If you want to study the velocity of change in this country, just compare restaurant menus from the early 1950s with today's. Back then our Main Streets sported steak and chop houses, Italian and Chinese restaurants, seafood eateries, and the dependable diner. Fast food in the form of burgers and shakes was still an unexplored notion. Gino's Hamburgers didn't open its doors until 1957, and McDonald's was still marching east.
Families seeking respite from tuna noodle casserole dinners could find only a limited menu in restaurants. For entrees, they had their choice of baked and fried chicken, steaks, pork chops, lasagna, ravioli and spaghetti with meat sauce, baked fish and ham, plus clams, oysters and crab cakes in season. It appeared that things would never change, until they did.
Julia Child introduced the country to French cooking via TV in 1963, and home chefs started to experiment with steeping beef in burgundy. Foreign travel broadened consumers' interests and they began to demand the authentic foods of Italy, Spain, the Middle East, Japan, and other locales. Waves of immigrants from Southeast Asia, China, India, Mexico, South America and other world regions brought their native dishes and ingredients with them. Cooking schools like Baltimore International College and the Culinary Institute of America churned out ambitious grads wishing to make a mark with novel cuisines. Lastly, the advent of the Cooking Channel in 2010 and rise of celebrity chefs turned up the burners even more. The result? A complete transformation of America's food scene.
Today Chipotle is giving Wendy's and McDonald's a run for their money, and it is not unusual for people to announce that this past weekend they ate Thai, Afghan or Indian. In our own kitchens, we might reach for the Sriracha hot sauce or make a snack for the kids of hummus and pita chips. In supermarkets it seems that yogurt selections now comprise one-fifth of the dairy department. Who knew that Greek, Danish and Aussie-style yogurt were so good for you?
The point of all this is not merely to catalogue the history of food, but to establish that radical change in America is possible. We don't have to settle for the status quo. Sure, 1955 to 2015 didn't pass in the blink of an eye, but in those 60 years key players reinvented American gastronomy. If we're now much more sophisticated about what we hunger for, then why can't we change some other essential facets of our society?
Why has it been so difficult to transform the way we educate our children? In the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment, which compares performance among 65 countries, our teenagers again earned below-average scores in math. This pattern has remained unchanged since the 1960s. The United States ranked 17th in reading, 20th in science and 27th in math. Why is this and why haven't we stemmed school drop-outs in cities like Baltimore, where the four-year graduation rate for the Class of 2013 was 68.5 percent?
Maryland ranks third in median household income among the 50 states, according to WalletHub and Forbes, so why are 9.8 percent of our fellow citizens living below the poverty level and why are nearly one in six reporting that they didn't have enough money to buy food at some points during the prior 12 months?
The Commonwealth Fund did a recent study of the health care systems in 11 first-world countries, including Germany, France, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Why did the U.S. come in last? It ranked 11th in cost, efficiency, equity and healthy lives. The study notes, "Other nations ensure the accessibility of care through universal health systems."
Why have we not taken a quantum leap in race relations since 1955? Sure, we have a black family in the White House, but we also have a fraternity in Oklahoma singing a song about lynching and the "N" word, a pattern of racist behavior on city police forces, and some states using retooled Jim Crow tactics to suppress the minority vote.
I believe in American exceptionalism, and we've proven we can change dramatically when it comes to our dining habits. Now it's time to address some more important issues, even gun control and the so-called entitlement programs. When will voters step up to make this happen?
Frank Batavick writes from Westminster. His column appears Fridays. Email him at fjbatavick@gmail.com.
