American Food: The Cultures Of The American Culture

832 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The relation between food and culture

Around the world there are many common factors that link cultures to one another, but one of the main factors that separates cultures is the food they eat. People travel the world specifically to taste the intricate cuisine from each culture around the globe. Its importance lies within the fact that all living things need it to survive, and in particular humans need a wide range of nutrients and vitamins to survive and the culture that it derives from makes it special. From China to Mexico, the wide assortment and tastes found relate directly to the culture that the food originates from. The preparation, cooking, and consuming of these diverse food leads to a wider view of that culture as a whole. In America, it is special to see all the …show more content…

Is it not sad that the Indian culture can be defined by food with a multitude of spices combined with rice, noodles, and many other tasteful ingredients and then American food is viewed as the golden arches? But, this is not how American cooking began. Before fast food restaurants and enough grease to clog a person’s arteries, there was good old fashioned home cooking comprised of fresh farm vegetables and meat, alongside a homemade apple pie. Yet, this is not how many people view American cooking and even though it is a better combination than the Dollar Menu, it is not enough to define a culture so diverse with one meal. Moreover, even though the rest of the world may see American food as a hamburger and fries, it is crucial to realize that there is not one specific type of food that can represent America, just as there is not one culture or religion that can define the American people. The American culture cannot be simplified to one specific food type, just as many Americans would not appreciate some of those titles. Nearly every region of the world has influenced the culture of the United States in some way, and one does not have to look far to find a wide assortment of restaurants and stores providing food from around the

Show More
Related

  • Lavanya Ramanathan's Washington Post Article: Why Everyone Should Stop Immigrant Food Ethnic?

    768 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Lavanya Ramanathan’s Washington Post article published in 2015 titled “Why everyone should stop calling immigrant food ‘ethnic’”, she discusses about people’s preconceptions on the type of food that should be labelled ethnic. Ashlie Stevens also touched on a similar topic in her Guardian article published in 2015 titled “Stop thinking and just eat: when ‘food adventuring’ trivializes culture”. She talks about how people assume that just by eating food from a certain culture, they are able relate to the culture as a whole. Both authors acknowledge the importance of appreciating authentic cuisines, but takes different approaches to convince the audience. Both authors establish credibility by using a wide range of substantiated evidences. While,

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Geeta Kothari's The Unexpected Lessons Of Mexican Food

    814 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the writing “If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?” Geeta Kothari describes the differences in the American and Indian cultures through her unique description of the food differences. As a little Indian-American girl, Kothari curiously wanted to eat what of kids her age ate, tuna salad sandwich, hot dogs, and foods of such nature. Kothari describes her first encounter with a can of tuna fish as it looks “pink and shiny, like an internal organ” (947). As Kothari ages, it becomes clear that she sees American food much the way her parents saw it- “repugnant… meat byproducts… glued together by chemicals and fat” (947). Even though Kothari describes American food as strange, disgusting, and foreign; it was also “infidelity” to eat it (951).

    Read More

  • Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

    1379 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser talks about the working conditions of fast food meat slaughterhouses. In the chapter “The Most Dangerous Job,” one of the workers, who despised his job, gave Schlosser an opportunity to walk through a slaughterhouse. As the author was progressed backwards through the slaughterhouse, he noticed how all the workers were sitting very close to each other with steel protective vests and knives. The workers were mainly young Latina women, who worked swiftly, accurately, while trying not to fall behind. Eric Schlosser explains how working in the slaughterhouses is the most dangerous profession – these poor working conditions and horrible treatment of employees in the plants are beyond comprehension to what we see in modern everyday jobs, a lifestyle most of us take for granted.

