Ok but we legit do hate food here in america for the same reason we hate healthcare, non-automotive travel, art, education and housing. Anything that is some kind of human need that doesn’t fit neatly into commodification has been turned into man-made horrors beyond imagination.
Take fast food: it was made so you can eat it in the car because as an american your car time is expected to be more important than time for food prep or eating a meal outside your car. In the ever tightening squeeze to drain every american of their last penny we’ve necessarily been separated from our humanity to the point that good food and time dedicated to it is a luxury.
Well, seeing the chemical waste people eat in the US, I do think they hate real food. Also in my culture (Dutch) food isn’t as important as it is in Italy for example. We eat rather healthy, but the best quality food we produce we export because we love money more than food apparently. For the best quality food produced in the Netherlands you need to go to a supermarket in France. It’s stupid.
Whoa, this person really is Dutch!
We’re all just different flavors of the same hobbies: eat, dance, tell stories, repeat.
The word “zeitgeist” makes more sense to me than the word culture. I know what “zeitgeist” means but the use of the word word culture is applied more generally to the point of being vague or anthropological. I grew up eating lots of McDonald’s so is my culture Scottish, or fast foody?
Well my culture loves watching TV and vegging out!
My kind of people. “We see food as necessary but not really a key part of enjoying life”
I feel like a lot of people are taking the post too literally (or maybe I’m not). I once knew a girl who posted a photo of her dad watching football on a plane captioned “Persian dads really need their football lol” and it’s like. That’s just a universal dad thing. Lots of dads in every culture do that.
Some people just do not think about cultures outside their own. Like, at all.
The only thing that varies is the type of football. Looking at you America, but I think that is going to change very soon.
Soon it will be FootWar, sponsored by Pete Hegseth and the War Hawks as well as sports betting.
Certain things are constant across cultures. Among them: food, sports, and music.
And when I say “food”, I mean beyond just biological sustenance. It’s part of culture and an important part of social gatherings.
But the importance of food can be very different still. As a German I would say food is not a huge part of social culture. Like yes we eat together when we celebrate, but the food is usually just a necessity instead of the main focus
which is a shame because schupfnudeln fried in blutwurst and sauerkraut should be sang to high heaven
Oktoberfest is not exactly not about food and drink though.
Fair enough
The cultural equivalent of:
“So what do you like to do?”
“I like to have fun.”
“I like to laugh”
I mean, I’ve never seen someone have a giggle and then frown and say: “that fucking sucked”
In my culture we like to have sex. My culture enjoys producing 2.1 children per woman in prosperous times. In less prosperous times my culture still likes to make babies, but it might be more or less.
Sometimes we even include women
Greece
In my culture we had nothing but roadkill and weeds to eat, so we got really good at making stuff palatable. << Most cultural food legends.
Appalachian?
Ok but the only thing better than good food is cheap good food.
OP is British
lol I was gonna make that joke (I am British too)
I do think it’s overstated about how bad British food is, at least nowadays but at the same time, we’re self-deprecating so lines up.
Nah, ask us about savouries and you might hear about pies and curries and chippies - the stuff you’ve heard a million times before. But ask a Brit about their favourite pudding or cake and you might want to book some time off for the reply.
Agreed. People think British food is dull because they’ve not seen what British people have as a treat. Cases in point:
England
- Roast Dinner with Yorkshire Pudding.
- Melton Mowbray pies
- Cornish Pasties.
Scotland
- Haggis (yes, I’m citing this, Haggis is actually fucking delicious and versatile).
- Cullen Skink
- Shortbread
Wales
- Welsh Cakes
- Bara Brith
- Glamorgan sausage
Northern Ireland
- Fifteens
- Paris bun
- Gravy ring
That’s not even getting into the weird shit like Scottish Fast Food or what we’ve done with immigrant cuisine. Fuck, if you want a tour of Britain, try a fry up in every home nation because other than Sausage and Bacon, there’s a different spin on it in every home nation. People shit on British cuisine because they shit on Working Class food, or food people have when they’ve just come home from work and need something in their stomach. Beans on Toast is what people have for Lunch when they need something quick and filling, Mince and Tatties is what people have when they have mouths to feed. I don’t see Americans having home-fried chicken every day or making Clam bake or something, why would we have full on roast dinners every night?
