Summary: Eating American

In this paper, the author discusses the typical American “cuisine”. The author first asserts that an American cuisine does not really exist. He then explains it in a historical approach: over the history since the US was founded, large amounts of immigrants came to the US, and the national population now consists people with a large variety of ethnic background. Such a variety of population resulted in a variety of regional cuisine, which reflects the different ethnic groups’ own traditional cuisine. Such regional cuisines are further combined in a way that reflects a universal theme in American eating habit: efficient, which means saving time. Therefore, the American cuisine is based on fast food, and a predominant way of eating is eating out, since it saves the time for cooking. The author thus argues that “I do not see how a cuisine can exist unless there is a community of people who eat it, cook it, have opinions about it, and engage in dialogue involving those opinions” (Mintz 29). Since the typical American eating is characterized by regionalization, fast food, and eating out, and more import, Americans do not take eating as important an event as people from other countries do, the author concludes that Americans do not have a cuisine.

Comments: I have a deep feeling about the point in the reading that the “regionalized cuisine”, when combined with the American fast food culture, changes dramatically and deviates largely from the original version. This is at least the case with American Chinese food. I can see some shadows of the real Chinese food in it, but they are mostly cooked in a way that is more time-efficient for both cookers and eaters such that I always miss the real Chinese food even though I can go to the Chinese restaurants here everyday.