In the Gabaccia’s chapter on “Food Fights and American Values”, she discusses what makes food “American” and explores the various ways in which native-born Americans have sought to control the spread of ethnic food as a result of the long-time influx of immigrants into the country. Whether it be by proclaiming that ethnic foods are inherently unhealthy, like food scientists did with Eastern European pickled foods or spicy Mexican foods, or by stripping ethnic foods of their traditional names, as people did with sauerkraut (renaming it to victory cabbage), Americans have been resistant to the assimilation of ethnic foods into the national pantry. Ultimately, this is an extension of xenophobic and nationalistic tendencies often exhibited in more overt policy or social manners. By encouraging and even forcing culinary assimilation onto immigrants, Americans tried to strip them of the vestiges of their culture, thus reenforcing American supremacy.
However, it is interesting to look at how these attempts to homogenize American cuisine have failed. Not only is the country too large to have a national food culture even only counting the native-born Americans, but plenty of foreign foods have cemented themselves as standard fare not just for people of that culture, but for Americans too. For instance, tacos have Central American roots and were brought to America by immigrants but have at this point been accepted into mainstream food culture. An American food appears to have very little to do with the origins, composition, or flavor. Whether or not a food is American or not appears to have more to do with whether native-born Americans can accept in, which appears to often be a longer process. As an immigrant group gains deeper roots in American culture and gets further along in the assimilation process, their foods become more deeply engrained into the national plate as well.
