A Bite of America
Exploring the food of a country should be, I think, one
of the best ways for those who come to this country for the first time to assimilate
themselves into its culture. I have found in these two months there are many differences
between American food and the food in my home country.
Fast
or Slow
Before I came to America, my general impression on
Western food from books and televisions is that fast food occupies people’s
life – as people are often busy with their business, study or many other things
every day, they like to finish everything including eating as fast as possible
to save time. After I came here, I find that though the pace of life in America
is not so fast as I imagined before, still there are a lot of fast foods with
high amount of sugar, salt and calories. Compared with the traditional foods in
my home country which are elaborately cooked, fast foods, which in most cases
are fried in oil, can make people feel full with just a smaller amount of
intake. On the other hand, it is really faster to prepare fast foods, thus
making it a solution in case people are really busy. For example, I have
laboratory sections in early afternoon of Mondays and Wednesdays, while my
classes end late in the morning. On these two days of a week, I like to have
many French fries for lunch in dining halls, while on the other days, I prefer
spending more time enjoying the delicious food from bars of different dining
halls, the ice creams, fruits, and snacks.
Cooked
or Uncooked
One strange thing I find about America food is that
people like to eat vegetables uncooked, especially in salads. It really takes
me some time to get accustomed to it, because in my home country people like to
eat cooked vegetables and to cook vegetables in a lot of ways (The first time I
try the uncooked vegetables I even feel like they have a taste of grass…
>.<). I think it may because Americans think it should be healthy to eat
vegetables “as they are in the fields” to maintain more nutrition and prevent
the loss of nutrition from cooking in high temperature. Fortunately, the
uncooked vegetables are now not so strange to me. I find if I mix them with a
little yogurt instead of much salad sauce, it can be very delicious!
P.S. The name A
Bite of America is derived from a famous Chinese documentary television
series A Bite of China which first
aired on 2012. This series of documentary introduces the history of Chinese
food culture and eating and cooking of food in the daily life of Chinese
people.
Written by: Xingyu Zhou
No comments