英语论文(中美文化差异)

The different food culture in China and America

As an old saying goes, “there are three important things when you in the outside, which are eating, wearing and living.” Just as we can see, “eating” is in the first place, eating is really important in ever yday life in China. And diet is also a kind of culture. And when we meet others by chance, we often talk about diet. And the most remarkable difference is the food culture when we compared with two countries’ differences. Just as XuXiong pointing out that, the reasons which caused the different food culture in China and America are the different culture, customs, history, atmosphere, nutrition values and economic condition and so on. And the people now think superficially that the largest difference is that most of Chinese people eat something using chopsticks, while in America they use knife and fork. In fact, there are many deep different levels which are usually neglected, for example, the diet attitudes, the diet manners, the diet environment and any other things. Now I will make some explanations about the different food culture in China and America.

1、Different Diet Attitudes

In China, we will eat something with sensibility. When we choose what to eat, we will care more about the color, the smell, the taste, the shape and the device. Because our nations in the past many years, the productive level is very low, and many people are always hungry, they can’t eat enough food. So if a kind of culture treats eating as the most important thing, there will appear two situations. On one hand, this function of eating will be played to maximize, not only for surviving, but also for using it to maintain health, which is the cultural basis of “if you want to keep health, you’d better choose to enjoy some delicious foo d rather than take medicines”. On the other hand, if paying too much attention on food, it will make people often pursuit the delicious food.

While Americans maybe more rationality. When they eat something, the things they care most are the nutritious value, such as the protein, the

fat, the vitamin, the minerals and the carbohydrate. And this attitude on food is connected with the whole western philosophy. Metaphysics is the main feature of western philosophy. The object of study of western philosophy is the reasons of things. And this kind of philosophy has brought vitality to western culture, which leads to the rapid development on sciences, psychology and methodology. But in other aspects, this philosophy advocates play a hinder role, such as food culture. In the banquet, they also pay attention to tableware, to materials and to service, but no matter how luxury, from Los Angeles to New York, the steak is only one taste, which has no arts to speak of. As a dish, chicken is chicken, steak is steak, even with other matches , there will be happened in the plate, for example a “French lamp chops” ,the potatoes will be on the left side next to the lamp chops, while the right side will place boiled green beans and a few slices of tomatoes. It will form strong contrast on the color, while the tastes about all kinds of materials are unrelated to each other.

2、Different Food Objects

In America, they think the foods are used just to eat, so they often eat a large piece of meat, the whole chicken and other “hard food”. However in China, we eat something is mainly enjoying the taste of it. So the Chinese cooking also show great randomness on the selected materials. And many things which are abandoned by the westerners will be treated as excellent materials in China. The things which foreign chefs cannot handle can achieve something magic when they are in Chinese chefs’ hands.

According to a survey of western botanists, Chinese food has more than 600 kinds of vegetables, which is six times more than it in the west. In fact, in Chinese dishes, the vegetables is a kind of common food, and meat dishes only on holidays and festivals or with higher living standard will appear in the normal diet, so from ancient times ,there is an old saying “fresh vegetables”, which means ea ting vegetables , having a main effect on normal diet. Chinese people use plants as main courses, which has closest contact with Buddhists. They treat animals as “beings”, while