You Are What You Eat?

So much of the American culture is a melting pot of so many others.  But some people still believe that we are more like a salad than a melting pot.  All of the different cultures stick out amongst the lettuce rather than cohesively mixing together to create a tasty stew.  I am a little bit more optimistic with regards to how our society acts as a whole.  I believe that we were once a salad, but now slowly moving towards a stew.  Enough with the drastic thematic buildup, but truly food is such an important aspect of identity and culture.

People really allow the food that they consume express who they are as a person.  Whether it be a health nut only consuming organic and locally grown items or a traditional Vietnamese household only preparing meals like Canh soup from their native homeland.  These well prepared dishes have the qualities of nourishment and are based on food that we can actually identify.  Should people really be eating food with contents like maltodextrin, calcium caseinate, lactalbumin or simplesse?  I think maybe a good rule to follow is that you should not eat anything unless you know what is actually in it.  The food companies are dictating what we as the customer are eating rather than us expressing to them the type of product that should be put onto the shelves. 

These highly processed food items represent the instant gratification that our society yearns for.  Our consumption expresses who we are, but does that expression line up with who we want to be.  Our culture is such that we have so many different food genres that cover such a diverse and broad spectrum.  Which is very obvious when compared to any other countries eating habits.  When people list off when they want to eat out as almost a 10^th grade geography review.  Do you feel like Mexican or Chinese?  Should all of these different food genres be made so readily available?  This confusion of identity plays into the lack of knowledge our society has with regards to living and eating a healthy diet.

So to get to the root of the problem, maybe we should explore the reason behind America’s lack of a food identity.  When we think about different countries, we closely associate what those citizens eat with that particular nations identity.  Italy : Sphaghetti, Japan : Sushi, Mexico : Tacos, Greece : Gyros…And the list can go on and on.  When people think of America, they assume that we eat burgers, fries and shakes.  Our culture, looking from the outside in, is being connotated with obesity, unhealthyness and worst of all grease.  Maybe we should learn from those around us and take in the opinions of people who live longer, healthier and with less disease.

Our lack of identity as a whole is what is causing us as a nation to be confused about what we should and should not be eating.  If we are what we eat, then we are made up of a whole bunch of different types of food, some good and some bad.