In northern Pakistan, in the high valley of Hunza, food practices have changed profoundly during the last 50 to 60 years. For decades, access to Hunza, in the heart of the Karakoram mountains (Western Himalayas), was quite difficult. But following its secession in 1947 from the maharajah's government of Jammu and Kashmir, Hunza shifted from an indentured agricultural economy, anchored by local hereditary rule (mirdom), to a state-driven national and global market economy. A benchmark of these changes was the completion in 1978 of the international Karakoram Highway. Traversing the valley, the highway became a thoroughfare between Islamabad and Beijing, and it opened Hunza to a variety of extraordinary changes. The changes in food and foodways reflect much of what happened and bring to view a new awareness of what "traditional" means.