I mean, I’ve had German and British food and I can confidently say it doesn’t seem like they love food, lol.
We absolutely love our bread in germany
Very true, they’re bread (and beer) connoisseurs!
German bread and beer is good. The only problem is that they have extremely narrow definitions of what makes good beer and bread. For example, the Reinheitsgebot law means that most German beer tastes the same. It’s not that it tastes bad, but the number of varieties is lower as a result. Similarly, with bread, Germans like a very specific style of bread. Sometimes they put seeds on it. But you have to search to find naan, corn bread, challah, roti, milk bread, injera, etc.
I recently learned about German bread and damn it looks legit af! But I’m a sucker for a lot of Bavarian food. Been lucky to eat a HOFBRÄUHAUS in the States and it was really good
Good lord, the funniest thing I remember from college German was how easy it was to distract Frau Professorin from her lecture by just mentioning bread.
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Lots of Germans defending German cuisine, so as another German: you are absolutely right!
Germany has some great food and some Germans love making good food but German culture is absolutely not about food. The food culture we have is a development of the last ~40 years. Traditional German food is supposed to make you sated so you can go back to the fields and work! And the go to the army and fight! And then go to the ruins and rebuild!
Tasty and awesome food? Yes! A culture that tells you it loves food? No!
Traditional German food is supposed to make you sated so you can go back to the fields and work! And the go to the army and fight! And then go to the ruins and rebuild!
This is frickin awesome. Ima tell this to my German-American relative. They come from a family of farmers, come to think of it.
Swedish food is the same!
As someone who enjoys the satiety of eating a good meal but not necessarily the flavors… I think this clicks for me now, why I seem to like Nordic/German styles of cuisine. It need but be flavorful, but it is hearty! Also, my tongue hates spices (sadly).
There are German towns surrounding San Antonio, such as Gruene (pronounced Green, because we’re heathens), with everything from traditional to fusion German foods. Anyone who treats mustard like its own food group is alright with me.
German food is underated. Apple strudel with vanilla sauce is amazing. Like a sweet lasagna. Genius!
That is more of a southern thing if not Austrian
I don’t think there even is a true Pan-German dish. Everything is regional in germany. And sourhern germany is still germany.
I’d wager bread and Bratwurst are the main pan-German dishes with minor differences in style
Bread in general is a pan-world dish
The “bread” a lot of the world calls by that name does not even deserve that term. It should be called “toast”, cause the only thing it’s good for is getting toasted.
I can confidently say that north and south american, aswell as north central asian bread isn’t. Many others only have one specific local bread variety, which are good but do not constitute culinary bread cultures.
You insulting Central-Asian bread can only mean that you lack any taste in regard to bread, or that you actually haven’t eaten Central-Asian breads, and perhaps only tasted a stale lavash shipped to you over two weeks.
Sorry Germany, you lose again🤷
I accidentally ordered a wurstsalat once. I have opinions after that expirence
At least mine had the decency to be in a dark pub hidden from the light
Honestly, it doesn’t sound like the worst combination.
A US version would be spam and bread and butter pickles?
Spam isn’t the right meat, tasted like shredded hotdogs
I googled it and now I wish I didn’t
Hey it’s salad. Made out of sausages.
Tastes great.
And to add on that, yes German food can be very good. If you try it out though, be aware of what is regional in the area you’re in. To familiarize yourself, just read the wikipage on German food
Fair.
You haven’t had the right german food then.
The Germans love their döner kebabs, possibly even more than the British love their chicken tikka masala
When I meet a German outside of Germany, it’s not german-style beer or doner they’re hurting for, it’s a german bakery.
I’m addicted to British doner kebab, much better than the ones in France IMO.
How about the ones in turkey?
Have you tried Currywurst or Spätzle or Sauerbraten or any kind of German sausage or Mettbrötchen or German bread and still think we don’t love food?
I have used Mettbrötchen with success to scare foreigners away from my German food. “Yes zis bread has ze raw meat on it. Salmonella? Das ist eine possibility. Schweinepest? Worth it.”
