Food Culture Essay

Introduction

The ethnic composition of the United States is changing rapidly. At the present time, ethnic minorities form more than 31% of the U.S. population, the main group being Hispanics, followed by African-Americans and Asian Americans. This cultural diversity explains the growing demand of food and healthy and tasty international original dishes, everywhere in the United States. Due to increased ethnic diversity and international transport in recent years, sector booming ethnic food in North America are passed from the category of food specialty of public food. In fact, 75f the United States ethnic foods are consumed by the American population as a whole which represents an annual turnover of 75 billion US dollars for an industry that is captured the seventh of the money spent on food (Euro monitor International, 2006).

According to forecasts, ethnic food will continue their current growth in North America. They represent more than 12f the total sales in the food retail and record an annual growth of 5This evolution will be further fuelled by the expansion of the population of visible minorities in the United States expected to reach a population of 123.1 million (i.e. about an American in three) by 2020, an increase of 30% from 2006 population stood at 94.4 million. It is expected that Hispanics will experience the highest growth [about 59 followed by African Americans (Vandermeer, pp.25-31).

Discussion

For this assignment, the ethnic-cultural recipe, I have chosen is Senate Bean Soup (See Appendix 1), the country it represents is U.S., all the ingredients and methods are mentioned in it. Next task for this assignment is to analyze any two components of the recipe.

Bean

The bean or common bean is a species of plant's annual family Fabaceae the genus Pharsalus, commonly grown as a vegetable. We consume is the fruit (the pod), green beans or "snap" or the seeds are rich in protein. The term "bean" includes those parts in which the seeds (beans) or pods are eaten.

This plant, native to Central America and South America (Andes), plays an important role in food as a source of starch (starch) and proteins. It is the subject of food crops in parts of Africa and Latin America, while in developed countries, alongside a limited production in home gardens, has developed a culture in the field is producing dry beans for canning, or green beans. The latter, whose consumption has grown since the beginning of the 20th century, fit better in the search for a lighter diet. Beans like green beans can be either dwarf (and this is the preferred form of field) or be rowing then climbing and the need for tutors.

Some of the early bean books, such as Georg von Martens's Gartenbohnen (Garden Beans, 1869) and U. P. Hedrick's Beans of New York (1931), tried to sort out the bean story and categorized beans by seed shapes, seed colors, pod shapes, pod colors, and a host of other physical characteristics that were artificial, having been induced by humans through breeding rather than through genetic ...