Immigrant Foods Threaten America
Published May 23, 2006
In this nation of immigrants, there is some worry that foreigners threaten our security, language, culture, and our very nature as a uniquely "American Culture."
Blogcritics has been full of the ongoing debates and unfolding government actions in Congress. Here in Mexico, I (as an American) have been monitoring the attitudes and reactions of the media and local people. They are not totally in agreement on the issue of our common border. In America, fear, rancor, xenophobic paranoia, economic worries and, as always, latent racism seem to rule the debate. Mexicans are worried for their sovereignty, not to mention the millions of dollars sent back from workers in the States.
Illegal immigrants are not the same problem as migrating foods. The foods are another threat both real and long-standing. From the beginning, immigrants have brought their own foods and clung to those foreign tastes. Many of these immigrant foods are on our tables and in our restaurants and stores. Perhaps the Minutemen and Republicans will try to protect America from this subversion of the national stomach.
It may not be my favorite but The Internet Pizza Server ("Something good for your nerve endings™, since 1994") delivered a pizza directly to my computer. In nanoseconds, the site delivers a virtual pizza with a choice of toppings from an extensive list including "cheese, beef, eyeballs, goblins, kittens, pepperoni, fingers, green olives, eggs, toast, golf balls, nails, smiles..." etc. I chose cheese, green olives, and beetles. To each their own.
When the Italians began to arrive on our shores and became an integral part of the melting pot, they brought their own foods, tastes, and spices. Garlic, olive oil, oregano, basil, and pasta entered our diets. By now, even the French have put pizza into their diet. Here, with typically French savoir-faire, is a French presentation of pizza.
Pizza has become part of America's diet. It is surely not the Neapolitan street food for the poor that it once was. A history of pizza came up in an article in American Heritage. The lengthy and historical history, "American Pie: How a Neapolitan street food became the most successful immigrant of all" by Hanna Miller, is definitely to read while you wait for the pizza to come by teen-aged, speeding driver with neon signs on his roof and wings on his feet.
Ms. Miller starts with an observation I never noticed. Almost every type of food available, from ma po tofu to smoked mullet, has a place in the Yellow Pages under "Restaurants." She writes:
- Immigrant Foods Threaten America
- Published: May 23, 2006
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Tastes
- Filed Under: Politics: International, Culture: Society, Tastes: Food and Drink
- Writer: Howard Dratch
- Howard Dratch's BC Writer page
- Howard Dratch's personal site
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Comments on this articleComments
Ethnic food, like everything else ethnic, is detestable and noone should eat it.
Instead of just slavishly eating the same food your mother made, one should investigate what foods one needs, and the side effect of foods and then design onesown diet. As I do (more people should be like me!)
Most ethnic foods are nothing more than cheap food-components which are combined into fatty globs which is easily packaged and easily sold to masses of ignorant people.
I must disagree with these comments. "Illegals" may or may not be fat. America is suffering its own obesity epidemic which comes as much or more from fast foods, junk foods and convenience foods than from foreign foods. Unless the chains of McDonalds, Pizza Huts, Kentucky Fried and the rest are really owned by "illegals".
Bliffle wrote, "Ethnic food, like everything else ethnic, is detestable and noone should eat it." Which ethnic foods: slabs of roast beef (English), watercress soup (Chinese), Tandoori chicken (India), stuffed grape leaves (Greece), vichyssoise (French), Fish in Veracruzana sauce (Mexican), Miso soup (Japan)?
Obviously different ethnic groups have "... cheap food-components which are combined into fatty globs..." There are hot dogs covered with bacon, Quarter-pounders with cheese, deep-fried ham and cheese sandwiches, brie baked in a pastry shell, Cuban sandwiches with everything on them... I have made myself hungry with the first group and would be dead if I ate from group B.
In Newsweek on line today Dr. Dean Ornish wrote on "Globalizing Health",
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Illegal Avenue--coming soon to a theatre near you.
I wrote about how illegals are creating an obesity crisis here with their low wages and more junk food available in this country. In fact school districts are replacing black women, single with children, with illegals in the cafeteria who speak NO English. They are impacting the food thing here.
But not so fast with Heloise because she knows how fattening their foods are plus she's a vegetarian so I am not tempted by much of their fare. I do not eat Mexican food or texmessmex food because it is just not my culture.
I am part Italian and most of my food choices reflect that. Look at their kids, they're fat. The grocery stores in my area, mostly Mexican, are crammed with women and two shopping carts full of FOOD paid with by food stamp cards.
The kids are as fat as black kids and there is no end in sight.
Heloise