20 ms·

There is nuance to all of this obviously, as with anything cultural, but in short - yes. Large swaths of the US population have been deprived of food culture f

There is nuance to all of this obviously, as with anything cultural, but in short - yes. Large swaths of the US population have been deprived of food culture for several generations now. There are many exceptions of course - Latino family bbqs in Southern California, or Cajun crawfish boils, are examples of food culture that’s well and alive that I’ve experienced personally. But you also have many Americans for whom the act of procuring ingredients and cooking is something so distant that it’s essentially alien - it’s been replaced by fast food, gas station food (frozen pizza, box of Mac & cheese), food delivery, etc. I’ve lived places where you had to easily drive 50-100 miles to find a farmer’s market - something unthinkable in Europe. Nowhere is this more visible than in schools. In French schools, it’s not uncommon for the people making the food to make seasonal/local recipes, eat it with the kids, maybe even involving them lightly in the process. In the US, school cafeterias often are serving what is essentially gas station food. (a funny side effect of that is Americans traveling abroad get their mind blown by foreign gas station food - see for example the sempiternal meme of tourists having their mind blown by the very mediocre Japanese konbini sandwiches) Many have written about this, Michael Pollan is probably the most famous one.

fleddr 4y ago
Recently on Twitter a lady was complaining about inflation. She posted a photo of about a week's worth of groceries and its combined new price, as this was what she typically bought every week. The inflation part was instantly forgotten due to the "food" itself. The picture pretty much contained none. A carnaval of over processed food, carbs, sugars, supplemented with giant containers of sugar water. Not a single fresh thing, not a single high quality thing, not a single ingredient, nothing of any solid nutritional value. And she has a family. This is what their two young children also eat. Nothing but garbage. I'm not at all elitist, I enjoy junk food in moderation nor am I anything more than a reasonable cook. But I consider the above example of this culture an extreme case of neglect to the point it is actively harmful to the entire family. It makes me mad because there's zero reasons for it. Every adult should be able to cook something basic, even more so if you have children. Surely it can't be rocket science to buy basic things like an egg, potatoes, veggies, rice...whichever, and prepare something semi-fresh? It costs less time than eating out. If even that is too difficult, Youtube tells you how. If even that is too much effort, there's services dropping fresh ingredients at your home with instructions on what to do with it.
schnevets 4y ago
It just seems like the end result of a culture that believes it has conquered food scarcity. Gourmet develops in response to different environmental restrictions; coastal nations eat more seafood, temperate climates have "hearty" meals for winter, dispersed communities recreate treasured recipes with local ingredients. But agricultural and transportation revolutions in the 20th century have lead to promises of any food whenever you want. This isn't all bad (I personally love getting a December-January fruit season from Argentina), but the expectation has lead to cutting costs, revising recipes for practical purposes, and introducing one-formula-fits-all preservatives and other ingredients. To suggest otherwise - that a Dominos pizza has nothing in common with nineteenth century Italian flatbreads or that the supermarket tomatoes pale in comparison to more expensive Farmer's Market varieties - immediately makes you a snob. There are clear and dangerous consequences to this mentality, but any scientific argument is muddled and overshadowed by customer's demand for convenience over anything else. It's clear that taste is losing to convenience in this culture war, but I have no clue what can change. But it is curious how cuisine gets blander and more predictable as food becomes more accessible.
- ghaff 4y ago
  >It's clear that taste is losing to convenience in this culture war On the other hand, anyone with the slightest interest in food quality and variety would be absolutely horrified to be transported back and forced to do all their shopping in a 1970s US supermarket. Yes, near major cities, you had farmers markets, butchers, fish markets, bakers, etc. My mother would go to the nearby farmers market that had all those things every Saturday morning. But supermarkets were pretty limited by today's standards.
rychco 4y ago
Exactly this, I know many adults who almost never buy raw ingredients to cook for themselves. It is common & accepted to consume exclusively frozen food, packaged snacks, and takeout.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Not representative I'm sure, but early in the pandemic with offices closed, I saw more than one "Woe be me" comments from large tech employees bemoaning how they were going to manage with their office cafeterias closed.
MontyCarloHall 4y ago
Yup. Exhibit A, found on this very site [0]: Cooking for one in the US with ingredients that aren’t laced with preservatives is incredibly expensive, especially if you live in a city. I found it to be the case even 6-7 years ago that it was cheaper to eat out every night than it was to cook. I was scratching my head at how so many people in the thread could possibly believe this, until I realized that they’re probably not actually cooking, but rather buying prepackaged meals and heating them up. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32128893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32128893
- abeppu 4y ago
  When I lived in NYC, I felt this was often true, but my hypothesis was that it was a reflection of the real estate footprint of grocery stores. A restaurant can receive daily shipments from vendors based in the outer boroughs (or further). If I really wanted to, I could have taken the subway to Queens for grocery runs, but that wasn't actually going to happen. But the Whole Foods on Houston takes up a large footprint of valuable real estate, and of course that drives up the price of everything. The choice between cooking and eating takeout weighs the labor of the kitchen staff (ideally low in a high throughput kitchen) vs the overhead of a supply chain which uses more high-value space.
