You are what you eat. If this means that you are a gordita de chicharrón, you’re in luck. How come Latinos eat healthier and are happier despite the bubbling fat in our extraordinary cuisines? Let me hisplain the Latino approach to food.
WARNING: Before you reconfigure your entire nutritional diet, keep in mind this is not medical or psychological advice. Please remember this column was conceived to be handled with a serious dose of humor—and the proverbial grain of salt (preferably on top of an antojito).
Food is culture. Perhaps nothing illustrates the differences between Latino and US culture than our approach to food. When I moved to New York City from Mexico City in 1992, I was horrified by the way people ate here: a power bar by themselves, while toiling at their desks. Back in Mexico, I had worked at an advertising agency, but I never ate alone, let alone at my desk, let alone a chewy protein brick. Even if we were short on time, we’d go out for something quick with at least one colleague. Latinos can certainly eat alone, but not if we can help it.
For us, eating is a social activity, whether we do it with family, friends, or colleagues. Eating by yourself in Latin America is fine, but you will feel people take pity on you as if you were Oliver Twist, Little Orphan Annie, and El Chavo del Ocho rolled into one.
I was appalled to learn that, for many Americans, food is utilitarian: a mélange of substances held together with edible glue that give you the energy or nutrients you need to survive, flavor and enjoyment be damned. Soylent, a thick shake supposed to contain every nutrient your body needs, could only have been invented in the US. Apparently, whoever came up with this concoction (what tech bros call a “hack”) has never had a cuchifrito or a taco in his life.
For Latinos, food is much more than the sum of its parts. Whether we hail from Patagonia or near the Río Grande, food is culture, pleasure, nourishment, a social treat, and a connection to tradition—our history on a plate. Making and consuming our food takes time. However, even our fast food is superior: tacos and their endless derivatives, tortas, empanadas, arepas, chimichangas. Our fast food is healthier because even when fried with lard (which makes everything taste better), it’s made with fresh ingredients, not with ultra-processed polysyllabic compounds.
In the US, as the saying goes, time is money. In Latino and other cultures, time is much more valuable than money. Perhaps this explains a meal I once had at a cantina in Mexico City that started at 3 p.m. and ended at 3 a.m. In Spanish, we even have a concept for this: la sobremesa, which is when you linger at the table with your people eons after the meal has ended. There cannot be much of a sobremesa over bad food.
Canned food appeared during the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century. Soon, food production became industrialized, with wars triggering the invention of foods that could be consumed on the battlefield (Spam, the canned meat, hailed from that time, hence the name for what we call digital junk).
Around the 1950s, US marketers introduced the concept of convenience to cooking, and convinced the American housewife that she could serve her family TV dinners or something out of a can, the freezer, or a box, and have more time for herself without guilt. This is how many Americans eat to this day—some for convenience, some for financial reasons, and some (confoundingly) because they like it.
Latino cuisine as a whole doesn’t really exist—each country has its own regional delicacies—but let’s oversimplify for the sake of argument: Our favorite Latino dishes and staples are time-consuming to make. This is a byproduct of economics. While labor is expensive in the US, it’s cheap in Latin America, which means that you can employ other people to help you cook.
The most humble establishments all over Latin America serve fiendishly complex delicacies. Many Latinos saw our mothers and grandmothers cook everything from scratch. Perhaps being closer to extended family means eating better, and by better, I mean both healthier and tastier. Imagine how many abuelas, tías and tíos, primos, and hermanas are in hand to cook.
The discrepancy between affordable food in the US and Latin America is depressing and deep, but you can often find Hispanic-owned establishments with deliciously authentic food in the States for reasonable prices. Living on kale smoothies for a quick and healthy “meal” may give you a longer life yet a less delightful one, whereas the glories of a taco de carnitas, a croqueta, sancocho, or insert your favorite Latino food here will guarantee you the most perfect happiness for years to come.
