Thailand

Thai Food vs. American Food

By Praphatsorn Griffin

Have you ever missed your home country’s food when you were abroad? I have never realized how much I love Thai food until I moved to the United States. There are many Thai restaurants in the United States, but most of them are adjusting to American style and taste. As a result, you can see many Asian stores in the United States because Asian people prefer to make food themselves instead go to the restaurant. The food in Thailand has significant differences from the United States in many ways such as the staple diet, nutritional value, and flavor.

First, in comparison with America, in Thailand, most Thai people eat rice as the staple diet. Thailand is unquestionably one of the ten countries based on the production of milled rice. Thai people eat rice since they were born until the end of life. Also, they cook many side dishes or “Kap Khao” that can be eaten with rice such as stir-fried vegetables and meat, steamed fish, curry, sour soup, etc. In contrast, most Americans do not eat rice. It is complicated to describe what is the American staple diet because there many options. For example, most Americans eat cereal with milk, bagel with cream cheese, and oatmeal for breakfast. They eat fast food, sausage, hamburger, fries, and sugary drinks for lunch. Also, for dinner, they eat lots of protein like beef, chicken, turkey, pork, and fish. However, I had been eating rice for more than 28 years; it is very hard for me to adjust myself to eating American food.

Second, unlike American food, Thai food has more nutritional value than American food. Most Thai food focuses on vegetables, meat, and spices or herbs in the right proportion, which means you can get good nutrition in a meal. Most American food is high in fat and sugar or salt, and low in fiber, especially fast food. Those types of foods can cause many health issues such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and some cancer. As a result, almost half of adult Americans are living with obesity, and likely to increase in the future.

Finally, the flavor of Thai food is hugely different from American food. The authentic flavor of Thai food must be very flavorful because they are many kinds of seasoning. For example, Thai food has more herbs, which make more flavors. They also have fish sauce, oyster sauce, mushroom sauce, sweet soy sauce, tamarind juice, and palm sugar to season all Thai foods. In addition, Thai people know how to cook in many ways to get a good taste and good texture; however, most American food has salt and pepper as the main seasoning.

In conclusion, although there are many differences between Thai food and American food, people can choose what they want to eat or what kinds of food they will enjoy the most. But, if you like flavorful food, healthy, and not too heavy, Thai food can be an excellent choice even though it is quite a bit hard to find the real Thai food in the United States. On the other hand, American food has a huge portion size, richer, and has many options that can be satisfied.