Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 84

80

Popular Culture Review

As these products point out with some absurdity, ethnic
"authenticity" is hard to quantify, in part because marketers ascribe
very generalized characteristics to ethnic foods. Supermarket
ethnicity is largely a projection of a mainstream perception of
ethnicity. The Latino Food section at Albertson's in Pocatello,
provides an extreme example. This small section is clearly designed
to serve the Latino community in Pocatello. Some of the foods are
labeled in Spanish only and many of the products fall clearly outside
of the familiar mainstream food preferences. One of the most striking
food products, however, is remarkably similar to a standard
American product: Maizoro's "Sugar Frosted Flakes," clearly labeled
as a product of Mexico, is a minor variation on Kellogg's "Frosted
Flakes" — the cereal box has a picture of a smiling cartoon zebra,
which could easily be a cousin of Tony the Tiger.
Of course, there is something deeply ironic and even troubling
about "Latino" authenticity being little more than a pale imitation
of "cheap" American consumerism. Given the increasingly
transnational marketplace, however, it is often difficult to find the
center of a particular cultural tradition. One could argue that the
Sugar Frosted Flakes belong with the rest of the American breakfast
cereals, a few aisles over, but in Pocatello, at least, this was
identified as a "Latino" product--a taste of home.
It is easy to dismiss this cereal as a reminder of the cultural
insensitivity of corporate culture. By contrast, many enlightened
consumers want to hold on to a standard of taste, an aesthetic of "the
real thing." Some Americans are disturbed by the free and easy
blending of cultural traditions, both in the supermarkets and in
restaurants. Food critic Regina Shrambling, for example, condemns
the "mongrelization" (12) of ethnic food. Shrambling writes,
"Americans are raised to revere the notion of the melting pot. But to
quote the late French journalist and gastro nome Cumoskty's first
lesson of serious cooking, 'Cuisine is when things taste like
themselves.' The trend today is to mix and match until you get a
mish-mash. . . .Maybe we're gaining a new global awareness, but
we're losing respect for cultural differences" (12).
Shrambling links respect for diversity to the preservation of
gastronomic purity. But why does she condemn the "frenzied
phenomenon" of "fusion food" (12) in the United States when Asian
and European foods have always been affected by trade, migrations.