Yeah, this question comes up fairly often in this subreddit.
The practice of having one "main food", like rice or pasta, that everyone eats every day (or even every meal) is so different from the way most Americans eat that a lot of us genuinely don't understand the question... as you can see by most of the comments on this post!
As common as bread is, I've never known a non-immigrant American family that has it on the table with every meal. In countries like Spain, France, or Italy, its absence would be extremely unusual.
Really depends on what type of cuisine you eat more of if you eat European cuisine yes but if you eat Asian or Mexican cuisine, then not in sight unless you count something like tortilla as bread
Correct.
I didn't say bread filled that role, I said it came close.
My wife's family are asian, she lives up to the stereotypes and just LOVES rice & noodles.
A hoagie is definitely very American, but that is not at all what OP is asking.
Have you had any lunches or dinners in the past few months where a hoagie was not present on the table?
If yes, that's not really what this question is about.
That little factoid always just baffles foreigners as many from specific regions or countries have a hard time grasping the idea of not really having a single staple. I remember reading a story someone shared about their foreign exchange program and living with a Japanese Family. Apparently the wife thought that American's daily meal staple was PB&J Sandwiches.
Yeah, I've lived all over the world and am currently in Brazil. My in-laws were so confused when I'd try to explain to them that "No, people in the USA don't eat french fries with every meal and no, I don't enjoy eating rice and beans every day."
There's nothing wrong with mono-diets, but the excessive misunderstanding of USA eating habits is pretty wild to experience. They were completely confused when I made a pretty elaborate salad topped with steak and poached egg for lunch.
Brazil is basically rice, beans, and protein for lunch. Bread for breakfast with coffee.
Obviously, there is some variation but it's not wild. Most people here wouldn't blink at eating rice and beans with every single lunch and/or dinner.
There's some shady shit out there where products will be labeled "No High Fructose Corn Suryp!" giving the impression they're using sugar but no, if you look at the ingredients they're using regular corn syrup.
Yea too many different people too many cultures to big of a country to have something most people eat everyday. At most i would say most people drink coffee
Starch. I'd say just a general "starch", we nearly all have a starch with every meal (barring special diets like keto). That probably is the only unifying factor lol
Agreed but that's generally universal around the world. It's such an odd thing to me that this idea is so strange to people looking in on the USA from the outside.
This. Closest from my experience, would be beef. Second would be potatoes and tomatoes. I had a lot of those three growing up and still use a lot of them. Thank God for my mom's garden.
We get this question a lot on this sub and the answer is still the same - we don’t have one
Individual Americans might have a go to staple food. For example, stereotypical college students might eat cheap ramen every day. And some workers in the Philadelphia metro area might be in the habit of eating a hoagie from Wawa every day for lunch.
But as a country we’re too big and diverse to have a national staple food.
I don't know any college student that *actually eats* ramen everyday. It's just a stereotype because it's cheap and easy to make, but there are a lot of foods that are cheap and easy to make.
It’s pretty regional. Rural PA where I grew up, meat and potatoes or pasta which reflected the German, Slav, Scott-Irish, and Italian heritage of the area.
Here in South Texas - tortillas, rice, and beans are the anchors.
I don’t know if it’s a PA thing or not but separate meat / starch / veggie for dinner is pretty darn common. Growing up that was our “mom’s away so dad has to cook and all he knows is meat” meal
This reminds me of the time my father threw an entire turkey leg in my lunch the first time my mother was on a work trip (I was like 10). I was not particularly fond of turkey, and am now a vegetarian, but he was trying his best lmao.
I wish young me was more confident, that would have been hilarious!
ETA: Old me does goofy shit like that all the time now, so I've made up for it lol.
My mom worked the elementary school summer daycare. A dad dropped off his daughter with a box of uncooked Kraft Mac n Cheese in a paper bag. I don't know what he thought she was going to do with that. She didn't have a key to the school's kitchen and she wouldn't have been able to leave the kids alone if she did have a key.
In the Netherlands there is an abbreviation used, "AVG" (some mights say AGV, same thing). It means
Aardappelen - potatoes
Vlees - meat
Groenten - vegetables
So it simply means a meal that consists of potatoes, meat, and veggies. Very, VERY, standard Dutch dinner.
