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"American" food
(thelemmy.club)
There's no such thing as American food
Then explain this
Last panel gets it wrong, though.
Rest of the world totally thinks that there is such a thing as original American food:
High-caloric, hyper-processed junk containing no significant nutritional value but much too much fat, fructose sirup and carcinogenic substances.
That, and watery beer.
I’m an american who lives in colombia and i can confirm this. The american section of my local supermarket is just boxed mac and cheese, cheese sauces, doritos, red bull, ketchup, and cake mix (the cakes here are way less sugary than US ones).
So... they don't have the specific kind of mozzarella you need to properly make pizza? That sucks. I love homemade pizza. It's hard work, but it's really rewarding. Kinda makes me miss when I worked at a good pizzeria. Not the junk ones like Little Caesar's, I'm talking about making the sauce from scratch with tomatoes from the garden. Shit's awesome. Hell, if I could, I'd make the mozzarella from scratch too.
I live near an italian store so i’m not lacking for any cheeses.
behold the quintessential American food: The twinkie
All of these foods were created by people from these countries who immigrated to the US
Also, gatekeeping food is annoying
I don't think I have actually ever seen any actual indigenous individual of a culture get mad at someone for cooking food from their own culture.
But I don't know if that's because the people who would've been mad about it got genocided and no longer exist, or if it's because people actually just don't care.
The people I HAVE witnessed getting angry about that sort of thing ... were white. I suppose they're trying to be 'culturally sensitive' but isn't that just kinda ... patronizing and infantilizing? low-key "talking over" them? As if to imply they need a white savior swooping down to the rescue >.< it just makes me uncomfortable.
White people just can't stand to be uninvolved. They don't call it brown knighting now, do they?
Yes! I hate the "this is not authentic" argument so much because it is so dumb. Stuff changes, taste changes and if people enjoy it, who gives a shit for authenticity points? This is so incredibly dumb it really makes me angry.
Furthermore, "X isn't as authentic as it is in X country" is lowkey bigoted towards immigrants. A lot of the times, the dishes being talked about are ones made by immigrants who are trying to cook dishes they are familiar with but using ingredients and equipment available to them in their new home. Whenever I hear about "authenticity" arguments, it's always acting like this food was being made by white Americans trying to krib and distort another culture's food to suit their palate, instead of immigrants authentically expressing their culture with what's available in their new context.
I for one can't think of anything more authentic than someone applying their cultural knowledge in creative and unique ways to survive and make a life in an environment unfamiliar to them.
Being something of a burrito connoisseur, I can certainly tell you what a bad burrito tastes like. It tastes like McDonald's greasy fucking cutting boards.
Okay? I don't know how you read my comment as a defense of McDonald's.
The "this is not authentic" exist because the food is sold as "authentic".
I don't care about what you eat. You could put pineapple on a pizza, or make a spam sushi roll for what I care.
But I do care about names. Because I expect things to be what they are called:
If I order a carbonara, I don't expect to find mushrooms, cream and onion on it. Same if I order a gazpacho made with the wrong ingredients, or if I order a certain kind of ramen...
It's fine if we do fusion cuisine, I love to experiment! But don't tell me a bun filled with lattuce and raw onions is a cheeseburger because it's not; call it a lattuce and onion sandwich dammit!
American food is like the borg, we just assimilate other food cultures into our own but adapt them to fit with everything else.
SmorgasBorg...
Adapt them to fit a certain criteria of saturated fats and corn syrup.
a taco is basically anything in a tortilla
https://www.tastinghistory.com/episodes/tacos
But not every thing in a tortilla is a taco.
American food always looks like it'd give you a heart attack if you got within 10m of it
People say that but the funny thing is that American food, even fast food, is not that greasy. Cultures that pan-fry food (like a lot of Eastern European ones) end up with way greasier food.
IMHO, the issue is not just deep or pan frying. It's about the kind of oil you use for that. South europe does fry stuff, but generally uses sunflower seed oil or, even better, olive oil.
Oh it definitely is greasy, and sugary, and carbohydrated, and with a minimum of fibres.
Bro the US deep fries so much that even their memes are deep fried.
Deep-fried food is generally less greasy than pan-fried food.
A burger is American.
Burgers are "as American as apple pie".
Ah yes, hamburgers from Hamburg, Pennsylvania.
Hamburg steak is not a Hamburger. Putting it between buns was made here by German immigrants. So yes, it is American.
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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