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AUGUST 15 22, 2005

America Eats!
How one nation revolutionized the world of food

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Special Report

HOW AME
In a vast land of immigrants, the food we loveand

In the 1950s,
a typical family
put away about
this much food
in a year.

RICA EATS
why we love ithelped transform a hungry nation

HAGLEY MUSEUM AND LIBRARY

Food & America

hat is it about Americans

and food? We love to eat,
but we feel guilty about it
afterward. We say we
want only the best, but
we settle forand even heartily
enjoyjunk food. Were obsessed
with health and weight loss but face
an unprecedented epidemic of obesity. Perhaps the answer to this ambivalence lies in our history. The first Europeans
came to this continent searching for exotic spices.
Instead, they got the lowly spud. The first cash
crop wasnt eaten but smoked. Then there was Prohibition, intended to curtail drinking but actually
encouraging more creative ways of doing it.
The immigrant experience, too, has been one of
dissonance. After all, assimilation means eating
what real Americans eat, but our nations food
has come to be defined by importspizza, say, or
hot dogs. And some of the countrys
most treasured cuisinesouthern
cookingcomes from people
who arrived here in shackles.
Perhaps it should come as
no surprise then that food has
been a medium for the nations
defining struggles, whether in
the Boston Tea Party or the sit-ins
at southern lunch counters. It is integral to our
notions of health and even morality whether one
abstains from alcohol for religious reasons or
eschews meat for political ideals.
But strong opinions have not brought certainty. Americans are ambivalent about what
they put in their mouths. We have become suspicious of our foods, especially as we learn more
about what they contain.
And yet, the ritual of food still thrives in the
American consciousness. Its no coincidence, then,
that the first Thanksgiving holds the American
imagination in such thrall. As the following stories
show, its what we eatand how we share it with
friends, family, and strangersthat help define
America as a community today. Sara Sklaroff
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U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT AUGUST 15 / AUGUST 22, 2005

THE COLONISTS

OLD WAYS IN A
NEW WORLD
By Jay Tolson

ike people, nations are

what they eat. But even
before America became an independent
nation, its colonial inhabitants produced and consumed their daily fare in
ways that gradually began to
shape a distinctive American
identity. From the Puritans
pease porridge (forerunner
of the New England baked
beans) to the Carolina lowlanders spicy hoppin John,
the dietary staples of British
colonials up and down the
eastern seaboard spoke volumes about where they came
from and what they were
trying to achieve.
The early British colonists
were a varied lot. In his
book Albions Seed: Four
British Folkways in America, Brandeis historian David
Hackett Fischer identifies
four different waves of English-speaking immigrants:

the Puritans of eastern England who started settling in

and around Massachusetts
in 1629; the Royalist elite
and indentured servants
from southern England who
put down roots in Virginia
starting around 1642;
Quakers and others from
Englands North Midlands
and Wales who began moving into the Delaware Valley
around 1675; and a host of
borderland folk from northern England, Scotland, and
Northern Ireland who
plunked themselves down in
Appalachian backcountry
mostly after 1718.
While they all ate differently, they all tried, to varying degrees, to maintain
old-world ways. The austere
Puritans largely spurned the
bounteous fish and fowl of
their new setting for the
baked peas (renamed beans
in the 18th century) and relentlessly boiled dinners of
old East Anglia. Among
NAT FEINHULTON ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES

ALL-AMERICAN.
Colonial settlers harvest
pumpkins from the field.

backcountry people, barleybased Scotch yielded to

corn- or rye-made bourbon
as the standard mealtime
accompaniment, a quart per
person per meal being considered a temperate quantity. Otherwise, as one visiting Anglican missionary
observed of a community of
Ulster transplants, they
lived wholly on butter,
milk, clabber [curdled sour
milk], and what in England
is given to hogs. That unhappy man would have been
far more comfortable at a
Virginia planters table, with
its roast beef, assorted game
meats, and the English fa-

voritesasparagus and
strawberries. In the
Delaware Valley, Quaker
simplicity, particularly a
fondness for boiled
dumplings and puddings,
extended, Fischer explains,
to a form of food preservation by dehydration that
produced, for one, Philadelphia cream cheese.
Self-sufficient. But the settlers objectivesand their
responses to the new environmentsalso contributed
to different regional eating
styles, particularly in the
early colonial era, argues
James McWilliams, a historian at Texas State Universi-

BARBEQUE. American Indians grill meat over an open fire.

