America's Food Identity: Is it worth it?

Eric Girton 

Communication/Food

Word Count: 1,317

Everyone has an identity. Your identity is what makes you unique and what makes you stand out among everyone else. It is something no one else can take from you. In the United States, we see identity as a reflection of your personal viewpoints and standpoints. Ethnicity and cultural background/heritage play a key role in determining where a particular person is coming from and how it shapes them. As we move into a more modern outlook on social issues, we also turn our lens on identity to that of an individual’s sexuality and orientation and how they identify in terms of gender and other social constructs. In our class we know now that a large part of identity also ties into food, and everyone has their own personal food identity. Food identity has to do with your background, and ties to both cuisine and culture. This means that the food you eat and your cultural background ties you to the many “normal” and “not normal” customs and practices of cultural cuisine and food preparation and meal etiquette. In the United States as it relates to our cultural identity and food, we use a strongly ethnocentric viewpoint to compare and contrast ourselves with other cultures and their food identities.  

Food drives people all over the world. Many people will travel to many different places around the world just to experience the cuisine and the culture of others. In some cases, people will live in other places for certain amount of times of their lives, but will try to make it back to their homeland. This situation has a very similar relationship with Chef's Table episode we watched in class. In this episode, the focus was on Alex Atala, a world famous Brazilian chef who traces his origins back to Brazil and who put the Brazilian culture and cuisine on the global culinary radar through his high-end restaurant, D.O.M. He tells the story of how he became a chef almost by accident. After an errant past as a punk rocker, a DJ and party animal, he moved to Europe. While working in construction in Belgium, Atala engaged in a cooking course to get a visa and extend his stay in Europe. From there, he went on to join the culinary schools in France before then moving back to Brazil. His return to Brazil was partly a result of his partner being pregnant with their son and him wanting to raise his son as a Brazilian, not an Italian. He also knew and understood that he would never be able to make Italian and French dishes better than the top chefs of those regions.  

In relation to Atala and his story can be found in the reading that we did on Food: The Key Concepts, which showed a distinct relationship between food and memory. It went on to say that food is often associated with many big memories in modern American culture and globally. Communal gatherings, feasts, holiday meals, family affairs, business ventures, etc. are all tied to memories. Vivid memories can be a consequence of special or unusual foods. As kids, we may have tried a variety of foods when we were younger to determine what we now like or don’t like. These very strong and lasting memories can be the reason why people as they get older, don't like a particular dish. It all reverts back to their origins. In Atala's case, it was his own cultural background and memories that his food gave him that drove him to come back to Brazil and embrace Brazilian cuisine and culture, mixed with the French and Italian culinary skills he gained.  

WHY are Americans so content with their food identity in comparison to other countries, even when it concerns their health? 

To put simply, I believe that there is an ethnocentric viewpoint that which many Americans believe that the United States is the pinnacle of modernization with the strongest global economy as well as global leadership. What many won't do is to see the world with an open and unbiased viewpoint. When it comes to a perception of our own food habits and identity, the American food scene has gone through many considerable changes over the past two decades. During this period, the public has seen the introduction of genetically modified crops, the mainstreaming of organic foods into America’s supermarkets, and the increase of chefs elevated to celebrity status within popular culture. 

Over the same period, there has been a marked increase in public health concerns about the growing prevalence of obesity among both children and adults. People such as Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman, and documentaries such as Morgan Spurlock’s “Super-Size Me,” Americans thinking about food has shifted dramatically. 

Americans are unaware that much of their food originates from other countries. This is another example of why they are not willing to go outside of their comfortable food identity. Food from other countries surrounds Americans without  them even knowing it. This is a part of the melting pot culture which describes immigrants coming to the U.S. and bringing with them their culture and food. Then the U.S. is filled with many other cultures food. 

According to the Pew Research Center on the Public Views of American Eating Habits concerns about obesity, food allergies and other health effects of food are fueling a new level of scrutiny with the chemicals and additives in foods and contribute to shifting ideas about portion size, sugar and fat content. America’s love of fast-food chains is on the wane, with “fast casual” brands that offer convenient options which focus on natural, fresh ingredients gaining favor. 

In relation to these shifts of social and public views on food, we can see a stark contrast between how other countries see food identity just from all the health problems that it creates. In the last 33 years, the United States as well as other countries worldwide haven't made any serious progress in the fight against obesity. In 1980, over 857 million people worldwide were overweight or obese, by 2013 that number had more than doubled. Today, nearly one third of all living people (over 2.1 billion) are either overweight or obese. These stats, including the graphics, come from a new analysis of 1,749 published studies on weight from around the world, published in the Lancet in May. This analysis showed that the United States is home to the highest number of overweight or obese people in the world. Shown in the photo above, in the U.S., 70.9 percent of men and 61.9 percent of women are overweight or obese, compared to 38 percent of men and 36.9 percent of women worldwide. From these statistics alone we see that even though 

A pop-culture example of my point that Americans are too content with their food identity is from the popular Netflix series, Stranger Things. In the series, the characters embraced the popular convenient breakfast snack, Eggos, shown in the photo below. Eggos are a reflection of the growing industry of processed food in America. It is a direct cause of obesity. Eggos also show a popular American breakfast, which is unhealthy, yet convenient, which most families give their kids everyday. They do not go out of the realms of processed fast food, and eat so called an "American meal." 

In conclusion, many Americans are not willing to go outside of their food identity because they are too accustomed to the convenience to fast food, processed food, and portable food. They also are not aware of the melting pot culture, therefore they do not see the need to try new things because they think the best food is in the "American cuisine". The reality is that we are facing a real world problem with our food identity and we need to make some changes in what we constitute as "good" and "bad" in our culture.