American food

[cherrypiepie]

I've a few questions about America food or cuisine. What is they day to day reality of food for those in the US?

I've just been on a cruise on an American orientated ship.

I read Michelle Obama's autobiography.

I've seen a few things in the internet.

What I noticed is that compared to the uk the food seemed ultra processed, even the same foods eg American Fanta, McDonald's fries (uk is potatoes salt and oil US is much more and lots of chemical additives), sliced bread. Fresh whole foods are not as prevalent in supermarkets so a whole shoe called Whole Foods has this market. I watched a person (wholesome family type) do a few recipes in you tube and they were "cooking from scratch" but they used cake mix for a cake recipe and jarred sauces for everything. Michelle Obama's description of the lack of ability to change the unhealthy school lunches as they are controlled by big business is a contrast to the uk where attempts have been made to address this issue. School lunches are hot dogs and pizza and fruit cup things.

The food on the cruise was nice but lacked the finesse of uk or continental food. And it wasn't as adventurous as a UK based cruise line. So the key lime pie would be similar to what I'd expect from a Pizza Hut type place not a £75 a head restaurant. (Appreciate this might just be this cruise line) The blue cheese salad was just called blue cheese not Roquefort or Stilton etc as it would I the uk. DH Fanta was bright orange (and he loved it!) I've read about people going nuts for American sprite too.

I wonder if any one can add any understanding to this?

I do love American food and we cook many seriously good American BBQ recipes and appreciate that there are some amazing food cultures in the US but wondered what the day to day reality is?

threads like this crack me up. In a country of 350 million people, unsurprisingly, there is no standard for day to day life. It’s like saying what’s the standard of food like across the EU, including Eastern European countries etc at very different income levels.

I cook almost entirely from scratch, fresh veg or high quality frozen if out of season. The grocery store we go to stocks a lot of local produce & meat, all antibiotic free/hormone free/ pastured finished beef etc. Most of my friends are similar and there are 4 or 5 similar grocery stores within a 1-2 mile radius. We live in an expensive, liberal west coast city in one of the most liberal & expensive neighborhoods. Does my neighborhood represent “America”, of course no. Are the foods available to me and the way i cook representative of my friends and family, who also all are similarly well off and live in similar areas? Yes.

We have way more access to locally grown organic produce (maybe 10? 15? Locally grown seasonal veg boxes you can join in our city) than we did in London. Is the food chain that stocks Walmart pretty shit? Yes. As always with the US, there is huge variety and my area on the west coast is about as similar to say rural Alabama as Windsor is to rural Poland.

Sorry, @GeorgiaGirl52, but the midwest is a vast region. In the part where I live, Italian, Polish/Central European, African American, and Mexican are the predominant influences. There's also a strong Chinese presence, currently being eclipsed by Indian.

Flavors of crisps available in my local supermarket include sea salt n vinegar, dill pickle, parmesan and garlic, truffle and sea salt, habanero lime, honey Dijon, backyard BBQ, salt n pepper, sour cream and onion, sriracha, maple bacon, buffalo bleu, Carolina BBQ, spicy Thai, roasted garlic, pepperoncini, red curry, NY cheddar, and more...

School dinners are provided under the aegis of the Department of Agriculture. This is (very basically) why it's hard to introduce better quality items. The purpose of school meals is to keep farmers in business, as well as providing balanced meals for kids plus keep costs reasonable, and there's obv a tension between those elements.

That’s you’re family’s choice not to have vegetables, every grocery store in the US has tons of vegetables for sale. I find such generalization very irritating.

In fact I detest the whole idea of this thread as it just brings about random posts based on stereotypes or one off experiences and it’s always the negative that are posted. The US has good food and bad food same as the UK, and in my experience the US has more variety of food than the UK.

I currently have plenty of good fresh food on hand.

from my grocery:
yellow squash
red peppers
avocados
lacinto kale
sour dough bread made in the store
lots of nuts - walnuts, pistachios, cashews
blueberries

from the local farmers market:
lovely locally grown mushrooms
sun dried tomatoes
chicken breast
chicken spinach sausage
steal cut oats

from the neighbors:
Cucumbers
several types of tomatoes
gazpacho soup from local ingredients
Fresh chives
access to fresh eggs

no garden this year but I do have a few pots:
rosemary
two kinds of basil
parsley
oregano
and the neighbors says to pick anything I like from her garden.

