Food Fights and American Values

Milk has long held a venerated role in American cuisine; establishing its medicinal value has long been used as a means to establish the superiority of American culture and substantiate the need for cultural assimilation. Interestingly, while domestic scientists condemned the use of spices and salt, the use of “white sauce” endured as a staple in American dishes. Nonetheless, it was evident that the New England cuisine which culinary reformers attempted to standardize as American food was unpopular with many American themselves, particularly rural Southern and Midwestern Americans. The federal food regulations that arose also stifled small businesses, many of them run by immigrant populations, against large corporations. In modern day, this continues to be an unfortunate trend; despite mounting food and safety regulations enforced by the government, the government otherwise occupies a detached role in providing the financial means by which such businesses can fulfill such requirements. For many small businesses in particularly immigrant enclaves, this has stimulated greater distrust and ire toward government policy respecting local businesses. Food carts owned by Italian and Jewish immigrants were particularly targeted under accusations of being unsanitary; such government regulations in times completely eliminated entire food industries such as the chili queens of San Antonio. The Prohibition Era in particular antagonized immigrants and American nationalists against one another. As the federal government imposed taxes to dissuade alcohol consumption, many germans were instead provoked to incorporate themselves in American politics. Figures such as Charles J Hexamer infused American ideals such as liberty to defend the right to drink and purchase beer. With beer consumption integrated into the cultures of many immigrant communities, the temperance movement’s attempt to conflate American cuisine with self-restraint was promptly shunned particularly by immigrants. Eventually, during the Great Depression, immigrant cuisines experienced greater integration into the kitchens of the mainstream American public when economic practicality was greatly valued. Nonetheless, as ethnic and invented dishes became increasingly integrated within regions, it became increasingly difficult to distinguish a singularly American dish. Gabaccia underscores that it was the advent of World War II, “a national wartime emergency”, which precipitated the federal government to promote and designate integration between ethnic cuisines and the American lifestyle as patriotic. The American lifestyle itself is one established on such values as efficiency and enterprise; thus, self-restraint in fact did become a hallmark of the American culinary tradition rooted in economic rather than moral grounds.