Food, Culture, and Diabetes in the United States

What do people in the United States eat? Is it meat and potatoes? Things have changed in the United States as the population has grown to include many different ethnic and cultural groups, and this has resulted in diverse food preferences and eating habits. Asian Indians are one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in the United States. African Americans are numerically the largest minority group, although the Latino population is expected to be larger than the African-American population by the middle of the next century.¹

Culture is defined as the knowledge, beliefs, customs, and habits a group of people share. These are not inherited behaviors, but learned. Culture is passed on from generation to generation.¹ Each ethnic group has its own culturally based foods and food habits. These traditions have been influenced and adapted through contact with the mainstream culture.

Conversely, the foods of mainstream culture have been influenced by the presence of these ethnic cultures. Fast-food restaurants and other take-out restaurants now offer such wide-ranging selections as pizza, tacos, falafel, tandoori, egg rolls, and hamburgers.¹

Thus, the American diet is a combination of many cultures and cuisines. To understand it, one must not only study the traditional foods and food habits of the many minority groups, but also the interaction between the majority culture and the cultures of these smaller groups.

Seventeen million people in the United States have diabetes. Key to the increasing prevalence of diabetes is the rapid growth of the disease in high-risk populations such as African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. The growth in obesity, as well as an aging population, have also contributed to this increase.^2,3

This article examines the ethnic and regional food practices of three larges segments of the U.S. population: African …