Todd Stadler's blog

it's the american way

So instead I will simply think on Godfather's pizza itself. They sure do have a lot of weird things passing for pizzas here.

Taco pizzas with shredded lettuce, tomato, shredded cheddar, and sour cream. Burger pizzas with hamburger, onions, lettuce, and even pickles. Barbecue pizzas. And of course, the dessert pizza, which is stretching the concept about as far as it can go. It's not even the same dough, and there's no cheese, just flat bread covered mostly in some sugary substance and sprinkled with tiny candies.

This got me thinking. Pizza is basically a meta-food. Sure, at one point it was a legitimate cuisine with cultural roots and all. But those days are long gone. Most Americans wouldn't even recognize an Italian pizza.

Once Americans got a hold of pizza, they loved it so much they made it look like whatever else they liked. They kept on stretching the definition of what constitutes a pizza until only the most basic elements were left. Which, as the dessert pizza proves, pretty much leaves us with flat bread, a sauce of some sort, and something particulate on top.

For some reason, Americans seem to really love such meta-foods. Indeed, most of the basic American staples are capable of mimicking other foods.

I've seen burgers, for instance, that mimic tacos, vegetarian food, barbecue, and, of course, pizzas. The definition of a burger seems to be something like "two pieces of bread with a large protein or protein-like chunk in between, often with other things like vegetables". Here again, we've pretty much boiled it down to bread and something.

To a lesser degree, tacos are a meta-food as well. Choco Tacos, anyone? Of course, tacos are still considered exotic in some parts of America, and they are not as popular as pizzas and burgers, anyhow.

So what is it about meta-foods that Americans love? Is it their obvious technological superiority over traditional ethnic foods? Or their ability to be whatever Americans want them to be? After all, when one wants a taco but the family wants pizza, isn't it nice that everybody can win?

Or maybe Americans simply can't get enough of their disturbing, disgusting, cholesterol-laden food. Either way, we all win.