American Cuisine

American cuisine in itself is not bad. Our cooks have an abundance of fresh ingredients and a heritage of marvelous regional dishes: apple pie, clam chowder, Louisiana gumbo, barbecued oysters, corn fritters, straw­berry shortcake, and countless other delectable dishes. As many guidebooks lamely say, it is possible to eat very well in America.

It is also possible to eat very badly, and many Americans do - by choice rather than necessity. A lot of supermarket food, while cheap and plentiful, is produced to provide the most calories with the longest shelf life and the shortest preparation time. The result is frozen dinners, packaged sweets, instant puddings, bottled salad dressings, and canned sauces. Manu­facturers are working night and day to invent new products that will capti­vate the public. Almost any conceivable meal is available ready-made.

The problem is that none of this stuff is very good. It supplies calo­ries, but in real satisfaction it doesn't measure up to anything fresh or home cooked. Even fruits and vegetables are raised to survive long shipping or storage periods, rather than for taste. Meats are tender and good, but very fatty and distressingly laden with hormones and antibiotics. Also, most su­permarket food is wrapped, canned, frozen, jarred, or packaged in such a way that you can't examine it until you get it home. Many are so well sealed that they're maddeningly difficult to open even at home.

A Tanzanian said he found American food so bland he nearly starved when he first came. "Back then, I couldn't even find a bottle of Ta­basco (a hot sauce) in my little town." Then he discovered pizza and sur­vived. The American palate has become braver than it used to be, but in the average household you won't find much seasoning in use beyond salt and pepper.

And sugar. There seems to be no end to the march on sweetness. One food writer swears that at a banquet he attended he was served a cup of M&M's (little candies) for an appetizer. Americans are stuck on sugar, and sugar (or other sweetener) is added to most packaged foods. It's hard to find a snack that isn't sweet, and a number of main-course dishes are served with a sweetener - such as pancakes with maple syrup and lamb with mint jelly. American pastries are very sweet, and Americans eat sweet desserts much more regularly than most peoples.

A lot of sodium (an element in salt) is regularly added to pack­aged foods, which has caused such an outcry among doctors (too much is said to be bad for the heart) that new lines of foods are coming out adver­tising themselves as "sodium-free". There are also a lot of sugar-free foods, but you have to read labels carefully to make sure you aren't just getting honey or corn syrup or an awful-tasting artificial sweetener.

The first two meals of the day eaten by an American are generally quick. The classic American breakfast of bacon and eggs is seen more on weekends than when the whole family is rushing to school and work. Cereal with milk and a cup of coffee is probably the usual morning sustenance of the average American. Lunch consists of a sandwich, soup or salad. Dinner is the largest meal of the day. The American dinner has fallen under medical disapproval due to its high cholesterol content. The meal typically consists of a large piece of meat, ketchup, vegetables with butter, potatoes (fried, or with butter), and a sweet dessert. It might also be an equally fatty frozen meal, heated in the microwave oven, or a high-calorie pizza.

A large proportion of Americans report that they would like to change their diets, but habits are hard to break. The beans, vegetables, and whole grains that doctors keep urging us to eat require time to cook, which we haven't got.

Bread

All bread starts from a simple recipe: you mix flour and water and cook it. Yet from this simple beginning come hundreds of different kinds of bread. There are flat breads from the Middle East and Asia and small thin sticks from Italy. The typical French loaf is long, thin, soft and white inside; German pumpernickel is dark and heavy and square. Bread can be cooked in several ways; often it is baked in an oven, but chappatis in India and tortillas in South Africa are not fried, and there's at least one bread that's boiled before it's baked. Bread can also include things other than flour, for instance, onions, sausages, potatoes or fruit. In other countries bread is an important part of everyday food. When people sit down for a meal, there is always bread on the table. They say: if there is no bread, there is no food. In countries where people eat a lot of bread words like "bread' and "dough" are sometimes used to talk about other important things. In English-speaking countries, for instance, "bread' and "dough" are used to mean "money". Similarly, people talk about their jobs as their "bread and butter", and the person in a family who brings home the money is called the "breadwinner".