Joke’s on you, it just made me love it more!
Lived in Germany for years and had all of these. Love mettbrötchen, krustenbraten etc etc. BUT. I believe Germans don’t prioritize food. They will eat any cheap shit and save the money for beer. In the office a bunch of people - mainly foreigners - got together and arranged for a restaurant to be bringing food every day for a relatively cheap price. It was great. But most Germans would still prefer to go to Lidl and eat canned pasta for lunch. It’s not that they couldn’t afford it. They just didn’t want to spend €8 for food every day. Canned pasta and Birckenstock with white socks dude. Every day.
OK, some people are just lost. Canned pasta are disgusting. And I promise that I won’t go further than to my mail box in Birckenstocks ;)
Lol sausage and ketchup, let’s pretend you didn’t mention Currywurst.
Spätzle might be the one exception, although the Swiss make it better.
Sausages, I don’t get your fetishization of it here. A random merguez from the local Arab place is still better than these.
And bread… Yeah, a billion sorts of it, still worse than a random French bakery’s baguette.
Germans never wonder why there’s no German restaurants abroad, go figure
I don’t think I’ve ever had bad food in Germany. In England my limited experience is mixed, some good, some bad and some interesting lunch choices like salted peanuts.
I could literally live on plain potatoes for the rest of my life and I’d be fine with it. My ancestors must have been as culinarily boring as possible.
TBF, potatoes slap. Potatoes and rice are like 80% of my fatass diet, lol.
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I could literally live on plain potatoes for the rest of my life and I’d be fine with it.
You wouldn’t and life would be short. There are not all nutritions in potatoes.
Sounds like you’ve never had Finnish food
I haven’t had the pleasure yet.
The best hotel breakfast I’ve ever had was in Finland… I still miss it.
And then, even Englishmen look down on Scots who think oats porridge is human food.
I have met people in Britain who genuinely seem to hate food. They have a plain cheese sandwich, the worst imaginable bread or eat Huel every day.
That doesn’t necessarily reflect all Britons, but I do think they genuinely care about food less on average than other cultures.
I hate food. It’s hard to explain but it’s kinda like most food triggers my fight or flight response. It takes me a lot of willpower to eat through a regular meal. As a kid I was severely underweight because I was always avoiding food. When I moved out I took the easier approach and started eating only the stuff that was easier to eat (mostly fried and dried stuff, and some ultra processed stuff like chips and cookies). I went from one end of the BMI table to the other in ~5 years.
Yeah that’s not cultural, that actually sounds like an eating disorder.
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Would be hard to chew properly with their misaligned teeth
Tap for spoiler
/s
What the fuck? Raw onion??
Just a little.
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Ah, a Dutch person
What, artificial chocolate sprinkles on buttered white bread isn’t peak cuisine?
Hagelslag is tasty, at least. Can’t say that for beans on toast.
Bro has never been to England
Or a Presbyterian church service. I gotta give it to the Pentecostals, they might be a cult but at least they know how to party.
Or they’re dutch
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Or is from England and cannot imagine that a good food culture can mean more than: “I like the taste of some stuff and everyone else in my country consumes food too.”
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What about sis?
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I admit, i made a bold assumption based on the name Kenny, but Ken is genderless, so my bad.
He’s british i guess.
Brits: I like my food like I like my trousers. Beige and tasting of cotton.
OP is British
Nah, ask us about savouries and you might hear about pies and curries and chippies - the stuff you’ve heard a million times before. But ask a Brit about their favourite pudding or cake and you might want to book some time off for the reply.
Agreed. People think British food is dull because they’ve not seen what British people have as a treat. Cases in point:
England
- Roast Dinner with Yorkshire Pudding.
- Melton Mowbray pies
- Cornish Pasties.
Scotland
- Haggis (yes, I’m citing this, Haggis is actually fucking delicious and versatile).
