Eating American

A year or so ago, a colleague who was teaching a course in science writing asked me to offer a lecture on food to her class. I chose as my subject aspects of the history of domestication. I regard domestication as one of the most important technical achievements in the history of our species. The lecture was well received, I thought. But in the discussion that followed, someone asked a question that had to do in part with American eating habits. When I responded, I mentioned in passing that I did not think that there is such a thing as an American cuisine. I thought nothing about it as I said it; though I had never discussed the subject with a class before, it wasn’t a new idea. But in the next five minutes of the dialogue, I came to realize I had said something that some members of the class found at the least hurtful, if not downright insulting. My gaffe (if that is what it was) became clear almost immediately. I was asked by one student whether, since I believed we had no cuisine, I also believed we had no culture. I responded with amazement. I talked momentarily about (North) America’s ¹ highly regarded art, literature, drama, and poetry, claiming as I said it that our music was gradually achieving a stature equal to that we had won in these other fields. Even as I spoke I realized that the questioner was really wondering whether she had come across one of those awful persons who cannot resist running down his own country and, with her question, was just looking for proof. (I recall thinking that I had better mention some names—such as Ives, Gershwin, Bernstein, Joplin, Menotti, and Copland—in my answer, or I might be in even more hot water.) Another student took a different tack. He talked happily about “eating Thai” one night, and “eating Chinese” the next, and asked rather plaintively whether that couldn’t be “our cuisine.” He plainly felt that having access to a lot of different “cuisines” was a wonderful idea—and certainly better than meat loaf. It was all amiable enough; but I knew I’d said something a lot of people did not like to hear, nor want to believe. Before the class ended, the instructor invited students to write papers about my lecture; after a week she sent me copies of two of them, written by class members. Reading those papers made it additionally clear that I had touched a nerve. Neither paper included any comments on domestication; both talked about cuisine. If America didn’t have a cuisine, these folks implied that it should; and they were certainly not prepared to accept my view of things. Though neither said it outright, I could infer that both wondered about my motives. As a consequence, I was left as interested in their sensitivity as I had been in the topic. Why, I asked myself, is having a cuisine important—is it because other people have one? Do people really think having a cuisine is like having a music, or a literature? Is having a cuisine like having a literature? Could it be good not to have a cuisine? If you don’t have a cuisine, can you get one?