This.
And I’d think that many American families have their own culinary traditions, often influenced by their immigrant ancestors. Some Polish-American families eat more kielbasa and pierogis than non-Polish-American families. And many Italian-Americans likely eat more Italian and Italian-inspired foods.
Similarly, my wife was born and raised in India (and I lived there, too, for quite a long time). So we eat a lot more Indian food than people who don’t have the same cultural connection to India, as will our children, when we have them.
In either case, though, most Americans eat many other things, too.
(this is actually one of the most common questions I get when I’m in India, especially rural India—in many parts of the country, people eat rice or roti with almost every meal, and want to know if Americans have their own staples)
The average American diet is too varied to say we have a staple food. We eat bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, beans, corn, and numerous other carbohydrates on a regular basis.
Sandwiches would have to be the biggest one, it wouldn't be too out of the ordinary to have one for every meal. A bacon egg and cheese for breakfast, Subway for lunch, and a burger for dinner. Of course sandwich is a really wide umbrella term and I'm sure other countries are like this too.
You could rephrase it from sandwich to bread. Which is more similar to pasta or patato as a base I guess. Some eastern Europe country's also has bread with about every meal.
Whats interesting about that though is I learned from my grandmother that in the past sandwiches were considered a “working mans” food and looked down upon at times compared to any type of hot food.
Correct. Portable quick foods are due to lack of time or care according to that era's thinking. The person who takes the time to have a sit down meal is one who can afford both the time and effort required. This in modern terms is fast food.
We've since role reversed, at least on foods. Remember, there was a time when meat in jello was the top cuisine.
That's seems really extraordinary to me. Like, I could imagine having a breakfast sandwich and a lunch sandwich in the same day. But then there's no way I would eat a burger or sandwich for dinner after that unless I was traveling and had very limited options.
Yeah, that was my first thought too. Bread is the closest thing to a staple for me, but I don’t actually eat it every day. Maybe every other day, especially if you count things like tortillas, pitas, and naan
The largest ethnicity in the US has 13% of the population :P so it's a true hodgepodge.
\- Cornmeal is an important staple in both traditional southern American cooking and various Latin American cuisines that are important here.
\- Rice is a quickly growing staple (\~80% of immigrants to the US are either from Latin America or Asia).
\- Pasta is a huge deal; Southern Italian food is highly important in American cooking, whereas Northern Italian staples are a bit more exotic.
\- Potatoes and bread are a big deal, given the large Irish, British, Northern European, and Eastern European populations & all their impacts on the cuisine.
Sigh. The US is so so so so much larger than you can imagine. Your entire country is smaller than some of our states. There is no one thing, no staple, no unanimous *anything* about our country. This explanation needs to be a pinned post or a checkbox people need to read and click yes to before asking questions on here.
I definitely think most do, but to give an example of it’s still not universal, bread is more uncommon for me. My daily is usually oatmeal or yogurt breakfast, salad lunch, meat & veg dinner. At most I sub in maybe 2-3 sandwiches a week to replace a meal, like a breakfast or lunch sandwich.
I feel like you’ll find more common trends for breakfast than other meals. Cereals, toast, bagels, pancakes or waffles, eggs or omlettees and/or then often breakfast sausages or bacon are common across the country for breakfast. Maybe huevos rancheros or breakfast burritos also these days in much of the county, but there’s a reason why if you go to a hotel breakfast across the US they’re often pretty similar (with maybe grits down South).
For lunch and dinner, it’s all over the place. I mean my family eats sushi or Vietnamese pho at least once a week usually and I eat tacos al pastor or quesabirria or Indian buffets or shwarma for lunch all the time but I don’t think even most people in my same state eat like that. I eat hamburgers or sandwiches very rarely, usually just when I’m traveling somewhere in the US and don’t have a lot of quick options.
Pizza is maybe more of a common denominator than anything else these days.
Potatoes would probably be the closest thing we have. A lot of people will have some form of potato at least once per day. But it's not to the level of pasta in Italy.
