and so it’s ironic that white writers have had the gall to think it’s acceptable to lift insights from my reviews (and sometimes social media posts) on multiple occasions. Quoting my work after it has already been butchered and presented to your own audience, that too with glaring factual inaccuracies, doesn’t count as credit. Or the conduct of someone who’s serious about this profession.

I saw a particular section of one of my reviews quoted across the board, and each time with the writer either presenting that knowledge as entirely their own, or lacing it with childish one-uppery. Some of these were people who pretended to be supporters. Anyone who’s Indian will know that those insights wouldn’t appear even in the dreams of white food writers. Those things were impossible to know for anyone who had never visited India or spent only a handful of days there. It was my review of Andhra Bhavan in Dublin. And that’s just one of multiple instances.

Underhandedness, one-upmanship and plagiarism exist in the food writing industry in the brown world, too. But the shamelessness that privilege affords white food writers makes it all the more dangerous. Seeing people with stable jobs posing my work as theirs, when the same industry in their country has refused me work for four years, feels entitled, exploitative and downright twisted.

I’m not sure what an effective deterrent is outside of consequences. It’s time-consuming and unfair to have to make this public to make it stop, but it’s infinitely better than being a doormat. True change will need to begin from the top and trickle down. And a substantial start can only materialise when the flagbearers of journalism stand their ground, refusing to let themselves be corrupted. Newspapers need to move away from flimsy rationalisations and focus on what they have always stood for: actual journalism.

Here’s a new guideline that I am going to apply to all of my work going forward: if you want to use or refer to anything I have written, on Binge or outside of it, you will be required to seek explicit written permission from me. And if you really find it that hard to stop plagiarising my work, I’ll make you another deal: if you find that I have a lot more knowledge about a piece you’re writing and feel inclined to use my insights without ethical and fair compensation, you invite me to write it instead. Email me for the flat rate.