Diet Culture differences between China and America 中美饮食文化的差异

Diet Culture differences between China and America

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. However, the word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses: 1) Excellence of taste in fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture; 2) An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning 3)The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization, or group.

Diet culture is another way to show people’s attitude towards life and future. From this point of view, we could know the differences between China and America through food. We human beings could not live without food, and we became very interested since we have the concept of food. How we could eat healthily and what we should eat are as important as food itself.

Here, I want to introduce the diet culture difference between China and America.

China is a country of long history, the diet culture also has long history here. But America is not the same as China. As we know, America is a nation of immigrants. The history is also very short. When we say America, we may mean the modern life and the fast pace of urban work. America also has its own diet culture, which is very different from Chinese.

Food is central to all societies and life styles. However, people have different habits and behaviors in different countries. Hence, diet culture difference comes out. Dietary culture is the sum total of human dietary behavior, conception, and its products. It shows human natural choice and dietary way of life which is suited to the nature and human environment through common practice. Cultural differences between China and America created the differences of food culture.

Chinese cuisine is any of several styles originating from regions of China, some of which have become increasingly popular in other parts of the world –from Asia to the Americas, Australia, Western Europe and Southern Africa. Chinese people fall it into eight categories: 1) Hui: Anhui 2) Y ue (Cantonese): Guangdong 3) Min: Fujian 4) Xiang: Hunan (Can include Xiangjiang Region, Dongting Lake and Xiangxi styles) 5) Su (aka Huaiyang Cuisine): Jiangsu 6) Lu: Shandong (Include Jinan, Jiaodong styles, etc.) 7) Chuan: Sichuan 8) Zhe: Zhejiang (Can include Hangzhou, Ningbo, and Shaoxing styles).

The Chinese diet is consummate, and the process is complete, rigorous, in addition to these, its cooking methods such as complex and changeable characteristics in the world history of cooking is a monolith. All these lead to the unique food culture. In Chinese daily diet, the staple food is rice, noodles and miscellaneous grains. And the main dishes are livestock, poultry, vegetables, aquatic products, seafood and dry. They pay more attention to vegetable and meat collocation, advocating complementary collocation, color, smell, taste, shape, texture, such as the organic combination of the raise. There are all kinds of cooking methods, such as decoct, fry, blasting, fry, boil, and burn it, from, bake, rinse, stewed, smoked, boiled, steamed halogen, etc. So dishes change much.

In daily time, American are outgoing, hospitable, informal, which make their diet culture much differ from Chinese. The biggest difference in diet habit between America and China is that Americans are accustomed to use fork and knife while Chinese prefer to use chopsticks.

Americans would like to eat frequently instead of three meals a day. They take their three meals casually. The daily breakfast of American includes eggs, sausage, fried potatoes, pancakes, jelly, toast, muffins, orange juice and so on. The breakfast is generally 8 am. Americans usually eat lunch which generally includes sandwiches, fruit, coffee, burgers, hot dogs and so on. Lunch is

usually between 12pm and 2 pm. Dinner seems much formal, relatively rich. There are twelve dishes such as steak, pork, chops, barbecue, fried chicken and so on. The dinner is usually 18 o'clock. Fast food is also very popular in America because of the accelerating pace.

Generally speaking, American tastes light and like to eat raw, cold foods, such as Shanking cold dishes, meat tenderizer row and so on. Soup is not hot. The taste of food is a little sweet and salty. Fired, grilled is the main way of cooking. Meat, fish, fresh vegetables is the staple food. Bread, noodles, rice is the subsidiary food. Sweet food includes cake, homemade pies ice cream and so on. They like to eat green beans, cabbage, bean sprouts, beans mushrooms and other vegetables.

Connotations of Chinese food can be generalized into four words: delicacy, refinement, affection and ceremony. These four words reflected the four characteristics of Chinese food, namely, strict procedures to ensure the quality of food, special aesthetic appeal, deep affection involved, and great social functions. Those special cultural implications involving in Chinese food culture demonstrated the close connection between Chinese food culture and the traditional culture of China.

American food doesn’t have as long history as Chinese, however, it has its own features. American people don’t have fresh food because they buy their food from supermarket which only sells stored materials. They also prefer fast food such as chips and hamburgers. We could say that American food culture is fast food.

In a nutshell, the main difference between Chinese and America eating habits is that unlike, where everyone has their own plate of food, in China the dishes are placed on the table and everybody shares. If you are being treated by a Chinese host, be prepared for a ton of food. Chinese are very proud of their culture of food and will do their best to give you a taste of many different types of cuisine. Among friends, they will just order enough for the people there. If they are taking somebody out for dinner and the relationship is polite to semi-polite, then they will usually order one more dish than the number of guests. But in America, AA style is very normal. Maybe the different culture influences the attitude people towards food.