Much of the joy of food lies in sharing: the passing of dishes across the table; the adoption of new ingredients and techniques. Curries and pasta have become staple parts of the British diet, while Malaysian hawkers use an Australian malted chocolate drink to make “roti Milo”. Even if some adaptations have niche appeal – durian pizza, anyone? – exchange enriches us all.

This is why some are worried by suggestions of “cultural appropriation” when it comes to cooking. In Britain, the issue has boiled over after the discovery of a string of offensive posts and videos from a white chef who makes Thai food. He exchanged the letters L and R to mock Asian accents, made vile remarks about Thai people and others, and told people to “go down to the jungle and ask the monkey for a coconut” over a still of Brixton market. He has since been fired by the restaurant Som Saa, and its co-founder (who had praised one of the videos) has also apologised.

It is true that the primary issue here is one of plain racism. But the other one is that this man made his living from the accumulated work and knowledge of people he treated with contempt. In doing so he highlighted broader issues about who owns, profits from and takes the credit for food cultures. The American writer Ruth Tam has written powerfully about the bittersweet knowledge that “the same dishes hyped as ‘authentic’ on trendy menus were scorned when cooked in the homes of the immigrants who brought them here”.

These issues are particularly raw, so to speak, given other recent controversies. Activists in the US have targeted the Chicago-based Aloha Poke Co chain (none of its owners understood to be native Hawaiians) for sending legal letters telling restaurants, including those run by Hawaiians, to stop using “aloha” or “aloha poke” in their names; both the word aloha and the dish poke (diced raw fish) originate in Hawaii. The firm says it is only trying to stop misuse of its trademark “Aloha Poke” in connection with restaurants.

Meanwhile, National Geographic announced that a new series would see Gordon Ramsay “discovering the undiscovered” and “[test] Ramsay against the locals, pitting his own interpretations of regional dishes against the tried-and-true classics”. As the US writer and foodie Eddie Huang observed, this sounded like Mr Ramsay showing locals that he can cook their food better than they can. (Some may recall MasterChef’s hosts confidently telling a Malaysian-born contestant that she had cooked a Malaysian dish incorrectly, though the mistake was theirs.)

There’s nothing wrong with experimentation; an obsessive veneration of “authenticity” can be a kind of exoticisation in itself. The problem comes when making a food more fashionable, or an easier fit for western tastes, is equated with making it “better”.

Equally, no one is suggesting it is wrong to cook food from another culture. Mexico gave the Englishwoman Diana Kennedy its highest honour for her remarkable knowledge of its cuisine. Some of those querying the Gordon Ramsay show suggested the late Anthony Bourdain, who showed such genuine curiosity and enthusiasm in approaching different cultures, as a model for how it should be done.

The issue, as the food writer Sejal Sukhadwala observed, is cooking another’s food without understanding or respect, and then profiting from it. The recipe for happy exchange demands one essential ingredient: humility. Enjoy the feast, but do not insult your host or hog the dishes. Sharing is delightful. Snatching is not.