America as a Food Laboratory: The Future of the Fast Food Empire

2019/09/06

Compared to the number of people who become interested in foreign countries through food, there are few studies on the history of food culture by country. This book provides an overview of the characteristics and trends of American culture and society through food. Food is packed with memories of a distant, buried past. It is a time capsule that tells us how a group secured its food, who they met, and how they built their own eating habits.

What is etched into American food is a memory that is often overlooked: that this country's food culture has important origins in the non-Western world, such as indigenous peoples and Black slaves, and is formed through a hybrid layering of wisdom from immigrants from various regions. America has experimented with creating hybrid original dishes that did not exist anywhere else in the world and making them shared property. The history of food culture reflects that it was not just white people who built this country, but that a hybrid and free experimental spirit is at the core of this country's creativity. This eloquently demonstrates that politics hostile to immigrants and minorities goes against the very foundations of this country.

But why is the result of that experiment standardized fast food? In fact, the hamburger, the mainstay of fast food, was one type of many creative ethnic sandwiches that met the demand for finger foods that grew along with industrial society. The ketchup and pickles essential to it are legacies of the ethnic food business, and the soft drinks indispensable to the fast food business were originally developed as health foods. Ironically, the results of hybrid creativity and technological innovation in industrial society also paved the way for the pursuit of food standardization and efficiency.

Today in America, a transformation toward a post-fast food society has begun. The legacy of the hippies' food culture revolution has revived and fused ethnic and healthy foods. Furthermore, community-supported agriculture, which prioritizes the environment and food safety, is replacing the large-scale monoculture of genetically modified varieties for fast food that reigns over a divided society, encouraging a shift from efficiency to the public good.

Fast food from America has swept the world. Knowing the trajectory of the experiment that is American food culture will deepen our understanding of this country and provide hints for rethinking our own dietary habits.

America as a Food Laboratory: The Future of the Fast Food Empire

Toru Suzuki

Chuko Shinsho

272 pages, 880 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.