I love finding new ways to tell stories, especially stories involving complicated issues of multicultural communities. And a connection to food doesn’t hurt, either. So when I heard about #RethinkYourAsianDrink, a Southern California initiative to raise awareness of the high sugar content of boba tea and other popular Asian drinks in light of high rates of diabetes among some ethnicities, I thought that would be a great example to illustrate another battle brewing in the state. In Sacramento, lawmakers have been debating AB 1726, a bill authored by Assemblymember Rob Bonta, the first Filipino American in state legislature. AB 1726 calls for data disaggregation — separating out data gathered for different Asian Pacific Islander ethnic groups — after all there are many different nations of origin, languages, socioeconomic factors, etc.
You can read my article over at PRI’s Global Nation section…