The cultural equivalent of:
“So what do you like to do?”
“I like to have fun.”
My culture also loves music, dancing and telling stories
Submitted 18 hours ago by bytesonbike@discuss.online to [deleted]
https://discuss.online/pictrs/image/3436d3da-2d78-4d03-ba07-1cd24d253221.png
Comments
minorkeys@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
OP is British
Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.org 10 hours ago
Ah, a Dutch person
ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
I mean, I’ve had German and British food and I can confidently say it doesn’t seem like they love food, lol.
Zwiebel@feddit.org 17 hours ago
We absolutely love our bread in germany
ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Very true, they’re bread (and beer) connoisseurs!
PacMan@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
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
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
And then, even Englishmen look down on Scots who think oats porridge is human food.
groet@feddit.org 16 hours ago
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!
Lemminary@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Now I want to try this brand spanking new cuisine you speak of. It has become my life mission. 👀
Sergio@piefed.social 9 hours ago
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.
fartographer@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
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.
gray@lemmy.ml 17 hours ago
German food is underated. Apple strudel with vanilla sauce is amazing. Like a sweet lasagna. Genius!
RidderSport@feddit.org 17 hours ago
That is more of a southern thing if not Austrian
arrow74@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
I accidentally ordered a wurstsalat once. I have opinions after that expirence
RidderSport@feddit.org 15 hours ago
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
jaybone@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
You haven’t had the right german food then.
AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 16 hours ago
The Germans love their döner kebabs, possibly even more than the British love their chicken tikka masala
mcforest@feddit.org 16 hours ago
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?
Ougie@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
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.
schmorpel@slrpnk.net 16 hours ago
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.”
Miaou@jlai.lu 10 hours ago
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
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 6 hours ago
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.
ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
TBF, potatoes slap. Potatoes and rice are like 80% of my fatass diet, lol.
plyth@feddit.org 4 hours ago
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.
FistingEnthusiast@lemmynsfw.com 17 hours ago
I’ve had the pleasure of dining at one of Heston Blumenthal’s restaurants and I can categorically say that it was the most wonderful dining experience of my life
zout@fedia.io 16 hours ago
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.
robocall@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Sounds like you’ve never had Finnish food
ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
I haven’t had the pleasure yet.
tflyghtz@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Bro has never been to England
Apytele@sh.itjust.works 13 hours ago
Or a Presbyterian church service.
TriangleSpecialist@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
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.”
buttnugget@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
What about sis?
Armand1@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
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.
Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours ago
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.
PapaStevesy@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Yeah that’s not cultural, that actually sounds like an eating disorder.
slaacaa@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Would be hard to chew properly with their misaligned teeth
Tap for spoiler
/s
db2@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
mavu@discuss.tchncs.de 12 hours ago
He’s british i guess.
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Brits: I like my food like I like my trousers. Beige and tasting of cotton.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
British food is unironically great, and based on WW2 rationing. It’s made funnier that the people who say it comes from a country where people spray cheese from a can
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 hours ago
British food is unironically great, and the stereotype is based on experiences during WW2 rationing
I think this overstates things. A substantial number of countries have their modern culinary culture defined in the post-war decades, though.
Japanese culinary identity came together after World War II, and many of the dishes and traditions defining their cuisine are recently invented or have evolved considerably during the post-war period: the popularization and evolution of ramen, katsu, Japanese curry, yakitori, etc. Even ancient traditions like sushi and Modern Japanese food draws a lot of influence from classic pre-war cuisine, but the food itself is very different from what was eaten before the war.
Even French cuisine underwent a revolution with nouvelle cuisine, heavily influenced by Japanese kaiseki traditions. Before the 20th century, French cuisine was about heavy sauces covering rich, slow-cooked foods (see for example the duck press and how that was used), and it took a few waves of new chefs pushing back against the orthodoxy to emphasize lighter, fresher ingredients. The most notable wave happened in the 1960’s, when Paul Bocuse and others brought in small, lighter courses as the pinnacle of fine dining.
Korean, Italian (both northern and southern), and American culinary traditions changed pretty significantly in the second half of the 20th century, as well, through changes in food supply chains, political or economic changes, etc. And that’s true of a lot of places.
Britain’s inability to shake off an 80-year-old culinary reputation comes in large part from simply failing to keep up with other more food-centered cultures that continually reinvent themselves and build on that classic foundation. Some of the criticism is unfair, of course, but it’s not enough to point at how things were 100 years ago as if that has bearing on what is experienced today.
rumba@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
I was in London for a couple of days, Ate at a hotel, a couple cafes, two pubs, a chip shop with one hell of a line. I must have missed something; flavors were low-key, under-seasoned, and under-spiced. The closest thing I got to flavor was breakfast; the sausage was decent, I think you fully understand sausage there. The beans and eggs were just kinda meh.