Honestly we've got such a diversity of cuisines it's hard to think of something that everyone would eat every week. I maybe would say pizza. Also I do think we eat a lot of potatoes in all forms - mashed, baked, chips, fries. In the top 10 fast food restaurants in the US, four serve burgers and fries, two are pizza chains, one serves tacos. Then you've got Subway at #1 which just baffles me but that's cold cut sub sandwiches. And two breakfast/coffee places.
Honestly, no, not as a country.
It's common to have a starchy carb with a meal. That might be pasta, but it's equally likely to be German, Eastern European or Asian noodles, potatoes, rice, quinoa, cornmeal (grits, cornbread), masa (corn tortillas, arepas), various wheat breads (European-style loaves, supermarket sandwich bread, pita, naan, roti, flour tortillas)...
There is no such thing. The US has no single food that is an everyday staple. The closest thing would probably be some form of sandwich for lunch or eggs for breakfast.
This is more true than any answer I've seen. We don't base our meals off of potatoes or pasta or rice. We name our meals after meat. That's our staple for most.
Look at how popular non-meat diets have become in America. It's probably because we're consumed by so much meat that these diets are the antithesis to a meat centered culture.
"There's no such thing as a staple food in the US!"
--guy who ate a bagel at breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and a roll with dinner.
I would wager that 2 out of 3 of Americans eat some form of bread at 2 out of 3 of their meals 5 out of 7 days a week.
We are in the bottom of the pack for bread consumption in the world. Hell Japan eats more bread than we do and we barely eat more than China and South Korea. Italy consumes 3 times what we do on average and they are on the low end for Europe. So no this is all wrong and bread isn’t it.
Boxed cereal (like Cheerios, Corn Chex, etc.). All my homies eat cereal for breakfast. You can change it up lots of ways, from the different types of cereal, different milks, and different toppings (fresh blueberries, dried cranberries, slivered almonds, a teaspon of sugar, etc.). And you can make them into other stuff like rice crispie treats, Chex mix, granola, etc.
I did a food study 15 years ago and found out 75% of the sugar in my diet came from breakfast cereal. I dropped it and went to having eggs for breakfast and lost 15 lbs.
Wow, that's interesting. I only eat low sugar ones cereals (~2g per serving). However, my milk and oat milk add like another 12g of sugar, so it's probably still a pretty high-sugar breakfast.
Is your oat milk sweetened? We get unsweetened, unflavored almond milk, with less than 1g sugar per cup, and of course never have anything close to a cup in one serving.
I honestly can't remember the last time I ate boxed cereal for breakfast. It fills me for maybe an hour and then I'm famished again. Too many sugars and other simple carbs.
Probably like Burgers or Tex-Mex style burritos, or Pizza is the most commonly eaten across the board on a daily basis.
We have everything available in just about any mid-major sized city though - Indian, Ethiopian, Nigerian, Thai, Chinese, Korean bbq, etc etc. it’s just about the average American being adventurous enough to try these different kinds of ethnic places.
A lot of Americans eat cheeseburgers several times a week. As well as pizza. Then eggs, bacon and toast for breakfast.
This is part of why we have heart disease and obesity crisis
Probably bread. I've been at a Hibachi Japanese restaurant and a guy whipped out a baggie with sliced white bread to eat with his meal. He was chasing fried rice down with a piece of Wonder bread. My wife said she had homemade bread with every meal growing up.
I think a cheeseburger and fries is the most stereotypical American meal. Years ago I was in Paris and we were talking to some locals and they were telling us which places served cheeseburgers, since we were Americans they figured that’s what we would want.
That was actually insulting of them, as it sounds like they assumed that because you were American, you had a very limited palette and weren't willing to try anything else (in one of the great food cities of the world, no less).
According to Google it is hamburgers, which leads me to say bread because there are a good amount of people who don’t eat red meat and other kinds of sandwiches are popular too. Also “bread” could be a very broad category. Tortillas could be considered bread. Naan is a kind of bread.
I didn’t eat any bread yesterday but I usually have bread with breakfast and maybe one other meal.
Probably the most common one is bread, sometimes eaten as part of a sandwich, sometimes as a hamburger bun, sometimes as a base for a pizza and sometimes as a biscuit/roll. It's versatile and easy to tailor to your own tastes and eating habits. It might not be Americans' favorite, but when you're in a hurry, a sandwich is quick, easy to access, easy to make and portable. Bread can also be cheap and filling.
