How did bland ass food become the hallmark of cuisine for white middle-class americans? I mean, fuck, just oven roasting those breasts would make them taste… I say this as a white dude from Canada
I don’t know, but anecdotally, my experience is that it’s mostly poorer and older folks that trend towards bland foods. It’s what they grew up with and what they know, and to them a lot of the recipes are tradition / comfort food. They simply weren’t exposed to a lot of spices and taste profiles growing up so they didn’t develop an appreciation for it and have no desire to step out of their comfort zone.
A lot of them were from large families and families that basically only ate what they raised and grew, for generations. They might’ve spent money to buy a small amount of extras like white sugar, bleached flour, salt, and maybe black pepper. And then in terms of produce, most of what was grown was staple foods, and a limited selection of easy to manage herbs like mint and dill that they could grow in a season then use or preserve.
Obviously that’s a bit over simplified and not every family and every body’s story is exactly alike, but it generally holds true to varying degrees in most of the cases of “blandfooditis” I’ve encountered.
Then there’s also the nature of a lot of larger families having to prepare meals for the least common denominator. Grampie can’t have too much salt, Grammie can’t chew cause she doesn’t have any teeth, Gina is diabetic, Braxton is allergic to pepper … so you end up with a lot of plain boiled meals simply because that’s the easiest/cheapest option that everybody can have.
A lot of people saying it isn’t real but it’s definitely a thing among some populations. It’s a holdover from the literal puritans who thought that simple, bland food was virtuous and heavily spiced or seasoned food was excessive and sinful. Over the years that aspect has kind of fallen away but there are still some groups of white protestants (primarily the “WASPs”- White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) who culturally prefer relatively bland food.
Wow, it really is a white middle class issue huh? My mom is from a rural area and could keep up with most professional chefs in the taste department. When my parents divorced, my dad got with one of the most stereotypical "Karen"s who’ve ever witnessed. She hated me because I refused to eat anything she had a hand in making. Ffs, I always made the deviled eggs for Thanksgiving ever since I was a child, here and her daughters said they won’t eat them if I put onion and relish in them. Needles to say, they did not eat my deviled eggs.
It’s pretty much a play by ear situation, as madre taught me!
But it’s pretty much 1/2 yolks 1/4 mustard & 1/4 mayo, healthy scoop of finely diced onions and non sweet relish. Season appropriately, but mine was usually Mrs. Dash and Tony C’s more spicy variant.
Racism. Honestly. Spices were seen for peasants and came from foreign lands. Over the generations it just became normal to come from a family with bland ass food.
Spices were associated with rotting food, because they were often used to cover up the flavor of overly game-y meat — at least that was common in the U.S. .
I don’t think you can blame people for eventually realizing that if a piece of meat has a suspicious amount of spice on it, it might just make you sick. You also can’t blame someone for being averse to the flavor afterwards — spice kicks twice, and if that second kick is also associated with one of the most violent shits you’ve ever taken… well you get the picture.
That being said, I do love spice. Not a terribly huge fan of the second kick, but such is life.
Poor people using spices to cover rotting food is a complete myth falsely attributed to the Middle Ages. Spices were incredibly expensive and a luxury limited to the upper class - anyone rich enough to afford spices did not have to worry about rotting food.
The actual reason for the perceived blandness of White American food is basically the converse of this. Stereotypical white suburban food is probably closest to mid western cuisine.
The mid west was uniquely isolated from Spanish, French, or Italian influence (which were heavier in tastes), lacked international trade to get any spices, and as the nation’s bread bowl specialised in and received lots of subsidies for growing staple crops, like corn.
Ethnically, its white populace is overrepresented by more Anglo ethnicities, like the British, German, and Nordic, which also had more, shall we say, limited palates.
Firstly, the word your looking for is Germanic not Anglo, Anglo basically means English since it’s one of the founding tribal groups that became the English alongside the Saxons and Jutes, calling the Germans Anglo is like calling the French Aragonese sure they both speak a Latin descended language but that’s cause they are linguistic cousins.
Secondly, as someone descended from both inland Southern and Northern stock Southerners fucken love spices compared to my kin who take more after our Great lakes or Northwestern Appalachian ancestors. So yeah that part checks out.
Anglo-Saxon is not just Germanic it is very specific to medieval England since the Anglo-Saxons were just the proto-English. The Angles were never particularly relevant until their migration into Britain and their mainland counterparts were almost entirely absorbed by the ancestors to the Danes by the 700s. The term you are looking for is WASP, which stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant which does have more of a pan white meaning here in the US and does cross over into the assimilated Germans, Celts, and Latins since it’s a term for a specific cultural grouping rather than an ethnic one.
