Food?? Discussed in my folklore readings? Absolutely! One of my favorite professors from the Air Force Academy taught a course called “Food Literature” where we explored the roots of the Slow Food Movement and tracked the differences in how the United States views a sit-down family dinner versus the perspectives in different countries (among other, more edible explorations!). There are so many interesting ways to go with this…and if you have not seen the movie Food, Inc, I highly recommend it. It may just change the way you view your food! If you’d rather read about it…Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma was largely the information source for this film documentary.
The selected chapters from Charles Lindholm’s Culture and Authenticity sets out a clear/compact definition for authenticity calling it (at minimum) “the leading member of a set of values that includes sincere, essential, natural, original, and real,” and I immediately saw how all of these descriptors could be used as the superlatives used to describe food. But with his further explanations, discussing that authentic means we are then true to our roots, and accurately expressing our essence, how can the United States be said to have an authentic food culture? There is a huge movement in the United States for food that is healthy, real, traceable to its origins, and food that just plain tastes good. We can even see this pressure evident at those fast food joints (McDonalds, Burger King, etc) to offer a “healthy” menu option for children and adults (low fat milk, apples instead of fries, yogurt instead of ice cream…). Also, there has been an increase in how many families now get most of their food from a Whole Foods Market, a local Farmer’s Market, or the natural section of their local grocer. The United States finally is well aware that the obesity problem in our country is appalling, and now it is up to consumers to fight for the ability to have healthy food, at a reasonable cost, and to not be “tricked” into the food-like imitations that dominate our supermarket aisles.
But what then is the United States food culture? I did not have sit-down dinners with my family as a kid, mostly because I was running off to soccer, gymnastics, or swimming practice and my mother and father both worked full time. It wasn’t until I got to high school that I realized how much my family relied on frozen instant meals to get us through the week, and we decided to make a conscious effort to care about what we ate, and how often we were able to cook and enjoy a meal together. My family now cooks nearly every one of their dinners together, and sometimes we call back and forth to see what on the table back home in Washington, and here for me in Tucson. It’s been a great way for us to connect and share our love for food. In many other countries, cooking and eating together is a natural part of their daily rituals. In France food is usually served in smaller portions where eating is a social event. Some refer to their eating habits as the French Paradox since they drink wine, eat rich cheese, smoke, and eat more bread, and yet remain lower on the obesity scale than the United States. This reality has been attributed to the fact that in France it is emphasized that you savor your food, you talk while you’re between bites, so that food is consumed slower. In the United States, the table often goes silent as soon as the food is served! Further, walking down the streets in Tucson teases out images of the American appetite being one that incorporates food from all over the world: we expect when we go out to dinner to select our preference based on country of origin whether it be Thai Food, Mexican Food, Chinese Food, etc. We also like to think that American food is prototypically a hamburger, fries, and a milkshake. This may be true, however, the name itself (hamburger) comes form its German origins (though, the “Hamburg steak” that New York first saw did not quite look like the meal we have today!). We are a melting pot of a country, so it makes sense that our cuisine would be a blending of the “best” other countries have to offer. I hope that in coming years, the sit-down family dinner will be more prevalent among households, and that cooking together will be the norm, instead of always running to the fast food joint to grab a quick meal! We must consider the long term health costs of our food habits (heart disease, obesity…) when we weigh in the cost of healthy food versus the largely cheaper food imitations widely available to us. It seems that the United States not only has to define what authentic means for our citizens and our dinner tables, we will also have to discover what it means.
Here is the trailer for the Food, Inc movie (highly recommend watching it as it overviews the current conversation about our food and the laws which are supposed to “protect” us from unhealthy and dangerous food:
Jamie Oliver's food revolution...this shows how the kids in the United States are more "accepting" of their fast food imitations, even when they see the nasty process! Unfortunately, this is "authentically" us!
Have a great week!
No comments:
Post a Comment