The dishes you listed are not really exciting to me, I’ll be honest. The one type of food English (not sure about other British parts) people can be relatively proud of are deserts. I really appreciate an Eton mess for example.
Why can’t you get a good lemon meringue pie any more?
I thought I’d worked out my favourite, and then you spring that shit! (It’s obviously rhubarb and apple crumble though) (or cream teas)
carrot… carrot cake? That’s my quick answer, but I’ll take the day off just to be safe
Or even biscuits for that matter
Brits don’t know what proper biscuits or gravy are.
You mean scones?
Everyone does cookies, there’s nothing special about British or French or Japanese cookies.
Scones aren’t biscuits. But biscuits are scones.
Only if you truly fuck up your biscuit.
Ah, a Dutch person
What, artificial chocolate sprinkles on buttered white bread isn’t peak cuisine?
Hagelslag is tasty, at least. Can’t say that for beans on toast.
People say that about food, music/dancing, and stories because they are the least antagonistic thing they could bring up while boasting about their culture. Its the least likely to get attacked as well, its a non-controversial aspect they can sing the praises of and its something easily shared
If they bring up their cultural religion, values, politics, philosophy, or social dynamics, suddenly things can become an area of controversy and even ethical debate. Most people are too fragile or cowardly to investigate that stuff.
Yeah, like I can tell you about our communist history, or our surrealist poetry. But then you’ll call me an extremist, or even worse, a nerd.
So I keep those for when I get drunk and overshare, and just talk about fish recipes and desserts.
If they bring up their cultural religion, values, politics, philosophy, or social dynamics, suddenly things can become an area of controversy and even ethical debate
Italians will go three rounds in the ring over which neighborhood has the best ice cream shop. I wouldn’t even say its uncontroversial. But these also tend to be attributes that vary heavily even at relatively short distances in older communities. A certain meal prepared a certain way or a dance/music style that originated in your neighborhood becomes a unique touchstone to your community.
I might note that this is something “Planned Communities” tend to lose out on. Everyone gets a Chilis. Everyone gets a radio station franchise that plays the same six songs on a loop. Everyone gets an AMC that shows the same ten movies as everywhere else. Everyone gets a Catholic Church and a Methodist Church book-ending the local elementary school.
Then you leave your provincial cookie-cutter suburb and visit London, a city where the dialect of the language changes by intersection. Or you do a road trip in Italy and find out how every tiny township has this one kind of dish they’re all really proud of. Or you just drop into inner city Houston and get an earful of Chop’n’Screw music played by guys with spinners on the wheels of their lowered Cadalliacs. Then you find some weird old bookshop in Montrose that sells pagan bumper stickers.
IMO, English Canadians don’t really have a food that they can call their own. Quebec has poutine, tourtieres, pea soup, and other things. English Canada eats many of those things, but also a lot of generic North American or European things: hamburgers, steaks, North-American style pizza, pasta, stew, etc.
Where I think Canada might be a bit different is that after decades of high levels of immigration, Canada has a lot of foods from other parts of the world. It’s common to find South Indian, Pakistani, Punjabi, Turkish, Persian, Carribean, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Mexican, etc. restaurants in a city. Many of them cater to immigrants from those countries, so they’re authentic tasting.
A lot of that is made at home too. While a home-made stir fry probably wouldn’t taste authentically Chinese to someone from China, there are many meals from around the world that have been adapted for Canadian tastes. Very white people in Canada often cook adapted versions of Indian curries, Chinese stir fries, Mexican tacos, Thai curries, etc.
Timbits. English Canadians have Timbits. Those aren’t just doughnut holes, they’re Tim Horton’s doughnut holes.
Bro has never been to England
Or a Presbyterian church service. I gotta give it to the Pentecostals, they might be a cult but at least they know how to party.
Or they’re dutch
What about sis?
I admit, i made a bold assumption based on the name Kenny, but Ken is genderless, so my bad.
