Taco Bell currently exports American-Mexican food to Mexico, but they don't call them tacos there. It would be too confusing.

Malcolm Gladwell (video) has an interesting lecture in which he describes the history of spaghetti sauce in America as decades of marketing a (relatively) authentic thin Italian style. Finally, when analysts actually sought to find out what people liked in a spaghetti sauce, the results were multi-polar (some liked chunky, some spicy, etc.) and less authentic than the sauces being marketed. The result is store shelves overflowing with variety and creativity. I like that kind of world better.

I'm mainly Dutch. The missus is pure Pollack. We have enjoyed many of the tradional foods of our native countries, but have Americanized them. In poor countries, folks make do with whatever is growing in the garden or left in the root cellar. We enjoy the options of meat every day and produce in every season.

I agree that a lot of the things that are being “lost” existed in large part because the people who created or used them didn’t have any “better” options (depending on your POV) because of factors like poverty and more primitive technology. When better options became available, they migrated towards things that they believed made their life “better.” I think though so long as there is still someone somewhere who still knows how to do things that way or has preserved a record of how to do it that way that can later be shared, the knowledge isn’t ever truly lost and people in the future can learn about it and resume practicing the “old ways” if they wish.

I'm not interested in suffering to preserve my own family's ethnic traditions, beyond occasionally cooking a meal or tossing out a curse that no one understands.

I am therefore utterly unqualified to demand that anyone else do so, or to lament the "loss" of any other culture (which I'm not experiencing, anyway!) for any reason other than violence or physical disaster.

In affluent and peaceful times, culture becomes choice, culture becomes style. That some cultures may not be chosen is in some small way sad, but that is entirely overridden by the fundamental happiness of the underlying peace and affluence.

During the years I worked regularly in the Andes, I was more than a bit annoyed at the Americans in the area who bemoaned the locals' periodic desire to don a baseball cap or a Michael Jordan jersey.

It became quite obvious the Yanks -- well enough off to be travelling for pleasure -- wished to maintain the area and its people as a sort of private zoo for their personal viewing pleasure.

It is rather more appropriate to lament the loss of our former culture of personal responsibility and accountability, it having been replaced with exactly the sort of entitlement mentality that expects others to exist for our enjoyment.

One thing I wonder about...

My wife has aquired through generations of her family in Arizona what is "the one and only recipe for tamales." The recipe apparantly takes a day or perhaps a weekend to prepare. In ten years of marriage, I've only heard rumors of the legendary tamale. Perhaps when it's time to teach the offspring, I will get to taste, but I fear my expectations loom frighteningly.

I assume the time commitment has to do with grounding corn meal from scratch, which leads me to my question:

Is corn still corn? I'm pretty certain corn 400 years ago barely resembles corn today. How can one keep a traditional recipe when the basic food stuff changes?

I fear that to be a true traditionalist, the vices of domesticating plant life would need to be confronted. Or am I mistaken?

The interesting thing is maize is basically a "GM food". It was "engineered" by the Aztecs before ol' Chris showed up. "Natural" maize has tiny ears and is not a viable food crop.

Hopefully, nobody is trying to sell an "organic" tamale or taco; it's only "organic" in the same fashion that a gallon of gas is organic - it's got carbon compounds. Otherwise, it's strictly a Product of Man.

PD,

Re #6, I think you are mistaken. In the first place, since corn has been domesticated for closer to 10,000 years than 400, I don’t think there would be much concern in traditionalist circles about recent genetic changes. Further, I think most people who consider themselves traditionalists have a certain degree of latitude to account for geographic and historical variations.

On a different note, I question the validity of the connection between poverty and the so-called “traditional” cultures that are disappearing, particularly with respect to cuisine. Within any given culture there will be a wide range between the wealthy and the poor. The dishes that the wealthy eat are more likely to be the ones that get exported around the world as examples of that culture’s cuisine. (I think is probably true for other traditional artifacts, such as costumes and other “beautiful things.”) Not all Mexicans are poor and not all Mexican food is the result of poverty. (My grandparents were Mexican, so I do have some personal knowledge of this.)

There is no reason to believe that the aspects of cultures that necessarily disappear, and whose loss we naturally mourn, are the results of poverty. Generally, they are the results of antiquated technology. The people who worked 10 hours a day in a Midlands textile mill powered by a steam engine weren’t necessarily less poor than the people who ran the hand looms in previous generations. And I’m not sure that someone working at Taco Bell is better off than a tens of thousands of middle class Mexicans in the last 3 centuries who ate hand-rolled tortillas. (My Mom still makes tortillas by hand, though she makes flour ones, which are easier than corn. Still, it’s an act of love on her part.)

I'm with mark. I don't think you can taste the tears and sweat from the backbreaking labor in a good tamale. Food is either good or it isn't, although sometimes its contextual. Mexican beer sitting on the beach is the face of god. Mexican beer in Chicago when its 40 below zero is a cruel farce. So ultimately you can import authentic food, but you can't import the experience... which is really what we respond to. The best restaurants give you both.

Moreover, I happen to think the trend is actually the opposite. Remember getting 'genuine' cuisine 20 years ago? Maybe spaghetti or polish sausage with kraut.

