Every Friday, Ross Harrington, a manager in Melbourne, heads to a local lunch shop to pick up a couple of deep-fried dim sims, kicking off his weekend dim sim routine.

Harrington is the founder of Dim Sims 4 Lyfe, a social media community made up of about 5, 000 dim sim enthusiasts who share their experience and innovative recipes—dim sims on pizza, for example. Dim sims are a variant of traditional Chinese dumplings.

Australia’s dim sim story began in 1942, when Chinese Australian businessman Chen Wing Young realized that a number of elderly Chinese men who had come to Australia to work during the gold rush of the1800s were left jobless. They were like the leftovers from the gold fields days.

At the same time, Chen noticed how popular Cantonese dim sim had become in Australia. Among the many dim sim dishes, siu mai — a flowerpot-shaped pork and prawn dumpling—was especially popular. Chen came up with an idea: If he could mass produce siu mai, these men could sell them on food trucks and earn a living. But siu mai was difficult for Australians to pronounce at that time. So Chen called it “dim sim”

One day, Chen asked his son Tom to deliver a box of dim sims to an elderly Chinese gentleman. While Tom was on his way, he stopped to say hello to his good friend Joe, who owned a fish and chip shop. The two friends ended up going fishing. When they got back, Tom left Joe some dim sims. And Joe decided to deep fry those dim sims for lunch. Before the next day was over, Joe rang Tom and said every one of his mates was asking where he got these dim sims.

“The dim sim is definitely an iconic Australian dish. It’s a part of Australian history,”Harrington says. “The dim sim reminds us that Australia has always been a country that welcomes others and isn’t afraid to adopt new cultures and cuisines. It is a bridge between the two cultures and two countries.”

There is more of a connection between food and culture than you may think. On an individual level, we grow up eating the food of our culture. It becomes a part of who we are. Many associate food from our childhood with warm feelings and good memories and it ties us to our families, holding a special and personal value for us. Food from our family often becomes the comfort food we seek as adults in times of frustration and stress.

On a large scale, traditional food is an important part of culture. It also operates as an expression of culture identity. Immigrants(移民)bring it wherever they go, and it is a symbol of pride in their culture and means of coping with homesickness.

Many immigrants open their own restaurants and serve traditional cuisine. However, the food does not remain exactly the same. Some ingredients needed to make traditional cuisine may not be readily available, so the taste and flavor can be different from what they would prepare in their home countries. Additionally, immigrants do not only sell cuisine to people from the same countries as them, but to people from different countries. Therefore, they have to make small changes to the original cuisine to cater to a wider range of customers. Those changes can create new flavors that still keep the cultural significance of the cuisine.

We should not only embrace our heritage through our culture’s food but also become more informed about other cultures by trying their food. It is important to remember that each dish has a special place in the culture to which it belongs, and is special to those who prepare it. Food is a window into culture, and it should be treated as such.

Will it matter if you don't take your breakfast? Recently a test was given in the United States. Those tested included people of different ages, from 12 to 83. During the experiment, these people were given all kinds of breakfasts, and sometimes they got no breakfast at all. Special tests were set up to see how well their bodies worked when they had eaten a certain kind of breakfast. The results show that if a person eats a proper breakfast, he or she will work with better effect than if he or she has no breakfast. This fact appears to be especially true if a person works with his brains. If a student eats fruit, eggs, bread and milk before going to school, he will learn more quickly and listen with more attention to class.

Opposite to what many people believe, if you don't eat breakfast, you will not lose weight. This is because people become so hungry at noon that they eat too much for lunch, and end up gaining weight instead of losing. You will probably lose more weight if you reduce your other meals.