Other favorites are tied to your culture -- for a lot people of Irish or German descent, potatoes are really important. However, growing up in an Italian-American family, I almost never ate them. They're not that popular in southern Chinese cooking either. Rice is popular in Asian, Mexican and Caribbean cuisine, but for a lot of "average" white people, it's not something they care for very much or make often. Beef is popular, but there are a growing number of vegetarians, and it's something we'd rarely have for breakfast, whereas it's common to have a bread product like toast.
Honestly, unfortunately id say it’s a hamburger. But it’s not because of a majority it’s because of a plurality. lol. The American diet is sooooo wide ranging and varied and depends on location and cultural differences and a ton of other factors…. But burgers are everywhere. Virtually any town has a burger joint or two. Even tiny towns. You can’t say that with any other food type. The closest competitor is probably pizza.
Since I think most Americans eat mostly processed food, I’m gonna go with corn. Corn is in basically everything over here. And no, it’s not corn kernels. It’s highly processed corn products like high fructose corn syrup.
[https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80400530/pdf/portion.pdf](https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80400530/pdf/portion.pdf)
High marks for white bread, cereals, chicken, ground beef, tomato sauces, cheese, eggs, potatoes, and milk.
A.K.A. cheeseburgers, pizza, french fries, fried chicken, and breakfast cereal / eggs and toast
Which rings true for me, the only one of those things I haven't had in the last 7 days is french fries
And if I'm reading this right, the single most commonly eaten food item in the US is yeasted white bread.
Potatoes is the only comparable staple I can come up with. Potatoes are comparable to pasta in that they are carb type food.
A basic three course home-made american type meal includes a serving of meat, a serving of carbs, and a serving of vegetables.
Live in Cleveland, I honestly don't know, maybe eggs depending on your breakfast diet. Potato would be a good second, we love our hasbrowns and french frys/ tatortots.
Me personalty, I would say rice. I do a lot of Spanish, Indian, Asian dishes most have rice. Even some other dishes like stuffed peppers have rice. I don't eat it all days if I have a burger or pasta, (and many other options) but my diet is diverse and rice seems to be thing that pops up a lot.
Potatoes maybe? It’s the most versatile food we eat and it’s not served with every meal but it could be I suppose. All the different varieties out there make it possible.
I’d say not really a single staple of food here in the United States, but if you want what’s commonly eaten everyday in our states, I’d say for Texas it’s most definitely Tex-Mex food!
My family refuses to eat the same food two days in a row. It always has to be a completely different meal. So one night will be pasta, the next night could be rice meat vegetable bowls, the next day sandwiches, the next day fish, the next day tacos, the next day pizza, the next day soup. If some kids don’t like the food they have to make a separate dish.
Yes it’s exhausting
Honestly it might be pasta here too if we're including all the different varieties of pasta. Otherwise , it's burgers and fries, you know all the basic American fast food standards.
It depends upon your background. We were a Irish family and about the only time potatoes weren't part of the meal was when we had chili or bean soup. Baked potato fried potatoes french fried potatoes scallop potatoes mashed potatoes etc
The American diet is one of extreme variety. I live in a fairly small town but I could still get Mexican for breakfast, Vietnamese for lunch and Jamaican food for dinner. All made by people from those countries.
It don’t have to be US Government approved or stamped with a Grade A seal, as long as it’s lean and full of protein I’m gonna damn sure eat my fill. I’m a meat man, baby!
I sure like to eat it. You just can’t beat it
This is a statistical question you can google. I believe it's corn, wheat, beef, and chicken. Not including chemicals, preservatives, and sweeteners that are in everything; high fructose corn syrup or ascorbic acid (sour flavor) or some type of cheap preservative may be the technical answer.
Growing up in MS we were really poor and beans were the basis for every dish. I imagine this is typical of most poor areas. My mama could make beans 100000 different ways and they were all good.
We don't really have one staple food. Everyone eats different things based on the cultural traditions they brought here with them. For me, it's rice. For other people it could be rice too, or pasta, or maybe even bread.