    Read More

  • Fast Food Nation Summary

    1394 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, a work examining the country’s fast food industry (Gale). Schlosser sets off chapter 5: “Why the Fries Taste Good,” in Aberdeen,

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Food For Thought By Shona Sequeira

    322 Words  | 1 Pages

    American style of food Cuisine as it’s frequently used in the essay is very unique in the eyes of Sequeira. She believes The diverse culture had brought together different styles and techniques of food choices to choose from. These food choices however are very unhealthy but satisfy the Americans to their needs. Throughout the essay the author Shona Sequeiras states the unhealthy food habit that American has created in their society. She states how Americans forms many simple dishes into something very exotic For example; “Request an American cookie, and you can be showered with hundreds of delectable options, including oatmeal raisin, double chocolate chip, macadamia pecan delight, and coconut brownie (Sequeiras

    Read More

  • Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser

    1927 Words  | 4 Pages

    Pothukuchi, Kameshwari. "Book Review of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal(Eric Schlosser, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001." U-M Personal World Wide Web Server. Web. 19 May 2011. .

    Read More

  • Food And Family In Italian-American Culture

    1383 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many scholars have written about the particularly intimate connection between food and family prevalent in Italian-American culture. Herbert Gans interprets this to be a legacy of the traditional Southern Italian peasant culture that the immigrant generation successfully passed down to the younger generations in America. Thus, the connection is implied to be a “transplanted” cultural trait. However, when viewed in light of the social changes in America, this bond was inevitably affected by the Italians’ experiences in America. Italian-American food culture was a tradition shaped by changes outside and inside the family. An examination of the Italian-American family of the interwar years (c.1919-1940) demonstrates that the critical role food came to play in the family life of Italian-Americans was very much the product of inter-generational negotiation. The second generation , largely affected by public discourse, originally viewed “Italian” food as a marker of social inferiority. Therefore, food became a major source of family conflict between generations. But, through inter-generational negotiation, food was ultimately to become a fundamental unifying force of the Italian-American family. Today, in light of the rise of inter-ethnic marriage rates between Italians and Italian-Americans in America, a new form of negotiation centering on food is taking place within the Italian-American family—‘inter-spousal’ negotiation.

    Read More

  • African American Food Culture

    740 Words  | 2 Pages

    Michael Twitty is a food writer and culinary historian best known for preparing, preserving and promoting African American food ways and its origins in Africa. He emphasizes how African food culture has made a great impact on the American South. His cooking helped him to learn about his identity and culture. He describes “identity cooking” a way to better understand him and his culture as a Jewish-African American. A project he developed called “The Cooking Gene” is what he explains as a means of “exploring my family history through food, from Africa to America, from slavery to freedom.” Race, food and ethnicity all have a more complex and cultural meaning especially when fused together. Different

    Read More

  • The End Of Cooking

    533 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Michael Pollan’s “The End of Cooking” shares the message of what we are losing something important in this day and age because of all our pre-made and processed foods. This can be compared with Kothari’s “If You Are What You Eat, What Am I?” and her argument that food is part of one’s own identity. By using the examples from these two texts you can analyze the state of food and culture in the United States today. All of the processed and pre-made foods are causing people all across America to lose their sense of Culture. We no longer know what it’s like to make one of our cultures specialty dishes from scratch which can help people identify with their culture. This process helped newer generations see what it was like for those before them to cook on a daily basis and could help them identify your sense of culture.

    Read More

  • Personal Identity In The Memento Movie

    1338 Words  | 3 Pages

    If an individual loses his past self, would he still be the same individual? According to the personal identity memory theory by John Locke, as long as a person is the same self, the personal identity of that person is the same. But for Leonard Shelby who is the main character if the Memento film, this does not apply after he suffered a condition that hinders him from creating new memories. This paper addresses the topic of the truth of John Locke’s perception of personal identity which follows that Leonard does not have a personal identity. The paper reviews the Memento film which is a psychological thriller which presents two different personal identities of Leonard Shelby after suffering from a memory condition. The paper

