All of these foods were created by people from these countries who immigrated to the US
Also, gatekeeping food is annoying
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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I don't think I have actually ever seen any actual indigenous individual of a culture get mad at someone for cooking food from their own culture.
But I don't know if that's because the people who would've been mad about it got genocided and no longer exist, or if it's because people actually just don't care.
The people I HAVE witnessed getting angry about that sort of thing ... were white. I suppose they're trying to be 'culturally sensitive' but isn't that just kinda ... patronizing and infantilizing? low-key "talking over" them? As if to imply they need a white savior swooping down to the rescue >.< it just makes me uncomfortable.
White people just can't stand to be uninvolved. They don't call it brown knighting now, do they?
Yes! I hate the "this is not authentic" argument so much because it is so dumb. Stuff changes, taste changes and if people enjoy it, who gives a shit for authenticity points? This is so incredibly dumb it really makes me angry.
Furthermore, "X isn't as authentic as it is in X country" is lowkey bigoted towards immigrants. A lot of the times, the dishes being talked about are ones made by immigrants who are trying to cook dishes they are familiar with but using ingredients and equipment available to them in their new home. Whenever I hear about "authenticity" arguments, it's always acting like this food was being made by white Americans trying to krib and distort another culture's food to suit their palate, instead of immigrants authentically expressing their culture with what's available in their new context.
I for one can't think of anything more authentic than someone applying their cultural knowledge in creative and unique ways to survive and make a life in an environment unfamiliar to them.
Being something of a burrito connoisseur, I can certainly tell you what a bad burrito tastes like. It tastes like McDonald's greasy fucking cutting boards.
Okay? I don't know how you read my comment as a defense of McDonald's.
You weren't, I'm not angry, just emphatic. There is absolutely such a thing as food so bad it's an insult to its origins. And McDonald's has the worst burritos on Earth.
The "this is not authentic" exist because the food is sold as "authentic".
Last panel gets it wrong, though.
Rest of the world totally thinks that there is such a thing as original American food:
High-caloric, hyper-processed junk containing no significant nutritional value but much too much fat, fructose sirup and carcinogenic substances.
That, and watery beer.
behold the quintessential American food: The twinkie
I’m an american who lives in colombia and i can confirm this. The american section of my local supermarket is just boxed mac and cheese, cheese sauces, doritos, red bull, ketchup, and cake mix (the cakes here are way less sugary than US ones).
So... they don't have the specific kind of mozzarella you need to properly make pizza? That sucks. I love homemade pizza. It's hard work, but it's really rewarding. Kinda makes me miss when I worked at a good pizzeria. Not the junk ones like Little Caesar's, I'm talking about making the sauce from scratch with tomatoes from the garden. Shit's awesome. Hell, if I could, I'd make the mozzarella from scratch too.
I live near an italian store so i’m not lacking for any cheeses.
There's no such thing as American food
Then explain this
I'm calling the cops
Given the ingredients, they're already there.
Putting bacon on donuts, it's like feeding a burger to a cow
American food is like the borg, we just assimilate other food cultures into our own but adapt them to fit with everything else.
SmorgasBorg...
Adapt them to fit a certain criteria of saturated fats and corn syrup.
a taco is basically anything in a tortilla
https://www.tastinghistory.com/episodes/tacos
But not every thing in a tortilla is a taco.
American food always looks like it'd give you a heart attack if you got within 10m of it
People say that but the funny thing is that American food, even fast food, is not that greasy. Cultures that pan-fry food (like a lot of Eastern European ones) end up with way greasier food.
IMHO, the issue is not just deep or pan frying. It's about the kind of oil you use for that. South europe does fry stuff, but generally uses sunflower seed oil or, even better, olive oil.
Bro the US deep fries so much that even their memes are deep fried.
Deep-fried food is generally less greasy than pan-fried food.
Source: 'trust me bro' (says with mouth full of chips and donuts).
Most of my knowledge is from personal experience eating different countries' foods, and I wasn't able to quickly find official data for American vs. Eastern European diets that is more recent than the 80's (back when the CIA used to care what Russian people were eating) but at that time, a larger fraction of Soviet calories than American calories were from fat. I came to the USA not too long after the data for that graph was collected so I'm not particularly knowledgeable about what Eastern European home cooking is like today, but in my family we pan-fried things that Americans often deep fry (potatoes) or grill (meat) and I didn't even know what deep-frying was.
I certainly didn't think I'd be reading a CIA document this morning, its a damn shame that the only thing they provide of value to society has been ended by Trump (the publishing of a wide variety of demographic data in their CIA World Fact Book), anyway I appreciate the response.
I was not polite in my request and looking back on it I want to apologize for being inflammatory. Sorry.
That being said, your data doesn't show any comparison between the amount of grease (oil) in shallow fried foods vs deep fried foods, the chart you've shared just shows protein per capita per day changing over several decades.
Pan frying is healthier than deep frying for a host of reasons - it's done at lower temperatures than deep frying, which means different oils are generally used, and healthier oils are used for pan frying vs deep, the high temp process destroys many food nutrients and generates higher creation and absorption into food of trans fats. These reasons (and others) with references are in the Wikipedia article on deep frying.
Nutritionist/dietician comparing the two methods with further reasons: https://blogs.bcm.edu/2023/04/25/the-truth-about-fried-food/
I'm yet to see any indication that deep frying causes foods to absorb less fat that pan frying, it is in fact reported as the opposite in all sources I've seen (but can't find any studies directly comparing the two). I'm sure it could be found scientifically via looking at fat/oil measurements in deep fried foods in studies and the same measurments in pan fried and comparing them, but that would take more time than I have to spare today.
Hope you have a good one.
Oh it definitely is greasy, and sugary, and carbohydrated, and with a minimum of fibres.
I don't care about what you eat. You could put pineapple on a pizza, or make a spam sushi roll for what I care.
But I do care about names. Because I expect things to be what they are called:
If I order a carbonara, I don't expect to find mushrooms, cream and onion on it. Same if I order a gazpacho made with the wrong ingredients, or if I order a certain kind of ramen...
It's fine if we do fusion cuisine, I love to experiment! But don't tell me a bun filled with lattuce and raw onions is a cheeseburger because it's not; call it a lattuce and onion sandwich dammit!
"If you added cream, this would be quite like a British carbonara..."
"And if my mother had wheels she'd be a bicycle."
No one else on Earth will claim ranch noodles.
A burger is American.
Ah yes, hamburgers from Hamburg, Pennsylvania.
Hamburg steak is not a Hamburger. Putting it between buns was made here by German immigrants. So yes, it is American.