Eating in the USA: Outlook on food: family, america, and the bourjuazi

So I'll start with my own family's outlook and treatment of food. Our attitude towards food can best be described as unappreciative; having owned restaurants for the past 17 years my entire family has grown incredibly comfortable as far as eating goes. We can eat whenever and however much we want. My brother and I were raised on mexican food from my fathers old restaurant, Burritoville. It was pretty much a fast food mexican place without all the frozen shit, but the title certainly suited it. My family would sometimes order copious amounts of food twice every day for free. We actually lived upstairs from one of our stores for about 7 years and for the majority of our time spent there we had free food.

Each day we would call down to order up and each time some mexican guy making minimum wage would run our food up.I remember guzzling down burrito after burrito with a quesadilla chaser washed down with a nice tall plastic bottle full of horchata, a mexican rice drink. Yup things sure were...fat. Even now after 2 years without processed sugar, pizza, or (for the most part) meat, I still have the same eating habits only now with fruits and health food.

Since my brother and I began eating mostly vegan my parents have had to change up their shoping list quite a bit. The only remaining junk foods left are oreos and chips, that my brother only eats because he has deprived himself of all animal products. Most of our dinners consist of large vegetable plates with minor seasoning and the occasional tofu or meat as a small side dish. Once we've all piled our plates high with assorted veggies my family all crowds around a flashing screen while I sit in the other room and try to read/ zone out. While we aren't your average McDonalds eatin' American family we have certainly gotten the mindless act of shoveling food into our unappreciative gullets down.

I'm not too optimistic about the American way of food either. The way I see i, most of this country is just one big highway leading onto several massive strip malls and drive through fast food places with occasional detours to New York and San Fransisco. I have family in these wastelands; my aunt in LA is morbidly obese and whenever we go out she tries to get my brother and I to "put some meat on our bones" by going to KFC. UGH! My family in New Hampshire is no better; their idea of a balanced dinner is mashed potatoes and gravy, meatloaf, and a small side salad. Now when I say meatloaf I would like to place extra emphasis on the LOAF part; my grandmother raised 6 children, most of whom were overweight and every night, as they squeezed themselves into their seats lined up around their tiny, intimate kitchen table, she fed them precisely this. The meatloaf that my grandmother cooks could feed a small commune in Africa. Don't even get me started on those mashed potatoes...

My extended family is what I would define as being the the average American piggy. But it is certainly understandable; my grandparents are, after all, products of the same generation of idealistic and delusional individuals that attempted to live the sedate, pastel colored life of white suburbia.

The predominant US way of eating now is pretty gross. We are one of the few places that still consider Micky D's a fun filled, family restaurant. With our great abundance of food has also come a severe lack of appreciation for it.
One interesting thing that Andy brought up in class today was that America is one of the only countries that has food fights. How many movies have we all seen that have some crazy all out food war packed with kids. Here in America kids throw their food at each others faces when they so please while in Africa children with bloated stomachs can go for months without eating a single nutritious meal. Sounds pretty fucked up to me.

Every where we look we see food; on tv, driving our kids to school, at work, online... Its insane. Like so many other potentially beautiful things in our culture, we have been desensitized to food. We eat out of necessity, just to satisfy our being. In movies heartbroken women cry while stuffing their faces with Ben & Jerry's. Whole families crowd around flashing tvs while stuffing their faces with (mostly) unhealthy food. The point being that we eat for comfort or to fulfill some sort of oral fixation and in doing this we lose the joy of eating, the taste of the food as it hits our taste buds.

We are also one of the only countries that has nutrition facts on everything. We are calorie counters, weight watchers, diet deviants so fixated on our shape that we lose sight of the beauty of eating.