On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 04:07:59 GMT, "Tea" > wrote:

>
>"Frogleg" > wrote in message
.. .

>> As Sturgeon's Law has it, "90% of science fiction is crap. Of course,
>> 90% of everything is crap."

>On this we can agree. I was not taking a swipe at American food, or the US.
>What I was saying is that most food is crap. What makes it even more crappy
>is the tolerance of round the clock crap. Mediocrity than Long Island to the
>Golden Gate, or from Vancouver to Prince Edward Island, is more than
>'mediocre'- it's horrid. I'm not Canadian, but I know in the US we do
>actually have wonderful foodways, yet most of our food is pretty bad because
>most people do not cook, are used to eating mass-market food, and haven't
>had a chance to train their taste buds. If I lived in French Polynesia and
>only ate Spam, I wouldn't recognize good food either- because I would
>probably assume that all food is supposed to be over-salted and filled with
>fat.

This is, at least in part, my point. I don't like being pushed into a
chauvinsit corner, but these sweeping pronouncements often convey (to
me) that the rest of the world is a paradise of native culture, and
everything American is sub-standard or suspect. I look around my
lower-middle class neighborhood supermarket and am saddened by its
aisles of snack food and sugary cereals, and perpetual offerings of
well-traveled produce. However, I know this isn't a whole-country
phenomenon. I've also read of the care and interest many French take
in their food. All of them?

Tastes and food fashions change, too. While it's not a definitive
statistic, sales of cookbooks of every conceivable stripe have risen
astronomically in the past decade. They may not be "authentic," but
how many Thai restaurants were there 20 years ago? Salsa overtook
catsup as the most popular condiment some time ago. Current interest
in "organic" standards shows at least *some* are concerned with food
issues. Even fast-food outlets are responding to pressure and offering
healthier alternatives. Of course, whether 'healthy' is precisely
congruent with 'excellent' is another discussion. :-)

The Slow Food movement shows that some realize an emphasis on
quick'n'easy may be misguided. We're coming along.

I've never been anywhere in Asia, but here I am with a kitchenful of
dahl and coconut milk and (inferior) nam pla and sesame oil and sesame
seeds and nori and ginger and tamarind and chiles. I may not be in the
center of the normal distribution curve, but I don't think I'm *that*
far out on an edge.