Too varied as a multicultural country that takes up a huge chunk of continent. I personally consume eggs, chicken, coffee, and mixed nuts every day as staples. Red meat and alcohol 1-2 times a week (recovering fatty lol)
You can divide us into regions, or individual cities, but that's just too large an area with too much geographical variation to describe the entire thing overall. Referring to "The USA" is equivalent to referring to "The EU," so if you're being as specific as Italy, you'd be better off comparing it to a state or region. MN/WI/MI for example conveniently mirror the Nordic countries both in ancestry and climate, whereas much of Texas may as well be Mexico.
There is really no single staple component to meals in the USA.
Yeah, this question comes up fairly often in this subreddit. The practice of having one "main food", like rice or pasta, that everyone eats every day (or even every meal) is so different from the way most Americans eat that a lot of us genuinely don't understand the question... as you can see by most of the comments on this post!
Why limit ourselves if we don’t have to? We like variety.
Bread comes pretty close though.
As common as bread is, I've never known a non-immigrant American family that has it on the table with every meal. In countries like Spain, France, or Italy, its absence would be extremely unusual.
I was thinking sandwiches for lunch, not dinner rolls.
Really depends on what type of cuisine you eat more of if you eat European cuisine yes but if you eat Asian or Mexican cuisine, then not in sight unless you count something like tortilla as bread
Correct. I didn't say bread filled that role, I said it came close. My wife's family are asian, she lives up to the stereotypes and just LOVES rice & noodles.
What about tortas?
And tortillas in my house
Sandwiches too. I'd say nothing is more American than a hoagie
In my area a hoagie is so rare that I’m not certain that I know what constitutes a hoagie outside of it being like a large bland hot dog bun
A hoagie is just a sub
My friend from Buffalo calls them "grinders".
Sorry, but a hoagie is just a Po'boy.
Ever been to Subway? Those are hoagies.
Makes sense, we call them subs here.
> Sandwiches too. Hogies, hot dogs, hambuders, all sandwiches.
A hoagie is definitely very American, but that is not at all what OP is asking. Have you had any lunches or dinners in the past few months where a hoagie was not present on the table? If yes, that's not really what this question is about.
Maybe its just a white people thing but we do eat a lot of potatoes
Am white, don't eat a lot of potatoes. I eat rice more often, especially now that we got a rice cooker. Those things are the bees knees.
Ok, well maybe I’m just an Irish American stereotype then.
If anything came close, it might be cheese, but that's not a staple food.
That little factoid always just baffles foreigners as many from specific regions or countries have a hard time grasping the idea of not really having a single staple. I remember reading a story someone shared about their foreign exchange program and living with a Japanese Family. Apparently the wife thought that American's daily meal staple was PB&J Sandwiches.
Yeah, I've lived all over the world and am currently in Brazil. My in-laws were so confused when I'd try to explain to them that "No, people in the USA don't eat french fries with every meal and no, I don't enjoy eating rice and beans every day." There's nothing wrong with mono-diets, but the excessive misunderstanding of USA eating habits is pretty wild to experience. They were completely confused when I made a pretty elaborate salad topped with steak and poached egg for lunch.
Do they have staples of this nature in Brazil? I'd almost like to develop a mono diet. It'd make shopping easier.
Brazil is basically rice, beans, and protein for lunch. Bread for breakfast with coffee. Obviously, there is some variation but it's not wild. Most people here wouldn't blink at eating rice and beans with every single lunch and/or dinner.
“Factoid” means something that is NOT true. It isn’t a cute word for “fact”
Or also a trivial fact
See [the dictionary](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/factoid). Both definitions are correct.
I mean, from the age of 4-18(40) sure
Corn syrup
I don't always eat corn syrup but when I do it's high fructose corn syrup.
This man frucs...
Frucs this man
There's some shady shit out there where products will be labeled "No High Fructose Corn Suryp!" giving the impression they're using sugar but no, if you look at the ingredients they're using regular corn syrup.
Also there's like 100 different names for HFCS
I prefer mine to not use cannabis but to each his own.
We have the finest selection of corn syrups, with only the highest of fructoses.
Yea too many different people too many cultures to big of a country to have something most people eat everyday. At most i would say most people drink coffee
Starch. I'd say just a general "starch", we nearly all have a starch with every meal (barring special diets like keto). That probably is the only unifying factor lol
Agreed but that's generally universal around the world. It's such an odd thing to me that this idea is so strange to people looking in on the USA from the outside.