  - valarauko 4y ago
    No need to go all the way to Queens for the groceries - just a few blocks from the Whole Foods on Houston you have the grocery stores of Chinatown, and even the produce from the street vendors is decent - and cheap.
- stonemetal12 4y ago
  If I go to McDonalds, I can get a hamburger for a dollar. At the grocery store I can't get the meat for a hamburger for a dollar.
  - buescher 4y ago
    True, but you should be able to make 20 burgers for less than $20; easily if you already have condiments on hand. McDonald's burgers have 1.6 oz (1/10 lb) ground beef patties, and 80:20 ground beef is about $4/lb in most of the US.
lettergram 4y ago
I think this has more to do with the breakdown of family. My family growing up (and now as the parent) ensure we sit down and eat together for breakfast and dinner. Home cooked from scratch 3-4 times a week fresh and left overs the other nights. I eat totally different foods than my parents cooked, but the community is key. My Wife and I got really good at making a few dishes from various cultures (Greek, Mexican, Irish, French). It wasn’t our culture matters, it’s the idea of making and sharing a meal.
- tallanvor 4y ago
  Blaming "the breakdown of family" is a rather privileged view. Consider that in the US, wages for lower income families haven't kept up with inflation for decades. That means even when a family consists of two parents, there often isn't enough money to make ends meet, and one or both parents often end up working a second (or third) job. When you have both parents working more than 40 hours a week, are you really surprised that they don't have the energy to cook from scratch? Even in the case of "broken" families, a mother and her children that escape domestic violence are probably still better off overall, even though it's harder for them to make ends meet. I'm sure you wouldn't advocate that they stay in a harmful environment just to maintain the family structure? Finally, and perhaps most important, many people live in food deserts. --They don't have easy access to reasonably priced raw ingredients. In some neighborhoods, the corner store is only place for them to buy stuff, and processed foods are often cheaper than the meager selection of raw goods.
  - fleddr 4y ago
    "When you have both parents working more than 40 hours a week, are you really surprised that they don't have the energy to cook from scratch?" Yes, because cooking costs like zero energy. The physical activity consists of standing for some 20-30 mins.
  - seanw444 4y ago
    I don't know anybody's advocating for people to stay in abusive relationships. Maintaining the family structure means keeping a close bond with the people you love as much as possible. If they don't respect you enough, and you can't work it out, leave, and find someone who does respect you. And build a family bond there.
jart 4y ago
Have you ever been to a WaWas? It's like 711 in China. Gas station food is awesome in the U.S. As much as I love old country, for their wonderful culture, manners, and accent, but the worst food I ever ate in my life was in England. It's no wonder they chose an Indian dish as their national meal.
dkarl 4y ago
It's amazing how strong this mental erasure of food is, to the point of overriding individual tendencies. I recently lent my car to a guy who is the epitome of do-it-yourself. He lives in a tiny house that he built himself, complete with electricity, running water, and sewage. He drives ancient cars because he would rather know how to fix every part of them than have an actually reliable car. He doesn't cut his own hair, but he does odd jobs for a friend in exchange for amateur haircuts. He works construction because making commitments longer than a month or two out undermines his sense of independence. He avoids getting medical care because it's something he doesn't understand. So what's in my car when I get it back? A 7-11 pizza slice container. This guy doesn't cook -- at all. The guy who connects his own sewage line, who is so obsessed with relying on his own understanding and judgment that he won't go to the doctor, will put anything into his body, from any source, without question, as long as it's an easily recognizable form of food. I wouldn't put too much stock in traditional foodways, either. The people who practice them are happy to do so on weekends and special occasions and are grateful for the easier option that fast food and frozen food provide them, because traditional foodways tend to assume that the people executing them are not working full time. Traditional foodways that are resistant to change are a small step up from fast food anyway. With few exceptions, they're just as deadly to people who have sedentary lifestyles. The physically strenuous lifestyles and financial restrictions that made them make sense in the past are mostly gone.
- leobg 4y ago
  Does he know that that’s what you think about him? I’m wondering how he’d react if he read this post and this characterization of him.
jandrewrogers 4y ago
FWIW, when I lived in various parts of the rural US, the schools frequently served seasonal ethnically-congruous cuisine from local ingredients. By "ethnically-congruous", I mean reflecting the historical ethnicity of the population. When I lived in a small town in the middle of the US that was ethnically Czech, a fair bit of the food at school was also ethnically Czech, even though none of them were immigrants. Often made by local grannies. Same situation when I lived on the Palouse, where the local schools often featured the local agricultural ingredients. Notably lentils and peas; not common in schools generally but ubiquitously grown in that part of the Palouse. However, when I lived in the cities, the bad school food you mention was endemic. There is quite a lot of local cuisine and food culture around the US, most people don't bother to find it if they are just passing through.

