Our food choices are inextricably linked to the past.

From a History Channel discussion of hoppin' john:

"It’s also uncertain why the dish became associated with New Year’s and good luck. The most likely story is that enslaved people would often have the period between Christmas and New Year’s off, since no crops were growing at that time. hoppin’ John was, and still is, often eaten with collard greens, which can resemble paper money, and “golden” cornbread. The peas themselves represent coins."

https://www.history.com/news/hoppin-john-a-new-years-tradition

A history of African, African-American, and African-Caribbean eating / cooking would say a lot about what people in the past experienced. Rice, like cotton, required cheap (i.e. enslaved) labor.