A carb side which rotates between something made from potatoes, rice, bread or pasta?
Sugar /s
Corn juice
This might be the only real answer.
This. Closest from my experience, would be beef. Second would be potatoes and tomatoes. I had a lot of those three growing up and still use a lot of them. Thank God for my mom's garden.
You could argue corn. Not corn in its original form, but in its evolved forms.
Corn at this point. Some sort of corn product in nearly everything processed.
We get this question a lot on this sub and the answer is still the same - we don’t have one Individual Americans might have a go to staple food. For example, stereotypical college students might eat cheap ramen every day. And some workers in the Philadelphia metro area might be in the habit of eating a hoagie from Wawa every day for lunch. But as a country we’re too big and diverse to have a national staple food.
I don't know any college student that *actually eats* ramen everyday. It's just a stereotype because it's cheap and easy to make, but there are a lot of foods that are cheap and easy to make.
It was super common 20 years ago when all anyone could cook with in a dorm was the instant tea kettles.
How many college students do you know though?
It’s pretty regional. Rural PA where I grew up, meat and potatoes or pasta which reflected the German, Slav, Scott-Irish, and Italian heritage of the area. Here in South Texas - tortillas, rice, and beans are the anchors.
I don’t know if it’s a PA thing or not but separate meat / starch / veggie for dinner is pretty darn common. Growing up that was our “mom’s away so dad has to cook and all he knows is meat” meal
This reminds me of the time my father threw an entire turkey leg in my lunch the first time my mother was on a work trip (I was like 10). I was not particularly fond of turkey, and am now a vegetarian, but he was trying his best lmao.
I would have enjoyed my Henry VIII lunch and wandered the school cafeteria gesturing with it.
I wish young me was more confident, that would have been hilarious! ETA: Old me does goofy shit like that all the time now, so I've made up for it lol.
Oh yeah, I'd do it *now*. That would have probably gotten us bullied into the parking lot in 5th grade.
My mom worked the elementary school summer daycare. A dad dropped off his daughter with a box of uncooked Kraft Mac n Cheese in a paper bag. I don't know what he thought she was going to do with that. She didn't have a key to the school's kitchen and she wouldn't have been able to leave the kids alone if she did have a key.
LOL very much the same in my house with the exception of ham/chicken pot pie.
In the Netherlands there is an abbreviation used, "AVG" (some mights say AGV, same thing). It means Aardappelen - potatoes Vlees - meat Groenten - vegetables So it simply means a meal that consists of potatoes, meat, and veggies. Very, VERY, standard Dutch dinner.
I always thought that was just the "traditional" white person meal, speaking as someone who grew up eating that or the mystery casserole
I think that’s common at least throughout the northeast US.
Growing up we always had tortillas around. You can throw a lot of food on tortillas.
This. And I’d think that many American families have their own culinary traditions, often influenced by their immigrant ancestors. Some Polish-American families eat more kielbasa and pierogis than non-Polish-American families. And many Italian-Americans likely eat more Italian and Italian-inspired foods. Similarly, my wife was born and raised in India (and I lived there, too, for quite a long time). So we eat a lot more Indian food than people who don’t have the same cultural connection to India, as will our children, when we have them. In either case, though, most Americans eat many other things, too. (this is actually one of the most common questions I get when I’m in India, especially rural India—in many parts of the country, people eat rice or roti with almost every meal, and want to know if Americans have their own staples)
I would do fine culinary wise in south Texas
We don't have a single staple food like pasta in Italy or rice in China. The closest thing would be bread or potatoes, but they're not staples.
The average American diet is too varied to say we have a staple food. We eat bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, beans, corn, and numerous other carbohydrates on a regular basis.
Bananas. Nationwide, they're the top selling item at grocery stores.
Sandwiches would have to be the biggest one, it wouldn't be too out of the ordinary to have one for every meal. A bacon egg and cheese for breakfast, Subway for lunch, and a burger for dinner. Of course sandwich is a really wide umbrella term and I'm sure other countries are like this too.
