Reading this, I feel like I’m seeing the past through the eyes of a US-based zoomer. This person should spend 6 months living with the locals in any 3rd-world country.
The US has a fantastical food culture because it's a large country that can natively produce almost every crop, and was historically agrarian. Adding to that, the US food culture always changes to wars, new immigrants, boycott, and government subsidies. Most countries aren't like that, and are significantly more conservative with dietary changes.
[1] We do not love that phrasing. The Cold War is over. Just say which continent you mean specifically.
With all these advantages in the US's favor, why is it that Europe is held as a standard of food done right? Discourse on the American diet is almost always concerned with obesity and diet-related diseases and induced by a villain-of-the-year ingredient (e.g. transfats, sodium, cholesterol, oxidants, monosodium-glutamate, corn syrup, etc). Where as, say, the Dutch breakfast and Italian wine culture are respectively associated with growing heights and increased longevity.
Because filter bubbles and liking Europe[1] is very fashionable in filter bubbles that are demographically similar to HN and most of HN has a social circle full of similar demographics that they get their food opinions from.
There are plenty of people who hold middle America in high culinary regard. The rest of the things those people tend to have to say are generally not welcome around here so those people don't hang out here and don't hang out with the kind of people who hang out here so there's little discussion going on between these groups of people.
[1] For a very specific definition of "Europe" that is a far smaller than the actual continent.
I don't think that's the case. Demographics for cooking and pop nutritionist shows are not comparable to the demographics of HN. The audience of the former is dominated by married, middle-aged women in metro-suburban areas across the United States while the audience of the latter is dominated by unmarried, late-20s, bicoastal, urban-dwelling men. Outside of family relations or significant others, I see little overlap between the two at the individual or social level.
> There are plenty of people who hold middle America in high culinary regard. The rest of the things those people tend to have to say are generally not welcome around here so those people don't hang out here and don't hang out with the kind of people who hang out here so there's little discussion going on between these groups of people.
My complaint is not about a lack of high regard, but lack of objective assessment. Sure, association or lack thereof might have something to do with a lack of commentary on American diets. But it has nothing to do with unqualified undermining of those diets. Such an opinion must have first come out of someone's mouth before becoming an oft-repeated factoid.
If you know of any, what middle American diets are associated with height, longevity, increased musculature, or better overall health and by what standard is this proven?
I think many "people" (aka the ones comparing food cultures and rating restaurants) would say that big US grocery stores are incredible, and our best restaurants are as interesting as any on earth.
It's also fair to say that our average person is extremely out of shape, and eats a comparatively huge amount of processed garbage. Food culture in a lot of suburban places is a mix of fantastic (fresh affordable food available year round) and dismal (32oz Monsters and Applebees).
My diet (a city dweller who pays some attention to food, but likes some junk), my neighbor the vegan (who is great cook are rarely eats out), my buddy's from our small city back in Missouri, and a poor child in southeast DC are all totally different.
It's not necessarily good or bad, so I wouldn't call it an advantage.
I didn't realize it could so easily be confused for “fantastic” which has a nice connotation.
I wonder how many people are thinking of a particular place when they say 'third world country.' In my experience they're just using it as a slightly less offensive way to mean 'shithole'. Which of course we also see when Europeans want to talk shit about America, so they call it a third world country.
"3rd world country with a Gucci belt" is a rather popular one.