美国食物文化.doc

Food, an very common word in our life. Human need to have foods throughout the life. But few of us have critical thinking about food. What is food? It seems like a simple question, but for further more, it is not. What is food? According to the definition from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, food is any substance, composed of carbohydrates, water, fats and/or proteins, that is either eaten or drunk by any animal, including humans, for nutrition or pleasure. Almost all foods are of plant or animal origin. Some popular types of ethnic foods include: Italian, French, Japanese, Chinese, American, Thai and Indian. American food is one of the popular types of ethnic foods. United States has long attracted immigrants from a wide variety of nations, so many different kinds food culture has mixed into American food, such as American Chinese cuisine, Italian-American cuisine, and Cuisine of the Mediterranean. And pizza, pasta, tacos and burritos are the most popular food in United Stated of America. Sometimes the food culture of American can response the basic view point of ethic. For instance, many American people would like to ask a question, do Chinese people eat dog(s)? As Chinese people know, the majority of American people have a dog as pet. And there is a saying that dog is the humble friend of human. So many American people can totally not understand Chinese people eat dog(s). In American food culture, they do not eat pet(s). They think that eating pet(s) is unethical. But some of the Chinese people would say that pet is a kind of animal, which is not the animal species on the blink of extinction. And also, animal can be used as food either directly, or indirectly by the products they produce. Meat is an example of a direct product taken from an animal, which comes from either muscle systems or from organs.[1] So based on this, pet is a kind of food, why human can not eat? In American food culture or Western food culture, eating pet is a kind of pica or allotri