- Cullen Skink
- Shortbread
Wales
- Welsh Cakes
- Bara Brith
- Glamorgan sausage
Northern Ireland
- Fifteens
- Paris bun
- Gravy ring
That’s not even getting into the weird shit like Scottish Fast Food or what we’ve done with immigrant cuisine. Fuck, if you want a tour of Britain, try a fry up in every home nation because other than Sausage and Bacon, there’s a different spin on it in every home nation. People shit on British cuisine because they shit on Working Class food, or food people have when they’ve just come home from work and need something in their stomach. Beans on Toast is what people have for Lunch when they need something quick and filling, Mince and Tatties is what people have when they have mouths to feed. I don’t see Americans having home-fried chicken every day or making Clam bake or something, why would we have full on roast dinners every night?
The dishes you listed are not really exciting to me, I’ll be honest. The one type of food English (not sure about other British parts) people can be relatively proud of are deserts. I really appreciate an Eton mess for example.
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carrot… carrot cake? That’s my quick answer, but I’ll take the day off just to be safe
Or even biscuits for that matter
Brits don’t know what proper biscuits or gravy are.
You mean scones?
M’fer calls a scone a biscuit and then has the audacity to tell us we don’t know what biscuits are. Probably hasn’t even had a party ring or a wagon wheel before.
Everyone does cookies, there’s nothing special about British or French or Japanese cookies.
Scones aren’t biscuits. But biscuits are scones.
Only if you truly fuck up your biscuit.
Why can’t you get a good lemon meringue pie any more?
I thought I’d worked out my favourite, and then you spring that shit! (It’s obviously rhubarb and apple crumble though) (or cream teas)
lol I was gonna make that joke (I am British too)
I do think it’s overstated about how bad British food is, at least nowadays but at the same time, we’re self-deprecating so lines up.
I would say this holds true for the USA considering all this fast “food” they eat. A culture that loves food doesn’t do this.
Nor drowns every flavor in corn syrup!
I don’t know much about corn syrup, but I assume for all the talking about it and the way it’s used that it’s basically ambrosia if the gods lived in a trailer park instead of on Mount Olympus.
Americans don’t particularly like the stuff, nobody adds it to their own food, it’s just added to every food at the factory to make it more addictive.
Yeah, we aren’t buying it like maple syrup, although most maple syrup is just corn syrup with maple flavor here, it’s just shoved in to everything sweet.
Go ready the ingredients list for practically anything sold in a box here and fir some reason HFC is just in there. No reason. Its cheap as fuck.
Love your description! Incredibly fitting! It’s tasteless honey, basically. Very sweet but not much else
It’s just really cheap sugar because the US government heavily subsidizes corn farming. So naturally you get a huge surplus of corn. So much that it’s a cheaper sweetener than sugar. So cheap that it’s added to our (already cheap and subsidized) gasoline. And yes, sugar is addictive.
Their fast “food” which is consumed all over the globe? Clearly, a lot of people in general like eating it.
These people eat the local version of it. I personally like to go to MacDonald’s in France. Better than any German dish I can find here. Yet I shudder when I recall what that crap tasted like in the USA
I’ve had McDonald’s in other countries and it’s not as big a difference as you make it out to be. This smacks of shitting on the US for the sake of it. There are many, MANY other more legitimate reasons to do so.
People note that even McDonald’s in Hawaii is way better than that in the continental US.
There are large sections of the US that don’t have consistent access to great food, so crappy fast food is what they get.
Then there are other parts of the US where the fast food is amazing. Also the other food.
Comments like OP usually come from Europeans who just want to shit on America. I live abroad in Europe and I can tell you their food has just as much crap in it as ours. Plus fast food is everywhere in the cities. The key difference is access to healthy food and a higher standard of living. No food deserts or high cost of living to make fast food your only real option.
If America didnt like food it wouldn’t have so many different food cultures to begin with
I appreciate your perspective.
I’ll do you one better and say that a lot of times it comes from chronically online Americans who got their opinion from said Europeans. And at least some of the time it’s from third world bots whose marching orders are to spread any and every kind of anti-American sentiment.