Or is from England and cannot imagine that a good food culture can mean more than: “I like the taste of some stuff and everyone else in my country consumes food too.”
He’s british i guess.
British food is unironically great, and the stereotype is based on experiences during WW2 rationing. It’s made funnier that the people who say it comes from a country where people spray cheese from a can…
There’s so many good pies, pastries, puddings, roast dinners, breakfasts, etc that are very good. British-Indian food is often excellent. Even a basic dish like macaroni cheese can be lovely if you make it right.
To be honest unless you include northern France, I’d argue nowhere in northern Europe has better food.
British food is unironically great, and the stereotype is based on experiences during WW2 rationing
I think this overstates things. A substantial number of countries have their modern culinary culture defined in the post-war decades, though.
Japanese culinary identity came together after World War II, and many of the dishes and traditions defining their cuisine are recently invented or have evolved considerably during the post-war period: the popularization and evolution of ramen, katsu, Japanese curry, yakitori, etc. Even ancient traditions like sushi and Modern Japanese food draws a lot of influence from classic pre-war cuisine, but the food itself is very different from what was eaten before the war.
Even French cuisine underwent a revolution with nouvelle cuisine, heavily influenced by Japanese kaiseki traditions. Before the 20th century, French cuisine was about heavy sauces covering rich, slow-cooked foods (see for example the duck press and how that was used), and it took a few waves of new chefs pushing back against the orthodoxy to emphasize lighter, fresher ingredients. The most notable wave happened in the 1960’s, when Paul Bocuse and others brought in small, lighter courses as the pinnacle of fine dining.
Korean, Italian (both northern and southern), and American culinary traditions changed pretty significantly in the second half of the 20th century, as well, through changes in food supply chains, political or economic changes, etc. And that’s true of a lot of places.
Britain’s inability to shake off an 80-year-old culinary reputation comes in large part from simply failing to keep up with other more food-centered cultures that continually reinvent themselves and build on that classic foundation. Some of the criticism is unfair, of course, but it’s not enough to point at how things were 100 years ago as if that has bearing on what is experienced today.
The only reason Britain still has that reputation is because Americans repeat it mindlessly in media that the whole world consumes.
Like the teeth thing. In the 2000s, the UK alongside Germany had the joint healthiest teeth in the world (although now they’ve fallen to 8th after the Scandinavian countries upped their game). Did it stop the “Brits have bad teeth” gag in US media? No.
The US, for whatever reason, has been engaged in a cultural pissing match with the UK for a long time.
I think that’s true about us missing out on those post-war culinary revolutions due to rationing still being in place for a while, and food was pretty dire still in the 70s and 80s. In the 90s celebrity chefs with TV shows really started to revitalise food culture in the UK — there’s a reason Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver among others are pretty well known — but by then instead of reinventing British cuisine it became about adopting recipes from everywhere. The range of ingredients you could get in supermarkets expanded hugely and became more cosmopolitan, and now you were more likely to be entertaining guests with a tagine or churrasco than steak and kidney pie.
Full English is still better than all of that though.
due to rationing still being in place for a while, and food was pretty dire still in the 70s and 80s.
That was definitely true of Japan, too, where ramen was a poverty food popularized out of necessity, that then became a foundation for innovation up the value chain.
Same with Korea, where American occupation (and a whole history of foreign conquest and occupation) made for interesting combinations of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and American ingredients. Now Spam is probably bigger in Asia and the Pacific Islands than it ever was in America.
Same with many American food traditions being rooted in the slave trade (see West African food culture being remixed with new world ingredients and exported right back to the Americas in what would become southern U.S. and Caribbean food).
And of course there’s the broader discussion between the interplay between fine dining, casual dining, home cooking, industrial/mass production of prepared/processed foods, etc., that often creates its own foodways.
I’m biased in that I think the cultural mixing in the Americas makes for better food innovation, where so many American classics are some sort of mix of German, Italian, Mexican (which is itself a mix of indigenous and Spanish cuisine, while Spanish cuisine itself has significant North African influence), Caribbean/West African, with even a little bit of French Canadian influence mixing in on Cajun food.