    Read More

  • The Americanization of Food

    1403 Words  | 3 Pages

    Food is traditionally considered as a simple means of subsistence but has developed to become filled with cultural, psychological, religious, and emotional significance. Consequently, food is currently used as a means of defining shared identities and symbolizes religious and group customs. In the early 17th and 18th centuries, this mere means of subsistence was considered as a class maker but developed to become a symbol of national identity in the 19th centuries. In the United States, food has been influenced by various cultures such as Native American, Latin America, and Asian cultures. Consequently, Americans have constantly Americanized the foods of different cultures to become American foods. The process on how Americans have Americanized different cultures’ foods and reasons for the Americanization is an important topic of discussion.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of My Food

    1322 Words  | 3 Pages

    I was born in one of the countries in Asia, and our staple food is rice. Rice is always at the center of the table, and the rest of the viand surrounds it. Here in the United States, my household still eat rice every day, accompanied by cooked vegetables and meat. My food choices are influenced by culture and family. Vegetables and fruits of my choice are abundant at the International Market and other Asian grocery stores. Vegetables are also available for a cheaper price at the farmers market. I myself buy these foods to ensure its freshness, prepare and cook them for my entire family. Inspired by Asian and American cuisine, our food is prepared with variety of cooking styles; such as dry like barbecues, baked and fried, with sauce

    Read More

  • The Impact of Eating Behaviors on our Health

    1098 Words  | 3 Pages

    The way in which we choose our foods can stem from events that occur during early childhood. When I lived in Jamaica as a child, I was only fed 'Jamaican style' cuisine. This involved lots of rice with peas, chicken, jerked pork, etc. However, I remember that my parents would take my brothers and I out to restaurants a few times a year as a treat. Our favourite place was a specific Chinese restaurant in a tourist area nearby our house. The food was prepared by Chinese workers and we got to experience what we believed was authentic Chinese cuisine. Another place in which we would enjoy was KFC. KFC represented an exotic 'Other' which allowed us to experience a different kind of social space. According to Finkelstein, this is known as an 'America place'. It is world-famous American food. Food consumption can be a social event where it is done solely for the experience. Interactions in restaurants are conditioned by existing manners and customs. Dining out allows us to act in imitation of others, in accord with images, in responses to fashions, out of habit, without need for thought or self-scrutiny. The result is that the styles of...

    Read More

  • The Influence Of Ethnic Restaurant

    1433 Words  | 3 Pages

    Some ethnic restaurants do not conserve authenticity in their food. For multiple reasons, such as the lack of certain ingredients and the difference of the local’s taste that forces restaurants to change the way they cook their dishes to serve their customers what they want. Therefore, this can give culturally inexperienced people the wrong idea of a certain culture. For example, the fast-food restaurant chain “Taco Bell” that serve Mexican food may give Americans the idea that this is what Mexican people usually eat. Taco Bell would represents the Mexican culture in a different way than what it truly is. This does not only happen in the United States. For example, in the middle-east (where I am from) people believe that McDonalds, KFC and Carls Jr. are American foods and that an American family’s regular dinner would usually be these sorts of foods. This reflects differently on what is true about the culture. Although it is true that altered versions of an ethnic dish may present the culture differently than what it really is, this is not the case for everyone. Even Taco Bell could be the starting point for a person to start exploring authentic dishes of Mexican food. Therefore, it boosts the chances that the person will be motivated to learn about Mexican culture. According to Kwast and Kim, “It seems that Ms. Sibley’s efforts to foster

    Read More

  • Essay On American Food Culture

    1065 Words  | 3 Pages

    American culture is changing dramatically. In some areas it’s a good thing, but in other areas, like our food culture, it can have negative affects. It is almost as if our eating habits are devolving, from a moral and traditional point of view. The great America, the land of the free and brave. The land of great things and being successful, “living the good life.” These attributes highlight some irony, especially in our food culture. Is the American food culture successful? Does it coincide with “good living”? What about fast and processed foods? These industries are flourishing today, making record sales all over the globe. People keep going back for more, time after time. Why? The answer is interestingly simple. Time, or in other words, efficiency. As people are so caught up in their jobs, schooling, sports, or whatever it may be, the fast/processed food industries are rapidly taking over the American food culture, giving people the choice of hot

    Read More

More about American Food: The Cultures Of The American Culture

Open Document