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Jason Salcido

ENG 367

Joni Adamson

16th Apr. 2018

Food Culture in the United States

The United States has struggled with the idea of identity since its foundation over 200

years ago. Instead of a widely accepted national identity, focus shifts more to the individual

identity and beliefs. The encouragement of personal identity is the perfect soil for the seed of

capitalism to take root and flourish. However, as the country grew the capitalist system reached

every corner of U.S markets, and one market that it had detrimental effects on was food. As the

search for the cheapest, easiest to make food became more and more important to consumers and

a market that kept up with this demand evolved, the desire for a food culture dwindled in

Americans. No other country has industrialized agriculture to the level that America has and

because of this Americans no longer know or care to know where their food comes from, or the

costs in which it takes to get it. In Ruth Ozeki’s, My Year of Meats, Jane Takagi-Little works on

a Japanese television show that features “the perfect American family” cooking meals that the

producers feel are appropriate. Much of what the producers want is what they feel “the perfect

American family” looks like in their narrative that satisfies their viewers and sponsors. In

Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Kingsolver recounts her year of living off

food grown locally and herself. As an advocate for the Slow Foods Movement, Kingsolver

makes it a point to describe the benefits of slow foods and the fault of capitalism in the decay of

food culture in America. Kingsolver and Ozeki suggest that the development of a food culture in
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the United States has been stagnated by the dominance of capitalism in the food industry, and I

propose that food culture can be developed via education of food systems and farming.

Before understanding the consumption of “convenient” foods, one must understand

exactly how inconvenient it is to cultivate them. America has a bad habit of wanting everything

and having it instantly. This once inconceivable demand is being met now with the help of faster

transportation, genetic modification, and the practice of growing crops that aren’t indigenous to

America. The cost of transporting foods from around the world into the United States to meet

demand because of the lack of a food culture made up of our own food has costed the

environment dearly. In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Kingsolver notes that “the average food item

on a U.S grocery shelf has traveled father than most families go on their annual vacations” (),

and although it was made somewhat in jest, there is truth to this statement. The distances most

foods travel is great, and the problem is that it comes with a high cost. Not just monetarily, but

environmentally. The fossil fuel consumption needed for the transport of foods from around the

world to every Walmart around the country costs the environment heavy tolls. As Mol stated in

his essay “Globalization”, globalization in the context of capitalist means of production,

“globalization will lead to the same kind of social and environmental disasters that befell

capitalism” (Keywords for Environmental Studies, 127) and as a result led to dangerous

overconsumption of resources meet global demand. Taking into consideration the costs of global

capitalism on the food economy, one can see that cultivating a food culture in the United States

is a good step into reducing carbon emissions by using the resources readily available to us.

Understanding how global capitalism is a factor into our food systems is critical, and is one of

the many aspects that should be integrated into a local food system/agriculture curriculum.
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The effect of capitalism on the food market in America has led to a demand for foods

from all around the world available in the supermarket down the street. As with nearly anything,

the overabundance of something leads to the diminishing of its value. By understanding this one

can see the same about foods from halfway around the world being cultivated outside of their

growing season and nowhere near their homelands being less special as they once were. The

diminishing of value of food both from around the world and those grown in our area has

resulted in the lack of a food culture in the United States. In Ozeki’s My Year of Meats, she

discusses the fall of American food culture at the hands of Walmart, saying “If there is one single

symbol for the demise of regional American culture, it is this superstore prototype, a huge

capitalist boot that stomped the moms and pops, like soft, damp worms, to death” (02:07:39).

America’s desire for the cheapest, easiest food available has not only costed it a food culture, but

the many local small businesses. As a country that deeply values our small businesses (at least,

claims that it does), supporting small businesses that use locally grown foods should be a key

step to helping our communities grow closer together. Educating our students as they’re

progressing through our education systems on what foods should be and are best grown in their

respective climates will strengthen our communities and better establish a sense of place.

We’ve considered the correlation between capitalism and the lack of food culture in the

United States, but not we must consider how we can establish a food culture in our country. The

key to establishing a food culture in a country where capitalism works against its development is

to educate the public on local food systems and farming. Education is the most valuable tool for

the sustainability movement, and specifically, “place-based education and bioregionalism intend

to build affiliation with local habitats and community” (Thomashow, Keywords for

Environmental Studies, 90) which allow for students to understand the food systems around
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them. As it stands now, education into food systems in Arizona, for example, is lacking in the

public education curriculum. We may briefly discuss the 5 C’s (Cattle, cotton, copper, citrus,

climate), but it’s often taught at a young age and the students don’t truly understand what they

mean culturally and traditionally. These days it would be difficult for most Arizonans to even

name some foods that are signature to their state, because the United States has become

homogenized when it comes to food. For a country whose states emphasize their individuality,

one would think that their food would be at the forefront of their cultural identity. The easiest

way to grow food that corresponds to a states national identity is simple: grow food that is

capable of growing there easily. Going back to Arizona, we have the tendency to grow crops that

aren’t suitable for the Arizona climate and use an immense amount of water to sustain these

crops. For the average Arizonan, it doesn’t even occur to them that it’s a problem. Kingsolver

discussed the issue of the average persons disconnect with agriculture in Animal, Vegetable,

Miracle, saying

Many bright people are really in the dark about vegetable life. Biology teachers face kids in

classrooms who may not even believe in the metamorphosis of bud to flower to fruit and seed,

but rather, some continuum of pansies becoming petunias becoming chrysanthemums; that's the

only reality they witness. (04:28:18)

This problem gives the uneducated population the luxury to claim that environmental problems

don’t exist simply because they’ve never been exposed to it to see the natural processes unfold

for themselves. Kingsolver’s passage further suggests that exposure to local natural processes

can lead to a more intimate relationship between residents and their food. Education of local

climate and what can grow there is an excellent step to develop a food culture. Ways education
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of these can be implemented is creating classes in our secondary education system that teaches

history of a state’s food systems, its general climate, and foods native to it.

The lack of a food culture in the United States is unfortunate, especially when comparing

it to the many that exist in every other country. However, I argue that the lack of a food culture

should not be seen solely as a fault in America, but as an opportunity to establish one using the

technology and information we have now to create one that’s sustainable. Since the United States

is a very diverse country in landscape, food culture cannot be uniform throughout, and this fact

offers plenty of possibilities. Educating the American population on the current state of food

systems and their local agriculture will lead to a food culture developing naturally as they

cultivate foods more suitable to their environments. One may argue that in certain areas, such as

low-income urban areas, that buying locally grown is difficult as there isn’t as much room to

grow. However, there have been movements for growing food in urban areas such as urban

gardens that are integrated into cities. Innovation should be directed towards development of a

food culture in constructive ways for the communities instead of how to get the most difficult

food as soon as possible. Capitalism may have its strong suits in some areas, but when it comes

to what we put in our bodies on a daily basis, the cheaper and most convenient option isn’t

always best for the consumer, and the whole world for that matter.
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Works Cited

Mol, Arthur P.J.. “Globalization”. Keywords for Environmental Studies, edited by Adamson,

Joni et al, New York University Press, 2016, pp. 125-127.

Thomashow, Mitchell. “Education”. Keywords for Environmental Studies, edited by Adamson,

Joni et al, New York University Press, 2016, pp. 89-92.

Kingsolver, Barbara. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Narrated by Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L.

Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver, audiobook, unabridged edition, HarperAudio, 2007.

Audible.com.

Ozeki, Ruth. My Year of Meats. Narrated by Anna Fields, audiobook, unabridged edition,

Blackstone Audiobooks, 2005. Audible.com.