If it seems like I’m getting weirdly annoyed about this that’s cause I am. I like anthropology and history, clumping together people descended from every damned Germanic nation and calling them fucking Anglo-Saxons is absurd. By that logic Romanians, French, and Italians are all Castilian. Words have meaning and while that meaning may shift let’s not misuse specific anthropologic and historical terms.
I respect the pedantry, but I was trying say that I was using the “Anglo” - which in casual speech is short for the casual “Anglo-Saxon”, itself short for White Anglo Saxon Protestant.
I remember I had this exact same conversation IRL, and we determined that the confusion and somewhat jargony nature of the latter two terms (especially since WASP isn’t well understood outside the US) was why people in casual speech just use the ambiguous “Anglo”.
Fair enough. Don’t have much if any experience with folks from outside of North America (getting taught new slurs by Slavs on CSGO aside) but I feel like the term Saxon would ironically be more applicable since the Saxons were instrumental in the formation of damned near every modern Germanic nation. Mostly because they were trader but they were spread out everywhere from Britain to Wallachia to at least one enclave in Uppsala in Sweden. Doesn’t quite work well for the Nordic nations but it’s probably the best term.
Like I said the term Anglo is just kinda weird since the continental Angles were more or less wiped out of assimilated before even Charlemagne was born. The Saxons on the other hand still arguably exist in both Germany, Britain, and in their expat cultures such as the Volga Germans or the Amero-Deutsch populations.
I haven’t been to an American household yet that doesn’t have powdered onion and powdered garlic on the shelf. I fucking wish more white ppl in the us would understand that Tajín is the absolute best thing in the world, and it makes fruit a thousand times better, especially watermelon.
How did bland ass food become the hallmark of cuisine for white middle-class americans? I mean, fuck, just oven roasting those breasts would make them taste… I say this as a white dude from Canada
I don’t know, but anecdotally, my experience is that it’s mostly poorer and older folks that trend towards bland foods. It’s what they grew up with and what they know, and to them a lot of the recipes are tradition / comfort food. They simply weren’t exposed to a lot of spices and taste profiles growing up so they didn’t develop an appreciation for it and have no desire to step out of their comfort zone.
A lot of them were from large families and families that basically only ate what they raised and grew, for generations. They might’ve spent money to buy a small amount of extras like white sugar, bleached flour, salt, and maybe black pepper. And then in terms of produce, most of what was grown was staple foods, and a limited selection of easy to manage herbs like mint and dill that they could grow in a season then use or preserve.
Obviously that’s a bit over simplified and not every family and every body’s story is exactly alike, but it generally holds true to varying degrees in most of the cases of “blandfooditis” I’ve encountered.
Then there’s also the nature of a lot of larger families having to prepare meals for the least common denominator. Grampie can’t have too much salt, Grammie can’t chew cause she doesn’t have any teeth, Gina is diabetic, Braxton is allergic to pepper … so you end up with a lot of plain boiled meals simply because that’s the easiest/cheapest option that everybody can have.
More or less the same way fried chicken ‘became the hallmark of cuisine’ for black Americans: it’s a stereotype, simple as that.
I’m pretty sure it didn’t, it is just something people like to say on the internet.
A lot of people saying it isn’t real but it’s definitely a thing among some populations. It’s a holdover from the literal puritans who thought that simple, bland food was virtuous and heavily spiced or seasoned food was excessive and sinful. Over the years that aspect has kind of fallen away but there are still some groups of white protestants (primarily the “WASPs”- White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) who culturally prefer relatively bland food.
Wow, it really is a white middle class issue huh? My mom is from a rural area and could keep up with most professional chefs in the taste department. When my parents divorced, my dad got with one of the most stereotypical "Karen"s who’ve ever witnessed. She hated me because I refused to eat anything she had a hand in making. Ffs, I always made the deviled eggs for Thanksgiving ever since I was a child, here and her daughters said they won’t eat them if I put onion and relish in them. Needles to say, they did not eat my deviled eggs.
Could I get that deviled eggs recipe? That actually sounds fire af, I kinda wanna try it.
It’s pretty much a play by ear situation, as madre taught me!
But it’s pretty much 1/2 yolks 1/4 mustard & 1/4 mayo, healthy scoop of finely diced onions and non sweet relish. Season appropriately, but mine was usually Mrs. Dash and Tony C’s more spicy variant.
Racism. Honestly. Spices were seen for peasants and came from foreign lands. Over the generations it just became normal to come from a family with bland ass food.
Spices were associated with rotting food, because they were often used to cover up the flavor of overly game-y meat — at least that was common in the U.S. .