Lately I just prefer to put the opposing idea out into the aether rather than try to dig into a whole online argument… thing.
Living in the EU as an American there is a very real sense of superiority that Europeans hold over their american counterparts. Blaming it on bots is disingenuous
But one of the things Russian troll farms are paid to do is spread general anti-American sentiment. I’m not trying to explain away the comments; I’m describing a real thing that happens.
But that’s my point. There is access to healthy food and there are no food deserts because people care about food. Of course there is still crappy food.
Food deserts exists because white ppl didn’t like the idea of brown ppl having the access to the same benefits they receive. American food culture doesn’t exist without brown ppl. A country that thrives on multiculturalism doesn’t exist without a love of food. The problem is racism gets in the way of its true potential
Those food companies have spent decades doing chemical research on how to make that food as addictive as possible. Then of course there’s all the marketing on top of that. Most people can’t break free of it.
It’s also about making it as cheaply as possible, which is why cooking yourself is better than almost any other food.
A culture that doesn’t appreciate food allows it to happen slowly.
For many cultures food is just nutrition, something that you have to do. This doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate good food or that your traditional recipes are bad, just that it’s not the same as cultures where there is a lot of importance on both the food and the context of consuming it with others
Absolutely. And in the less extreme variants, there are cultures for which good food is the base of socialization - you mostly meet up for dinner or similar - and others where good food is the exception, happening for big occasions and parties but not an every day occurrence.
I live in Norway. I can confirm this. Norwegian food
That’s a great video.
People keep making this broad assertion and then not following up.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but if there are many cultures for whom food is merely nutrition, could you name one?
From an anthropological standpoint, I’d be fascinated.
Like, this thread is full of jokes about how some cultures have shitty food, but that subjective assessment is very different than the idea that food’s mere purpose is nutrition. It implies it has no ceremonial use.
So, of the many, just even tell us one.
There’s several mentioned in this thread. Among them, Scandinavian countries, England and the US, and I don’t disagree
Food has ceremonial and ritual value in all of those places, it is not merely a vehicle for nutrition.
Sure, I never said it doesn’t. Just that it is not a centerpiece of the culture. The fact that Americans have a big Thanksgiving dinner once a year isn’t comparable to the approach that the French/Italian/Greek/most Asian cultures have towards food on a daily basis
Well, at the risk of being pedantic, you literally said:
food is just nutrition
I understand now what you intended to communicate (which is strictly different than what you said)
I got excited when I read what you said, because i thought you actually had an example of a culture for whom food is just nutrition. It’s a sci-fi trope that i find interesting because it is truly alien, and I’ve always wondered if any real culture fit that.
Even in puritan cultures that intentionally eat plain food to shun “hedonism”, food becomes a vehicle for virtue signaling. The suffering is a ritual practice. Food, even then, plays a critical cultural role.
I understand what you mean now. I’m just disappointed.
It is for like 350 days a year yeah. Eating take out food in front of the TV/PC doesn’t count? There’s someone else sharing their experience of Brits just “eating” those liquid protein shakes every day, that seems pretty close too. Of course, cultures are not homogeneous, and you can find Italians that drink protein shakes and Norwegians that are really into cooking high-quality ingredients for others. I’m not sure if you were picturing a country where everyone eats pills or what
I was picturing a culture for whom food was strictly for nutrition.
Even in puritan cultures that intentionally eat plain food to shun “hedonism”, food becomes a vehicle for virtue signaling. The suffering is a ritual practice. Food, even then, plays a critical cultural role.
Yeah, but one can view that cultural tradition and conclude that their culture does not value the deliciousness of food as much as some other cultures.
I’m not sure if agree with your conclusion. You might conclude that they put great value on the deliciousness of thier food, but the relationship is inverse: less delicious = greater value.
People of of two cultures might both place high value on decorations, but one culture might view another’s style as tacky.