fleddr 4y ago

Recently on Twitter a lady was complaining about inflation. She posted a photo of about a week's worth of groceries and its combined new price, as this was what she typically bought every week. The inflation part was instantly forgotten due to the "food" itself. The picture pretty much contained none. A carnaval of over processed food, carbs, sugars, supplemented with giant containers of sugar water. Not a single fresh thing, not a single high quality thing, not a single ingredient, nothing of any solid nutritional value. And she has a family. This is what their two young children also eat. Nothing but garbage. I'm not at all elitist, I enjoy junk food in moderation nor am I anything more than a reasonable cook. But I consider the above example of this culture an extreme case of neglect to the point it is actively harmful to the entire family. It makes me mad because there's zero reasons for it. Every adult should be able to cook something basic, even more so if you have children. Surely it can't be rocket science to buy basic things like an egg, potatoes, veggies, rice...whichever, and prepare something semi-fresh? It costs less time than eating out. If even that is too difficult, Youtube tells you how. If even that is too much effort, there's services dropping fresh ingredients at your home with instructions on what to do with it.

schnevets 4y ago

It just seems like the end result of a culture that believes it has conquered food scarcity. Gourmet develops in response to different environmental restrictions; coastal nations eat more seafood, temperate climates have "hearty" meals for winter, dispersed communities recreate treasured recipes with local ingredients. But agricultural and transportation revolutions in the 20th century have lead to promises of any food whenever you want. This isn't all bad (I personally love getting a December-January fruit season from Argentina), but the expectation has lead to cutting costs, revising recipes for practical purposes, and introducing one-formula-fits-all preservatives and other ingredients. To suggest otherwise - that a Dominos pizza has nothing in common with nineteenth century Italian flatbreads or that the supermarket tomatoes pale in comparison to more expensive Farmer's Market varieties - immediately makes you a snob. There are clear and dangerous consequences to this mentality, but any scientific argument is muddled and overshadowed by customer's demand for convenience over anything else. It's clear that taste is losing to convenience in this culture war, but I have no clue what can change. But it is curious how cuisine gets blander and more predictable as food becomes more accessible.

ghaff 4y ago
>It's clear that taste is losing to convenience in this culture war On the other hand, anyone with the slightest interest in food quality and variety would be absolutely horrified to be transported back and forced to do all their shopping in a 1970s US supermarket. Yes, near major cities, you had farmers markets, butchers, fish markets, bakers, etc. My mother would go to the nearby farmers market that had all those things every Saturday morning. But supermarkets were pretty limited by today's standards.

rychco 4y ago

Exactly this, I know many adults who almost never buy raw ingredients to cook for themselves. It is common & accepted to consume exclusively frozen food, packaged snacks, and takeout.

ghaff 4y ago
Not representative I'm sure, but early in the pandemic with offices closed, I saw more than one "Woe be me" comments from large tech employees bemoaning how they were going to manage with their office cafeterias closed.

MontyCarloHall 4y ago

Yup. Exhibit A, found on this very site [0]: Cooking for one in the US with ingredients that aren’t laced with preservatives is incredibly expensive, especially if you live in a city. I found it to be the case even 6-7 years ago that it was cheaper to eat out every night than it was to cook. I was scratching my head at how so many people in the thread could possibly believe this, until I realized that they’re probably not actually cooking, but rather buying prepackaged meals and heating them up. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32128893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32128893

abeppu 4y ago
When I lived in NYC, I felt this was often true, but my hypothesis was that it was a reflection of the real estate footprint of grocery stores. A restaurant can receive daily shipments from vendors based in the outer boroughs (or further). If I really wanted to, I could have taken the subway to Queens for grocery runs, but that wasn't actually going to happen. But the Whole Foods on Houston takes up a large footprint of valuable real estate, and of course that drives up the price of everything. The choice between cooking and eating takeout weighs the labor of the kitchen staff (ideally low in a high throughput kitchen) vs the overhead of a supply chain which uses more high-value space.
- valarauko 4y ago
  No need to go all the way to Queens for the groceries - just a few blocks from the Whole Foods on Houston you have the grocery stores of Chinatown, and even the produce from the street vendors is decent - and cheap.
stonemetal12 4y ago
If I go to McDonalds, I can get a hamburger for a dollar. At the grocery store I can't get the meat for a hamburger for a dollar.
- buescher 4y ago
  True, but you should be able to make 20 burgers for less than $20; easily if you already have condiments on hand. McDonald's burgers have 1.6 oz (1/10 lb) ground beef patties, and 80:20 ground beef is about $4/lb in most of the US.