I don’t think you can blame people for eventually realizing that if a piece of meat has a suspicious amount of spice on it, it might just make you sick. You also can’t blame someone for being averse to the flavor afterwards — spice kicks twice, and if that second kick is also associated with one of the most violent shits you’ve ever taken… well you get the picture.
That being said, I do love spice. Not a terribly huge fan of the second kick, but such is life.
Poor people using spices to cover rotting food is a complete myth falsely attributed to the Middle Ages. Spices were incredibly expensive and a luxury limited to the upper class - anyone rich enough to afford spices did not have to worry about rotting food.
The actual reason for the perceived blandness of White American food is basically the converse of this. Stereotypical white suburban food is probably closest to mid western cuisine.
The mid west was uniquely isolated from Spanish, French, or Italian influence (which were heavier in tastes), lacked international trade to get any spices, and as the nation’s bread bowl specialised in and received lots of subsidies for growing staple crops, like corn.
Ethnically, its white populace is overrepresented by more Anglo ethnicities, like the British, German, and Nordic, which also had more, shall we say, limited palates.
Spices Were Used to Mask the Taste of Bad Meat in the Middle Ages? - https://culinarylore.com/food-history:spices-used-to-cover-taste-bad-meat/
Honestly, that checks out — thank you for the info!
Hey just two things.
Firstly, the word your looking for is Germanic not Anglo, Anglo basically means English since it’s one of the founding tribal groups that became the English alongside the Saxons and Jutes, calling the Germans Anglo is like calling the French Aragonese sure they both speak a Latin descended language but that’s cause they are linguistic cousins.
Secondly, as someone descended from both inland Southern and Northern stock Southerners fucken love spices compared to my kin who take more after our Great lakes or Northwestern Appalachian ancestors. So yeah that part checks out.
Oop, I meant Anglo, as in the the shortened version of Anglo Saxon (basically Germanic).
Anglo-Saxon is not just Germanic it is very specific to medieval England since the Anglo-Saxons were just the proto-English. The Angles were never particularly relevant until their migration into Britain and their mainland counterparts were almost entirely absorbed by the ancestors to the Danes by the 700s. The term you are looking for is WASP, which stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant which does have more of a pan white meaning here in the US and does cross over into the assimilated Germans, Celts, and Latins since it’s a term for a specific cultural grouping rather than an ethnic one.
If it seems like I’m getting weirdly annoyed about this that’s cause I am. I like anthropology and history, clumping together people descended from every damned Germanic nation and calling them fucking Anglo-Saxons is absurd. By that logic Romanians, French, and Italians are all Castilian. Words have meaning and while that meaning may shift let’s not misuse specific anthropologic and historical terms.
I respect the pedantry, but I was trying say that I was using the “Anglo” - which in casual speech is short for the casual “Anglo-Saxon”, itself short for White Anglo Saxon Protestant.
I remember I had this exact same conversation IRL, and we determined that the confusion and somewhat jargony nature of the latter two terms (especially since WASP isn’t well understood outside the US) was why people in casual speech just use the ambiguous “Anglo”.
Semantics 🤷♂️
Fair enough. Don’t have much if any experience with folks from outside of North America (getting taught new slurs by Slavs on CSGO aside) but I feel like the term Saxon would ironically be more applicable since the Saxons were instrumental in the formation of damned near every modern Germanic nation. Mostly because they were trader but they were spread out everywhere from Britain to Wallachia to at least one enclave in Uppsala in Sweden. Doesn’t quite work well for the Nordic nations but it’s probably the best term.
Like I said the term Anglo is just kinda weird since the continental Angles were more or less wiped out of assimilated before even Charlemagne was born. The Saxons on the other hand still arguably exist in both Germany, Britain, and in their expat cultures such as the Volga Germans or the Amero-Deutsch populations.
It’s not really true. Everyone likes flavorful food. Most Americans season their food plenty.
If a hallmark of your culture is that your people love “food, family, and fun”, your culture may not be as unique as you think.
I haven’t been to an American household yet that doesn’t have powdered onion and powdered garlic on the shelf. I fucking wish more white ppl in the us would understand that Tajín is the absolute best thing in the world, and it makes fruit a thousand times better, especially watermelon.
As someone who moved from one country to the other, Canada’s food is sooooo much better than the US’s by comparison
I’m certain this varies wildly by region. The US, and Canada, are both massive.
Northeast and Southwest US have incredible food.
Not all of us are that bad. I’m making tamales next week and getting gyros tomorrow
No idea. I’m having wings and tacos on Sunday.
because its all they eat, and also "anything exotic’ is too much for them.