When everyone but you thinks your food is shit, it probably is.
See e.g. Germany
German food is incredible; I didn’t even know hating German food was a thing. Gimme those sausages, sauerkrauts, cheeses, cold cuts, schnitzel and hot potato salads every day.
The breads, cakes, chocolate, and pastries are next-level too.
See, you highlighted why the German cuisine is not that great. There’s simply not much variety in what you just listed. The German cuisine is kinda shallow, focusing mostly around the same stuff. If you’re not that into cheese or meat, then that’s 75% of the German cuisine eliminated.
One thing “food countries” have in common is that their cuisines have variety. Go to Spain or Turkey or China, and you’ll be drowning in mouth watering options no matter what kind of food you like. Hard to say the same for countries like Germany or the NL or Denmark or whatever. Yeah they can be very good at what they do, but they just don’t do a whole lot.
And you can basically divide these cultures by latitude. Like in Europe the further north you go the less people care about gastronomy. Since these cultures were formed around food scarcity and pure survival, since they had very harsh winters ( before global warming), and the days up north are short in the winter and spring comes later. And before you go “but China and Japan”. Beijing is on the same latitude as Madrid and Tokyo is even further south, so that still tracks.
The Chinese for “how do you do” translates as “have you eaten yet?”
And what’s the correct formulaic response to that?
I’m not actually sure. I’ve always answered it at face value, but I’m not a native speaker. I’ve probably been committing a faux pas, like disagreeing with a British person when they say “lovely weather today”.
English has a rote greeting in “How are you doing?” But, you can respond with anything from “great!” to “oh, okay”. It would be a big faux pas to take that as an opportunity to launch into all your medical issues. Maybe in Chinese it’s ok to respond honestly, but just not to assume someone is actually asking you if you want to eat something.
The alternative to loving food is to eat as a necessity and seek to optimise it. Various combinations of industrialisation, the Protestant work ethic/disdain of unproductive hedonism, neoliberal financialisation of food production/distribution (hence the flavourless “water bomb” tomatoes that last longer in the supply chain, for example) and possibly endemic low-level depression could do this, to the point where the norm is just to get the necessary calories and a dopamine hit from some sugar/salt/fat and anything else seems suboptimal.
People say that about food, music/dancing, and stories because they are the least antagonistic thing they could bring up while boasting about their culture. Its the least likely to get attacked as well, its a non-controversial aspect they can sing the praises of and its something easily shared
If they bring up their cultural religion, values, politics, philosophy, or social dynamics, suddenly things can become an area of controversy and even ethical debate. Most people are too fragile or cowardly to investigate that stuff.
If they bring up their cultural religion, values, politics, philosophy, or social dynamics, suddenly things can become an area of controversy and even ethical debate
Italians will go three rounds in the ring over which neighborhood has the best ice cream shop. I wouldn’t even say its uncontroversial. But these also tend to be attributes that vary heavily even at relatively short distances in older communities. A certain meal prepared a certain way or a dance/music style that originated in your neighborhood becomes a unique touchstone to your community.
I might note that this is something “Planned Communities” tend to lose out on. Everyone gets a Chilis. Everyone gets a radio station franchise that plays the same six songs on a loop. Everyone gets an AMC that shows the same ten movies as everywhere else. Everyone gets a Catholic Church and a Methodist Church book-ending the local elementary school.
Then you leave your provincial cookie-cutter suburb and visit London, a city where the dialect of the language changes by intersection. Or you do a road trip in Italy and find out how every tiny township has this one kind of dish they’re all really proud of. Or you just drop into inner city Houston and get an earful of Chop’n’Screw music played by guys with spinners on the wheels of their lowered Cadalliacs. Then you find some weird old bookshop in Montrose that sells pagan bumper stickers.
Yeah, like I can tell you about our communist history, or our surrealist poetry. But then you’ll call me an extremist, or even worse, a nerd.
So I keep those for when I get drunk and overshare, and just talk about fish recipes and desserts.