Merely importing ingredients is only part of it. There’s a lot to be said for techniques, tools/equipment, and traditions, too.
I was in London for a couple of days, Ate at a hotel, a couple cafes, two pubs, a chip shop with one hell of a line. I must have missed something; flavors were low-key, under-seasoned, and under-spiced. The closest thing I got to flavor was breakfast; the sausage was decent, I think you fully understand sausage there. The beans and eggs were just kinda meh.
Then you have places like this catering to local tastes. https://www.oldelpaso.co.uk/products/extra-mild-super-tasty-fajita-kit
I think things are changing. People are starting to crave a little more spice. There’s no lack of curry shops with plenty of spice, but they’re not strictly British food.
Brits love spice. I think you just were very unlucky or choose the cheap slop.
explain the old elpaso then ;)
Cheap slop?
They test-marketed mild. It failed for being perceived as too spicy.
Chip shops in London are always shit, I’ll grant you that. It’s rare you get good fish and chips outside of seaside towns.
As for Brits not liking spice… Lmao. Brits like spice more than anywhere else in Europe, how else would Indian food be so popular there?
A good chippy is non-negotiable in a northern town. Dunno why but Londoners can’t even seem to get the basics like skinning and boning the fish, never mind getting the batter crispy and not wet.
We don’t all obviously spray cheese from a can, some of us are from or near Wisconsin, the place where Monroe cheese is from, which is to say very well regarded in the international community. Whatever bad things Americans did to cheese is basically either a Republican’s doing or the interests of companies like Kraft or Nabisco who are cheap and want to can a product that lasts without refrigeration. See also, Old English cheese spread.
A full English breakfast is one of the best meals in the world.
My wife was just telling me about unironic british abominations on tiktok
Oh wow, tiktok? Must be true.
Look I have been to Britain and the best British food I had was Indian. “Indigenous” British food is rarely anything special. It isn’t usually god awful but I’ve never had British food that made me want to eat it again
Americans always try to paint British Indian food as not being British, but they’ll happily claim Tex-Mex as American. Same goes for pizzas and such.
Funny that.
I don’t think creole cuisine necessarily belongs to either culture but I generally tend to like them 👍
Didn’t realize British indian food was particularly different from indian in general tbh
Yeah, I’m not taking the “that’s not indigenous food” from an American who im sure will unironically attempt to claim pizza and the hamburger steak as American.
Sad to hear you don’t like apple pie though. I thought you guys loved that one.
I was referring to like, shephards pie when I said indigenous but honestly I have no idea if that’s even the case. Regardless the cuisine of the colonizer is usually mid at best
I’ve never had shepherd’s pie, but I can’t imagine mutton in a pie is easy to get wrong. I eat something similar most days for breakfast. Sometimes there’s different seasoning and veggies and some organ meats added in, but it’s never bad, except for the time it was testicles.
Yeah I’ve honestly never had it be bad. My partner regularly makes a vegetarian shephard/cottage pie that I find very comforting though it doesn’t exactly conform to british standards of the dish. British food just isn’t interesting or spectacular in the way a lot of many other cuisines are. It is comforting and I can appreciate that but its doesn’t excite me.
Tbf, some people just throw mash potato over mince beef they’ve cooked with chopped tomatoes and soggy carrots. I used to think I hated it too, until I made it properly.
However, I feel thats like deciding how good American food is based on next door’s poor attempt at a dry meatloaf. We have plenty of bad cooks here who panic and make poor food that they take no time over. Maybe more than our fair share.
Also, we don’t cover up the taste of spoiling, poor quality, food by drowning it in sugar syrup and seasoning powder. That can take some time for palettes to adapt to.
Idk why you are making this a competition i don’t even like american food man. Shit’s kinda ass and I don’t eat meat or cheese so most of it is off limits.
Pointing out that I think someone is being a bit unfair and overly generalising isn’t making something a competition.
It genuinely does take time for people to adapt. That’s not point scoring.
Brits: I like my food like I like my trousers. Beige and tasting of cotton.