Now i can make a phone call and have Vietnamese, Thai, Persian, Ethiopian, Yucatan, you name it. There is a Polish market, an Asian market, and a 'eastern European' market within a 5 minute drive from my house, with ingredients that were impossible to get a few scant years ago. For every Pepe's there is an authentic Mexican place run by 1st or 2nd generation Mexicans that owns it. Rustic and authentic are the gold standard for foodies and celebrity chefs these days. Forget cooking French, thats so 1980. What can you do Cambodian?

The whole impoverished noble savage idea is nonsense. I promise you for every awesome cuisine there are 10 tribes that regularly eat things we couldn't even digest and certainly wouldn't want to. Is dysentery part of the authentic experience?

mark,

Perhaps a better word than "poverty" might be "limited circumstances." Cajun food exists as a result of the economic and geographic isolation of a French-speaking people. They had to develop cooking techniques based upon the wild game, fish and a few basic vegetables and spices available near the bayous. If they weren't so isolated, their food would be indistinguishable from New Orleans, that is a creole food derived from trade with the French-speaking diaspora of the Caribbean.

Becoming integrated by trade was a two-way street for the Cajuns. It gave them new food stuffs like beef, cheese, beans and wine. It gave them more opportunities to substitute chicken and pork for wild game. New consumers tended to like what made Cajun cuisine unique; it became spicier. Alligator, a meat only used in desperation because it tastes like carrion, became more important.

No doubt refrigeration makes a lot of difference.

But rich or poor, I think the larger question is what food stuffs do you have access to.

#9, MB,

Sure, you can get a wide variety of ethnic food, but I offer the following observations:

1) It's a lot more likely to be available if you are in or near a center of affluence, e.g., a large city. My little college town had delivery pizza and Chinese, and that's it. Downtown Chicago is a vastly different experience. Affluence is choice.

2) Are you getting authentic (say) Indian food as it's served in India, or are you getting luxury Indian food made in wealthier British and Indian traditions? Affluence is choice.

Hell, even the European dishes I've mastered from my grandparents get upgraded and riffed by virtue of having more and better ingredients and techniques to play with. My mother's mother, in particular, would probably look askance at the careful preparations I make of her breaded pork, and something close to aghast when I do something other than bread it-- the whole culinary tradition is built around taking crummy cuts of cheap meat in low quantities and stre-e-e-etching them, without poisoning your family. But as far as almost anyone I serve it to knows, it's perfectly authentic.

It interests me that this is a strand of what cultural conservatives fear for their own culture, and what cultural liberals fear for the cultures of others. (Cultural liberalism of that sort itself requires a certain level of affluence found mostly in the West. Cultural conservatism happens everywhere.) I happen not to be afraid of, or antipathetic to, either of those.

I don't want to get hung up on the poor tamale I've never tasted, but I think the question still stands. You can preserve the recipe, but what if the basic food stuff changes. My understanding is that it is. Poultry and pork and cattle are all being bred to have more attractive qualities (more visually appealing in the store; less fat/taste). I do occassionaly catch a rant from a food writer about the negative consequences of some of these changes.

This isn't a rant on organic food. I assume that the idea of domesticating an animal or crop for food means constant change, whether you want to date it at a thousand years or a hundred years.

PD,

I'd say that's just a fact of life. Whether domesticated or not, over time, all things change. Additionally, things change over space. The venison in Maine probably tastes a little different than the venison in Montana...or Italy. However, for that matter, no two individuals of a species are ever exactly alike, so each time you make a tamale from the same recipe it is going to be different. The further you move in time and space from the original tamale the more different it will be...BUT they will all always be different. It's a question of degree. But that's just the case with all things everywhere. Hell, the first glass of wine is different from the last one in the same bottle just because of the interaction of oxygen. What are you gong to do?

What are you going to do?

Gather some men with guns and send all of those hairless apes back into the trees where they belong. If only we could invent a time machine and stop Marco Polo from bringing spices back from the orient.

I jest. I only pause to notice that some of the losses are no doubt irretrievable. There is no way back. I don't even think there is a way to slow down. Nor would I if I could.

I absolutely WANT my ancestors' traditions to be swept aside and buried amidst 21st century globalization and prosperity. My ancestors were picturesque savages, and am glad I am not born in their time or place.

My grandmother had 13 children, BTW.

"2) Are you getting authentic (say) Indian food as it's served in India, or are you getting luxury Indian food made in wealthier British and Indian traditions? Affluence is choice. "

I'll let you in on a little secret. The authentic Indian food, cooked by housewives in India, actually isn't very good.

Back in the bad old days of the seventies, we did a bit of homestead farming, and still have a garden. I have been amazed at the difference between factory farm products and home raised. Most gardeners are familiar with the better taste of home grown, vine ripened tomatoes, but we also discovered what God intended eggs,butter, cheese, and pork to be like. I miss the good eatin' but not the hellacious effort involved.

This topic reminds me of a gal in Pennsylvania I saw featured on TV some years back who had gone on a "back to the future" trip--and took her family with her, God forbid. She drew ALL her water from a nearby stream, cooked over the proverbial single giant black pot hung in the fireplace, used an outhouse, etc. Her great grand-mother, who had actually been raised under similar conditions as a child, when interviewed on TV and asked what she thought, averred that she thought her great grand-daughter was crazy: "I've got every electrical appliance known to man in my kitchen and my house to make life easier," she said. "Trust me, when you actually have to live that way day in and day out, it's nooo picnic," she went on--and on.

The "good old days" are for the most part better in the telling than in the living for the average person.