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Some cultures value food more than others. Pretty obvious there’s a spectrum between “we eat for sustenance” and “holy shit taste this recipe I’ve been honing for decades”. This is a shit post, not a shitpost.
I once saw a post where the guy said he was from Minnesota and he thought ketchup was too spicy.
I wanted to burn the heretic.
It’s definitely too strong a (sweet) flavor for me, but I just dislike adding sweet sauce to savory things. I also find barbecue and teriyaki sauce unpleasant for the same reason.
Chilies and spices are fine by me though, and tbf, I wouldn’t ever describe ketchup as spicy.
How do you know people like spicy food? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
Yes, people in my culture often speak about the foods they enjoy.
Funny story. As a kid I’d laugh at my father, because he put black pepper on everything.
Today I have about nine different hot sauces on my spice rack.
If only it were actually “people often speak about the foods they enjoy” and not “you’re a weakling I love spicy everything’s spicy fuck not spicy” which is the reality for most morons.
That’s an unexpected bonus from living in a multicultural area.
The Asian and South American places serve truly hot food. The posers know not to ask for it ‘extra spicy.’
Implying that ketchup is spicy at all?
Maybe it is spicy ketchup or something? I don’t know. People who judge others’ spice tolerance belong in prison.
I agree. But if I give you table sugar and you tell me it’s spicy, then that’s not a question of spice tolerance. You just don’t know what the word spicy means.
Although, come to think of it, if you think ketchup is spicy, you may want to check if you’re allergic to one of the ingredients. Regular ketchup is absolutely not spicy.
How do you know people don’t like spicy food? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
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He meant that the food he grew up with was super bland. Minnesota was mostly settled by Scandinavians.
Well, seeing the chemical waste people eat in the US, I do think they hate real food. Also in my culture (Dutch) food isn’t as important as it is in Italy for example. We eat rather healthy, but the best quality food we produce we export because we love money more than food apparently. For the best quality food produced in the Netherlands you need to go to a supermarket in France. It’s stupid.
Whoa, this person really is Dutch!
I feel like a lot of people are taking the post too literally (or maybe I’m not). I once knew a girl who posted a photo of her dad watching football on a plane captioned “Persian dads really need their football lol” and it’s like. That’s just a universal dad thing. Lots of dads in every culture do that.
Some people just do not think about cultures outside their own. Like, at all.
Certain things are constant across cultures. Among them: food, sports, and music.
And when I say “food”, I mean beyond just biological sustenance. It’s part of culture and an important part of social gatherings.
But the importance of food can be very different still. As a German I would say food is not a huge part of social culture. Like yes we eat together when we celebrate, but the food is usually just a necessity instead of the main focus
which is a shame because schupfnudeln fried in blutwurst and sauerkraut should be sang to high heaven
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Oktoberfest is not exactly not about food and drink though.
Drinks jeah, food I would say partially only. I mean it’s good high quality food, but again it’s more like you have it because you need it. It’s not like you will have multiple things or food to share on the table at all times like in other cultures.
Fair enough
Some people just do not think about cultures outside their own. Like, at all.
Hey that IS my American culture!
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The only thing that varies is the type of football. Looking at you America, but I think that is going to change very soon.
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I’ve moved to England 5 years ago. I can confirm a worrying amount of people don’t care for food at all here.
Instead of a nice meal, when they want to enjoy a convivial moment, they burn shredded black leaves in boiling water, add milk to it to cover the terrible taste, and call that tea. And if you don’t ruin it in the exact specific way that they designed, they get angry (but they don’t understand why e.g. Italian and French people are so particular about their traditional recipes).
Send help.
There was an episode of some TV show (maybe Broadchurch?) where David Tennant microwaved his tea and it genuinely upset enough people that it made the news lol.
edit: https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a823432/broadchurch-david-tennant-tea-microwave-twitter-reactions/
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Chuck it down the drain and make another one according to my British friends and family.
Pretty much lol
You only need add milk to tea if the tea is terrible
