“American cooks and chefs have substantially altered these dishes over the years, to the degree that the dishes now enjoyed around the world are considered to be American. Hot dogs and hamburgers are both based on traditional German dishes, but in their modern popular form they can be reasonably considered American dishes.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cuisine#Ethnic_influe...

The list of US-specific and US-influenced food is pretty long, and includes lots of ‘slow’ foods. Why are you basing your argument on cherry picking from an incomplete list of examples?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_foods

And what do you mean that so-called ‘easy food’ isn’t a contribution to food culture? It’s trending globally (for better or worse), and relates closely to food supply economics.

> Cornbread: Native Americans

Native American foods count, why wouldn’t they?

> This has very little to do with cultural foods like cheese

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_cheeses

Inventing Coke, toaster pastries, and breakfast cereals was neither quick, nor easy. And drinks are a part of cuisine. If we can't count Coke, we also can't include French wine-making or German brewing.

What's a "cultural food"?

Not that GPs point is particularly convincing, but are we really comparing the mastery of wine making and beer brewing to Coca Cola now, in a discussion on culinary culture..? That’s like comparing Fox News to Tolstoi.

Why not? This is just the whole high art/low art nonsense in another context. Plenty of people enjoy their cola of choice more than they do a fancy wine and consider it to be an essential part of their day. Why is it less worthy of inclusion in culinary culture?

No, it’s not. Wine is not just a fancy drink but a craftsmanship tradition, thousands of years old. It’s not just the sophisticated people drinking it, but also the countless people involved in its making and cultivation! Have you ever been to a vineyard in a French, Italian, or German vineyard wine region? The people there live for this; their yards have been passed on for generations, and will continue to be. Planting a new grape means making a 30 year bet, with that much commitment you have to be all in.

I could go on about the entire villages built around wine, the historic efforts required to get the grapes we have today, the unique chemical compounds making for the aromas, and more.

And you’re telling me you want to seriously compare thousands of years of agricultural tradition to a mere hundred years of stimulating Coca Tonic that accidentally tastes pretty good?

It looks like you just did compare coke to wine. :P Seriously though, isn’t this a straw man argument? Parent wasn’t saying there isn’t craft or tradition involved in wine, nor that coke compares on those axes. You didn’t actually answer the question at all: why not discuss the cultural impact of coke? There is cultural impact. It’s not the same impact wine has, it’s quite different, but it is in fact there, don’t you agree?

I answered this in a sibling comment in more detail, but basically my complaint is that comparing a single soda brand to an entire class of tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of drinks, which have a rich cultural back story just seems wrong to me, that doesn’t do wine justice, especially as we don’t just discuss cultural impact, but cultural significance. I’m sure I come across as a European snob here, and I’m actually sorry for that, but I can’t get over the fact that someone claims Coca Cola is in any way as significant as the tradition of winery in total :(

Nobody claimed Coke is as historically significant as all wines combined. That is the straw man. As the best selling single soda brand, and a major global export that people in almost every country on earth consume, Coke does in fact have global cultural and economic significance, which is just a fact. That fact is not taking anything away from the rich history of winemaking, so there’s no need to be defensive. Have some wine and relax!

Edit: BTW Coca Cola’s revenue does stack up meaningfully against the entire wine industry. (The Google results are all over the map, so I’m being careful with my claims, but according to some web pages out there, Coca-Cola’s net revenue is higher than all wines combined.) There is an economic basis for comparing Coke to wine, which does establish a cultural basis for comparison. Notice I’m not (and upstream comments were not) coming to any conclusions about the result of the comparison.

They're all popular drinks associated with their respective food cultures. That's all. I'm not comparing the skill in manufacturing Coke vs beer or wine.

It’s an apple to fruit comparison, then: More apt would be picking carbonated soda drinks, maybe. Or pick out a single kind of wine from a single vineyard.

I’m just a bit salty on comparing such a giant category like European wine or beer to a single company‘s soda.

Specifically colas as opposed to all carbonated drinks should count.

I don't know if generally all sweetened carbonate drinks are mainly American, but I wouldn't be surprised.

That's fair. Most of the popular soft drinks today were invented in the US - Pepsi, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, 7-up, Slice, Dr. Pepper.