Most cultures have a default regional/national cuisine that is time-tested, well-adapted to the local flora and fauna, and is reasonably healthy. That means mo

Most cultures have a default regional/national cuisine that is time-tested, well-adapted to the local flora and fauna, and is reasonably healthy. That means most of the complexity gets elided -- just eat and cook however all your neighbors/family eat, and you'll be fine, because other people have done all the hard work of figuring out what works well. The most striking thing about America is how absent traditional food culture is -- how it's been progressively supplanted by industrialized food to the point where people are afraid to cook. One way to fix this is to pick a reasonably close cuisine and just implement it. E.g. decide that you really like to eat Italian, buy an (authentic) Italian home cooking recipe book. It will be more expensive, because we're not in Italy, but the combinations will probably be healthy.