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What Americans Can Learn from Other Food Culture

            Food feeds the soul. To the extent that we all eat food, and we all have souls, food is the single great unifier across cultures. But what feeds tour soul? What you want to cook and eat is an accumulation, a function of your experiences that the people you have dated, what you have learned and where you have gone.

            American cuisine is moving in the same direction, becoming more localized, not globalized. Because American cuisine is shaped by the natural wealth of the country, American’s food identity can be said “meat”. We can catch from part of their celebrations that every season, every harvest, and every holiday has meat.

            Sometimes food means survival. For example, the Chinese food of America has entirely modified their cuisine to survive and been based on economic necessity. Meanwhile, the Chinese food of China are going to be forgetting their own style because the younger generation is focused purely on studying, and their parents never teach them how to cook.

            Food as status has always been a huge thing in other culture. Being able to afford to eat their food is part of cultural history. How and why you eat your food is also very cultural. Some culture eat food not necessarily for taste, but for texture.

            Also, community is key to the food culture. The daily food that breaks the morning, for example, features their own traditional fare.

            One of the great things about cuisine is the physical manifestation of our relationship with the natural world. It can become even more important than language, and even other culture. Your first relationship as a human being is about food. Also, the first social experience we have is being put to the breast or bottle. Learning to eat is learning to become their human.

TED read : What Americans Can Learn from Other Food Culture. written by Amy S. Choi

http://ideas.ted.com/2014/12/18/what-americans-can-learn-from-other-food-cultures/