lettergram 4y ago

I think this has more to do with the breakdown of family. My family growing up (and now as the parent) ensure we sit down and eat together for breakfast and dinner. Home cooked from scratch 3-4 times a week fresh and left overs the other nights. I eat totally different foods than my parents cooked, but the community is key. My Wife and I got really good at making a few dishes from various cultures (Greek, Mexican, Irish, French). It wasn’t our culture matters, it’s the idea of making and sharing a meal.

tallanvor 4y ago
Blaming "the breakdown of family" is a rather privileged view. Consider that in the US, wages for lower income families haven't kept up with inflation for decades. That means even when a family consists of two parents, there often isn't enough money to make ends meet, and one or both parents often end up working a second (or third) job. When you have both parents working more than 40 hours a week, are you really surprised that they don't have the energy to cook from scratch? Even in the case of "broken" families, a mother and her children that escape domestic violence are probably still better off overall, even though it's harder for them to make ends meet. I'm sure you wouldn't advocate that they stay in a harmful environment just to maintain the family structure? Finally, and perhaps most important, many people live in food deserts. --They don't have easy access to reasonably priced raw ingredients. In some neighborhoods, the corner store is only place for them to buy stuff, and processed foods are often cheaper than the meager selection of raw goods.
- fleddr 4y ago
  "When you have both parents working more than 40 hours a week, are you really surprised that they don't have the energy to cook from scratch?" Yes, because cooking costs like zero energy. The physical activity consists of standing for some 20-30 mins.
- seanw444 4y ago
  I don't know anybody's advocating for people to stay in abusive relationships. Maintaining the family structure means keeping a close bond with the people you love as much as possible. If they don't respect you enough, and you can't work it out, leave, and find someone who does respect you. And build a family bond there.

jart 4y ago

Have you ever been to a WaWas? It's like 711 in China. Gas station food is awesome in the U.S. As much as I love old country, for their wonderful culture, manners, and accent, but the worst food I ever ate in my life was in England. It's no wonder they chose an Indian dish as their national meal.

dkarl 4y ago

It's amazing how strong this mental erasure of food is, to the point of overriding individual tendencies. I recently lent my car to a guy who is the epitome of do-it-yourself. He lives in a tiny house that he built himself, complete with electricity, running water, and sewage. He drives ancient cars because he would rather know how to fix every part of them than have an actually reliable car. He doesn't cut his own hair, but he does odd jobs for a friend in exchange for amateur haircuts. He works construction because making commitments longer than a month or two out undermines his sense of independence. He avoids getting medical care because it's something he doesn't understand. So what's in my car when I get it back? A 7-11 pizza slice container. This guy doesn't cook -- at all. The guy who connects his own sewage line, who is so obsessed with relying on his own understanding and judgment that he won't go to the doctor, will put anything into his body, from any source, without question, as long as it's an easily recognizable form of food. I wouldn't put too much stock in traditional foodways, either. The people who practice them are happy to do so on weekends and special occasions and are grateful for the easier option that fast food and frozen food provide them, because traditional foodways tend to assume that the people executing them are not working full time. Traditional foodways that are resistant to change are a small step up from fast food anyway. With few exceptions, they're just as deadly to people who have sedentary lifestyles. The physically strenuous lifestyles and financial restrictions that made them make sense in the past are mostly gone.

leobg 4y ago
Does he know that that’s what you think about him? I’m wondering how he’d react if he read this post and this characterization of him.

jandrewrogers 4y ago

FWIW, when I lived in various parts of the rural US, the schools frequently served seasonal ethnically-congruous cuisine from local ingredients. By "ethnically-congruous", I mean reflecting the historical ethnicity of the population. When I lived in a small town in the middle of the US that was ethnically Czech, a fair bit of the food at school was also ethnically Czech, even though none of them were immigrants. Often made by local grannies. Same situation when I lived on the Palouse, where the local schools often featured the local agricultural ingredients. Notably lentils and peas; not common in schools generally but ubiquitously grown in that part of the Palouse. However, when I lived in the cities, the bad school food you mention was endemic. There is quite a lot of local cuisine and food culture around the US, most people don't bother to find it if they are just passing through.