Reading Response (Ariane Marchese)

Gabbacia’s writing describes the history and the evolution of food and what people believe we should eat in America. With that in mind, America is a country of immigrants and to exclude their dishes, as native born Americans did in the past, is being resistant to the country’s changes that are already happening. One may not want to eat foreign foods, but when these foreigners become part of the country the society. Even so, I do not believe “American food” is a fusion of cultures, but instead, like other countries, dependent on the resources and situation. Gabbacia mentions that Americans used to believe these foreign foods, because they use different ingredients, were not healthy. They even sent health officials that declared a majority of these families didn’t know how to prepare food. For example, native born Americans found it shocking that these immigrant families included a smaller portion of milk in their diets (124). I thought that this was because there was a large amount of milk available so Americans naturally thought it was normal to make it a large part of their diet. Gabbacia also brings up the point that food is also seen as a “source of pleasure” (136) to explain why the prohibition failed. However, I do not believe that a country’s food is defined by what they take pleasure in as one may technically take pleasure in foreign foods. In fact, I recall my mother telling me that frozen American food would bring her pleasure when she lived in the Philippines. However, that does not mean the Filipino dishes mostly consist of frozen foods. Instead, I believe that a country’s food is based on the prominent resources that are included in their foods. For example, there is a lot of rice grown in Asian countries and, thus, is found in many dishes (as a side, an entrée, and even desert). I think this also explains how American food evolved even during the World War II. Gabbacia said that Americans became more accepting of foreign dishes as they saved on resources that were needed for the war (147). Thus, with the smaller amount of meat and other resources available, foreign foods that relied less on these resources grew popular in America, becoming a larger part of American history and culture. I believe that this can become more apparent in the future as one resource becomes more apparent than the other or a situation demands a change in the consumption of a resource. With that in mind, American food is always changing with the people in the country and the situation.