THEODORE DE BRY, HOW TO GRILL ANIMALS; SERVICE HISTORIQUE DE LA MARINE, VINCENNES, FRANCE;
LAUROS/GIRAUDON / BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

potatoes, cornbased grits, gumbos,

and jambalaya-like
combinations of
pork, beans, and
rice. Settlers arriving in the Chesapeake region also
relied on Native
American foods
until they began to
prosper from tobacco, their cash crop,
and were able to buy
foodstuffs that gave
their tables a far
more English look.
As different as regional American
cuisines were at
first, they all began
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM / ART RESOURCE
to converge in the
early to mid-18th century,
tySan Marcos, in his book
when increasingly secure
A Revolution in Eating:
Anglo-Americans began to
How the Quest for Food
emulate genteel English
Shaped America. The Purieating, employing fancier
tans, for example, never
kitchen and dining ware
sought to cultivate a single,
and following English
cash-earning crop because
recipes. A widely shared
they came to America on a
thirst for domestically
spiritual mission rather
brewed beer fostered trade
than an economic one. They
and further strengthened
produced a varied and
ties among the colonies.
abundant food supply that
assured a virtuous self-suffi- Eating and drinking had become an important way for
ciency. Raising English rye
the colonists to assert their
and oats, they also imported
status as full-fledged British
English meadow grasses to
subjects. That explains why
raise cattle for meat and
Anglo-Americans took pardairy products. If their food
ticular offense when royal
was as boringly prepared as
tariffs threatened their actheir East Anglian cousins
cess to tea, sugar, and farm
was, it also contained many
produce. Such goods,
of the same elements.
McWilliams notes, were
Not so with colonials farabsolutely integral to the
ther south, particularly
sense of liberty that
those who came to places
colonists believed was salike coastal Carolina by way
cred enough to fight the
of Barbados and other
Caribbean islands. Eager for American Revolution to
protect.
a crop like sugarcane that
After the revolution,
had made them so much
Americans would turn away
money on the islands (and
from English culinary
eventually discovering rice
models to embrace a frugal
through their slaves), they
plain repast that underabandoned many of their
scored the republican simold, British eating habits
plicity of the newly indepenand acquired new foods and
dent people. But that would
new dishes from their
be a new chapter in the
African slaves or Native
story of American food. l
Americans, including sweet
U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT AUGUST 15 / AUGUST 22, 2005

35

WILD RICE

HARVESTING
TRADITION

BOB SACHAIPN / AURORA

By Caroline Hsu

eech lake ojibwa

reservation,
minn.Below the
railroad bridge over
Cass Lake, wild rice
transforms sections of
the lake into what looks like
parcels of prairie dotted
with water lilies. In about a
month, the grain will be
ready to harvest, but this
stand wont make a good
crop. Thats a Superfund
site right there, says Jeff
Harper, 39, a reservation
water resource specialist,
pointing toward a white
clapboard house. A woodprocessing operation left
pcbs and dioxins on 125
acres just west of the lake.
The daily struggle that the
Leech Lake Band faces to
protect its land and food supply, even within reservation
boundaries, is daunting.
Once, the Ojibwa tribe hunted deer, fished, and cultivat-

ed gardens. But years of persecution changed the tribes

way of life. It was only in
1972 that the Leech Lake
Ojibwa broke free of state restrictions on when they could
hunt for game and gather
rice. But much food culture
had already been lost.
Gathering wild rice,
though, remains. The Ojibwa
consider wild rice
both food and medicine. Its part of
their creation
story. Our people came here
from the East because they were told
to live where the food
grows on the water, says
Leslie Harper, Jeffs sister.
The ricing moon. During
manoominike-giizis, or the
ricing moon, which begins
in late August, wild rice is
harvested in the same way
that it has been for centuries. Two ricers go out in a
canoe. The poler pushes

the boat through dense

stands. The knocker sits in
front, pulling the grass
heads with a short tapered
stick and knocking the
grains into the boat.
The tough, black grain
that most Americans know
as wild rice is not wild at all.
It has been engineered to
grow in man-made paddies
and be harvested by
machines. In the
past, Ojibwa depended on the
wild rice harvest to pay for
school supplies
and clothes in the
fall. But paddy rice
has dampened the price of
real wild rice. Add to this a
drop in wild rice habitat due
to agricultural waste flow
and the demand for vacation
lake houses on clear waters,
and its a lot harder for them
to make a living.
From the academic
world comes another in-

GRAINS. American Indians take to

the lake during the yearly wild
rice harvest in Callaway, Minn.

cursion. The University of

Minnesota is conducting
genetic research on wild
ricea move that the Ojibwa fear will be used to alter
the grain, leaving their rice
vulnerable to infection
from windborne pollination. They also worry that
their spiritual food could
become a corporations private property. This is not
paranoia: Between 1995
and 2000, 500 patents on
rice were issued.
But such concerns evaporate at Sucker Lake where
the Harper family rices
each year. Here, water traffic is confined to a pair of
loons and dozens of dragonflies swooping among the
pink rice flowers. We dont
grow the rice, says Leslie
Harper. Its more like the
rice grows us. l

EARLY JOE Passing three coffeehouses within a city block may seem like a modern phenomenon, but in
the 18th century, one couldnt stroll along most city streets without encountering the scent of a roasted
bean. An upscale answer to the tavern, the coffeehouse served as a cozy spot for men to discuss politics or
business over cake, chocolate drinks, and brewed Turkish roast. The concept started in what is now
Istanbul in 1475 and slowly spread west over the next 200 years, becoming trendy in Vienna and London
around the same time it jumped the Atlantic. But the half-caf mocha soy latte was still a long way off.

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U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT AUGUST 15 / AUGUST 22, 2005

FROM LEFT: RITA MAASENVISION; MARK FERRIENVISION