Today I have researched more information about food. Food is
much more than a mere means of subsistence. It is filled with cultural,
psychological, emotional, and even religious significance. It defines shared
identities and embodies religious and group traditions. In Europe in the 17th
and 18th centuries, food served as a class marker. A distinctive court
tradition of haute cuisine and elaborate table manners arose, distinguishing
the social elite from the hoi polloi. During the 19th centuries, food became a
defining symbol of national identity. It is a remarkable fact that many dishes
that we associate with particular countries--such as the tomato-based Italian
spaghetti sauce or the American hamburger--are 19th or even 20th century
century inventions.
The
European discovery of the New World represented a momentous turning point in
the history of food. Foods previously unknown in Europe and Africa, such as
tomatoes, potatoes, corn, yams, cassava, manioc, and a vast variety of beans
migrated eastward, while other sources of food, unknown in the
Americas--including pigs, sheep, and cattle--moved westward. Sugar, coffee, and
chocolate grown in the New World became the basis for the world's first truly
multinational consumer-oriented industries.
Until the
late 19th century, the history of food in America was a story of fairly
distinct regional traditions that stemmed largely from England. The country's
earliest English, Scottish, and Irish Protestant migrants tended to cling
strongly to older food traditions. Yet the presence of new ingredients, and
especially contact among diverse ethnic groups, would eventually encourage
experimentation and innovation. Nevertheless, for more than two centuries,
English food traditions dominated American cuisine.
Before the
Civil War, there were four major food traditions in the United States, each
with English roots. These included a New England tradition that associated
plain cooking with religious piety. Hostile toward fancy or highly seasoned
foods, which they regarded as a form of sensual indulgence, New Englanders
adopted an austere diet stressing boiled and baked meats, boiled vegetables,
and baked breads and pies. A Southern tradition, with its high seasonings and
emphasis on frying and simmering, was an amalgam of African, English, French,
Spanish, and Indian foodways. In the middle Atlantic areas influenced by
Quakerism, the diet tended to be plain and simple and emphasized boiling,
including boiled puddings and dumplings. In frontier areas of the backcountry,
the diet included many ingredients that other English used as animal feed,
including potatoes, corn, and various greens. The backcountry diet stressed griddle
cakes, grits, greens, and pork.
One unique
feature of the American diet from an early period was the abundance of
meat--and distilled liquor. Abundant and fertile lands allowed settlers to
raise corn and feed it to livestock as fodder, and convert much of the rest
into whiskey. By the early nineteenth century, adult men were drinking more
than 7 gallons of pure alcohol a year.
One of the
first major forces for dietary change came from German immigrants, whose
distinctive emphasis on beer, marinaded meats, sour flavors, wursts, and
pastries was gradually assimilated into the mainstream American diet in the
form of barbeque, cole slaw, hot dogs, donuts, and hamburger. The German
association of food with celebrations also encouraged other Americans to make
meals the centerpiece of holiday festivities.
An even
greater engine of change came from industrialization. Beginning in the late
nineteenth century, food began to be mass produced, mass marketed, and
standardized. Factories processed, preserved, canned, and packaged a wide
variety of foods. Processed cereals, which were originally promoted as one of
the first health foods, quickly became a defining feature of the American
breakfast. During the 1920s, a new industrial technique--freezing--emerged, as
did some of the earliest cafeterias and chains of lunch counters and fast food
establishments. Increasingly processed and nationally distributed foods began
to dominate the nation's diet. Nevertheless, distinct regional and ethnic
cuisines persisted.
During the
early twentieth century, food became a major cultural battleground. The influx
of large numbers of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe Progressive Era
brought new foods to the United States. Settlement house workers, and food
nutritionists, and domestic scientists tried to "Americanize"
immigrant diets and teach immigrant wives and mothers "American" ways
of cooking and shopping. Meanwhile, muckraking journalists and reformers raised
questions about the health, purity, and wholesomeness of food, leading to the
passage of the first federal laws banning unsafe food additives and mandating
meat inspection.
During the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, change in American foodways took
place slowly, despite a steady influx of immigrants. Since World War II, and
especially since the 1970s, shifts in eating patterns have greatly accelerated.
World War II played a key role in making the American diet more cosmopolitan.
Overseas service introduced soldiers to a variety of foreign cuisines, while
population movements at home exposed to a wider variety of American foodways.
The post-war expansion of international trade also made American diets more
diverse, making fresh fruits and vegetables available year round.
Today, food
tends to play a less distinctive role in defining ethnic or religious identity.
Americans, regardless of religion or region, eat bagels, curry, egg rolls, and
salsa--and a Thanksgiving turkey. Still, food has become--as it was for
European aristocrats--a class marker. For the wealthier segments of the
population, dining often involves fine wines and artistically prepared foods
made up of expensive ingredients. Expensive dining has been very subject to
fads and shifts in taste. Less likely to eat German or even French cuisine, wealthier
Americans have become more likely to dine on foods influenced by Asian or Latin
American cooking.
Food also
has assumed a heightened political significance. The decision to adopt a
vegetarian diet or to eat only natural foods has become a conscious way to
express resistance to corporate foods. At the same time, the decision to eat
particular foods has become a conscious way to assert one's ethnic identity.