Then you have places like this catering to local tastes. oldelpaso.co.uk/…/extra-mild-super-tasty-fajita-k…
I think things are changing. People are starting to crave a little more spice. There’s no lack of curry shops with plenty of spice, but they’re not strictly British food.
Zombiepirate@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
A full English breakfast is one of the best meals in the world.
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
Look I have been to britain and the best british food I had was indian. “Indigenous” British food is rarely anything special. It isn’t usually god awful but I’ve never had British food that made me want to eat it again
Johnmannesca@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
We don’t all obviously spray cheese from a can, some of us are from or near Wisconsin, the place where Monroe cheese is from, which is to say very well regarded in the international community. Whatever bad things Americans did to cheese is basically either a Republican’s doing or the interests of companies like Kraft or Nabisco who are cheap and want to can a product that lasts without refrigeration. See also, Old English cheese spread.
morphballganon@mtgzone.com 6 hours ago
My wife was just telling me about unironic british abominations on tiktok
merc@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
IMO, English Canadians don’t really have a food that they can call their own. Quebec has poutine, tourtieres, pea soup, and other things. English Canada eats many of those things, but also a lot of generic North American or European things: hamburgers, steaks, North-American style pizza, pasta, stew, etc.
Where I think Canada might be a bit different is that after decades of high levels of immigration, Canada has a lot of foods from other parts of the world. It’s common to find South Indian, Pakistani, Punjabi, Turkish, Persian, Carribean, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Mexican, etc. restaurants in a city. Many of them cater to immigrants from those countries, so they’re authentic tasting.
A lot of that is made at home too. While a home-made stir fry probably wouldn’t taste authentically Chinese to someone from China, there are many meals from around the world that have been adapted for Canadian tastes. Very white people in Canada often cook adapted versions of Indian curries, Chinese stir fries, Mexican tacos, Thai curries, etc.
halfsalesman@piefed.social 8 hours ago
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.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
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.
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.
saimen@feddit.org 17 hours ago
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.
Eq0@literature.cafe 16 hours ago
Not drowns every flavor in corn syrup!
essell@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
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.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
Their fast “food” which is consumed all over the globe? Clearly, a lot of people in general like eating it.
Miaou@jlai.lu 10 hours ago
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
moakley@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
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.
Cosmonauticus@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
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
rhymeswithduck@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
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.
MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
It’s also about making it as cheaply as possible, which is why cooking yourself is better than almost any other food.
bystander@lemmy.ca 9 hours ago
A culture that doesn’t appreciate food allows it to happen slowly.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
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.
floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 hours ago
For many cultures food is just nutrition, something that you have to do. This doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate good food, but 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
Eq0@literature.cafe 16 hours ago
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.
Berengaria_of_Navarre@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
I live in Norway. I can confirm this. Norwegian food
merc@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
That’s a great video.
Windex007@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
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.
Miaou@jlai.lu 10 hours ago
When everyone but you thinks your food is shit, it probably is.
See e.g. Germany
floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
There’s several mentioned in this thread. Among them, Scandinavian countries, England and the US, and I don’t disagree
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
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 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.
skisnow@lemmy.ca 11 hours ago
The Chinese for “how do you do” translates as “have you eaten yet?”
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 11 hours ago
Cmon, fish & chips with vinegar is not food. That’s a snack at best.
Whelks_chance@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
You need to find a better chippy
JadedBlueEyes@programming.dev 8 hours ago
If you’re not bursting you didn’t have fish and chips
AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 16 hours ago
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.
Quill7513@slrpnk.net 14 hours ago
i mean. have you encountered soylent culture? white people get marketed to like eating sucks and all your nutrients should come in a tube
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 14 hours ago
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.
TriangleSpecialist@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
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.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
This is what I imagine elves are like.
Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca 9 hours ago
Remember that episode of Enterprise with the web alien and the other aliens that didn’t eat in public?
gergolippai@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Kenny must be dutch.
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 14 hours ago
chunes@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
you’ve nearly described autism
ik5pvx@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Wasn’t there some variant of christians that considered the pleasure of eating a sin thus that area has dull food?
aesthelete@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
OP is from a country full of models.
ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 hours ago
we have a very good traditional bread that is served with a sauce or maybe flavored oil
notreallyhere@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
sounds Scandinavian
MissJinx@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Well you guys eat tuna sandwiches for lunch. Thats not loving food.
halfapage@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
hell yeah corporate culture
s@piefed.world 15 hours ago
Hollywood actress culture
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 hour ago
In my culture we had nothing but roadkill and weeds to eat, so we got really good at making stuff palatable. << Most cultural food legends.