Things I made:
quinoa and chickpea salad with cumin, tumeric and walnuts
roasted red pepper sauce

The problem is, not everyone can afford to eat like this. In my area you must have a car or it is very difficult to access reasonably priced, fresh, healthy food.

also, I’ve never had a fanta in my life.

Hahaha you made me laugh but I agree. The US is the one country everyone is an expert on and so confidently proclaims their point is the holy grail of facts. The poster who said no ones bakes from scratch in the US made me laugh so much, such generalizations are ridiculous.

I'm going to post a list of the cheeses available in my local supermarket after my trip there tomorrow or Saturday.

(But just off the top of my head, last time I was even in Aldi I saw Havarti, Gouda, halloumi, feta, queso fresco, Oaxaca, cotija - along with the usual cheddar, Swiss, muenster, monterey jack, Danish blue, gorgonzola, chevre, 'American', pepper jack, and more.)

I’m fascinated to know all about “the finesse” of U.K. food. Is it the elegance of gravy poured over chips? Or the lovely lob of mushy peas served with the finest deep fried fish?

I love anerican food, but yes I think itsmuch more heavily processed than the UK. And fresh food is much dearer, but fast food is cheaper.

However,we love more traditional things, like proper low and slow bbq, proper biscuits and fried chicken, gumbo, creole, shrimp po' boys, proper texmex too, and yes, even chicken fried steak is really good.

I enjoy trying their fast food, just because its different and its definitely an experience eating there.

I remember eating from the lunch menu and thinking they must have given us the wrong thing as it was a huge massive plate of pasta. Till I saw at a table over the way where it was like an oval platter of the same pasta. I struggled to finish my lunch portion!

But I also love the variety of different cuisines available. We stopped in a small town enroute to somewhere much bigger and had some of the nicest Thai food out of a strip mall restaurant. We've also had really good Vietnamese, Japanese, Ethiopian, Chinese and Malaysia food too

Oh and the Jewish food in NYC is amazing too, and the amish market stuff too. Proper biscuits are so tasty, like buttery, flakey, salty fluffy, crunchy scones. Yet I had some in texts that were awful. The food is as good as the source.

“the blacks who were promoted from slaves to cooks?” Is that how Georgia schools are teaching history these days? Shameful. 😳

If no American cooks from scratch who is buying American cookbooks like Dorie Greenspan, Rose Berenbaum and Richard Sax?

It's a very big place with a lot of regional variation. Where I grew up almost everyone with a back yard would have at least one citrus tree and many people grew their own veg. And I grew up in a mostly working class town.

A lot of people don't bake because the cost of the raw ingredients is much higher than it is in the UK.

I in America years ago but I the portions were huge because it was expected you wouldn’t eat it all
but
get the restaurant to pack it up to take home with you? Here it is seen as embarrassing to take your leftovers home - though I think it is getting better. I don’t care though - I now always ask to take home anything I haven’t eaten!

• lived
• thought

Some of this sound food sounds lovely. I don't think I'd realised how much regional variations influence day to day eating.

It's shameful that there is such a huge divide between rich and poor, similar to the UK really.

American and America are the wrong adjective and noun, what are the correct terms?

I seemed to have touch a raw nerve with a few people so apologise but just as a counterpoints. The finesse I was referring to was "fine dining" (what ever that means) not fast food /junk food. Chips and gravy is not too far of Canadian poutine!

Still not sure about adding Hellman's to cake mix, though.

Mayo in a cake? This is a new one to me and I'm a seasoned baker! Off to Google and potentially make a mayonnaise cake...

Its really laughable that you're assuming American cuisine is the same as what you find in your boring tourist restaurants. No variety of fruits and veg and cheese! Come on.

OP the noun is the US, adjective is American

Calling the US 'America' is bad form because it implies we're the only country in the continents

I know. I have reported the post @mnhq please take this down as it’s incredibly offensive and racist

American vs UK Fanta - just find it interesting.

Because America is as Capitalist as you can get. It's more a business than a country. Every decision is made with profit in mind. And the bottom line is more important than people and their health and lifestyles.

Ha I’d forgotten all about mayo cake! My work used order this chocolate mayo cake from Portillos for birthdays that all the locals were convinced was some sort of delicacy but was universally hated by the large British/Irish contingent. I’d put in the same category as deep dish pizza, which is very hard to like if you’re not from Chicago… (sorry!)