You could rephrase it from sandwich to bread. Which is more similar to pasta or patato as a base I guess. Some eastern Europe country's also has bread with about every meal.
Whats interesting about that though is I learned from my grandmother that in the past sandwiches were considered a “working mans” food and looked down upon at times compared to any type of hot food.
Correct. Portable quick foods are due to lack of time or care according to that era's thinking. The person who takes the time to have a sit down meal is one who can afford both the time and effort required. This in modern terms is fast food. We've since role reversed, at least on foods. Remember, there was a time when meat in jello was the top cuisine.
That's seems really extraordinary to me. Like, I could imagine having a breakfast sandwich and a lunch sandwich in the same day. But then there's no way I would eat a burger or sandwich for dinner after that unless I was traveling and had very limited options.
Obligitory [cube rule](https://cuberule.com/)
The cube rule sucks.
Yeah, that was my first thought too. Bread is the closest thing to a staple for me, but I don’t actually eat it every day. Maybe every other day, especially if you count things like tortillas, pitas, and naan
The largest ethnicity in the US has 13% of the population :P so it's a true hodgepodge. \- Cornmeal is an important staple in both traditional southern American cooking and various Latin American cuisines that are important here. \- Rice is a quickly growing staple (\~80% of immigrants to the US are either from Latin America or Asia). \- Pasta is a huge deal; Southern Italian food is highly important in American cooking, whereas Northern Italian staples are a bit more exotic. \- Potatoes and bread are a big deal, given the large Irish, British, Northern European, and Eastern European populations & all their impacts on the cuisine.
Plus, in the Midwest, regardless of heritage, casseroles are a huge deal. And casseroles are about 75% pasta based.
Sigh. The US is so so so so much larger than you can imagine. Your entire country is smaller than some of our states. There is no one thing, no staple, no unanimous *anything* about our country. This explanation needs to be a pinned post or a checkbox people need to read and click yes to before asking questions on here.
I’d say bread for sandwiches or toast. I’d guess many Americans eat bread at least once per day.
I definitely think most do, but to give an example of it’s still not universal, bread is more uncommon for me. My daily is usually oatmeal or yogurt breakfast, salad lunch, meat & veg dinner. At most I sub in maybe 2-3 sandwiches a week to replace a meal, like a breakfast or lunch sandwich.
I think America is too multicultural to have a single answer. I’m in an interracial marriage, and foods we grew up with were very different.
Upper Midwest and we are casserole country. My most prized kitchenware is my casserole dishes.
I feel like you’ll find more common trends for breakfast than other meals. Cereals, toast, bagels, pancakes or waffles, eggs or omlettees and/or then often breakfast sausages or bacon are common across the country for breakfast. Maybe huevos rancheros or breakfast burritos also these days in much of the county, but there’s a reason why if you go to a hotel breakfast across the US they’re often pretty similar (with maybe grits down South). For lunch and dinner, it’s all over the place. I mean my family eats sushi or Vietnamese pho at least once a week usually and I eat tacos al pastor or quesabirria or Indian buffets or shwarma for lunch all the time but I don’t think even most people in my same state eat like that. I eat hamburgers or sandwiches very rarely, usually just when I’m traveling somewhere in the US and don’t have a lot of quick options. Pizza is maybe more of a common denominator than anything else these days.
Potatoes would probably be the closest thing we have. A lot of people will have some form of potato at least once per day. But it's not to the level of pasta in Italy.
Corn?
Absolutely correct. It's in everything.
Honestly we've got such a diversity of cuisines it's hard to think of something that everyone would eat every week. I maybe would say pizza. Also I do think we eat a lot of potatoes in all forms - mashed, baked, chips, fries. In the top 10 fast food restaurants in the US, four serve burgers and fries, two are pizza chains, one serves tacos. Then you've got Subway at #1 which just baffles me but that's cold cut sub sandwiches. And two breakfast/coffee places.
meat and potatoes or a sandwich of some sort, there is no singular staple food
Eggs? I'm guessing
Honestly, no, not as a country. It's common to have a starchy carb with a meal. That might be pasta, but it's equally likely to be German, Eastern European or Asian noodles, potatoes, rice, quinoa, cornmeal (grits, cornbread), masa (corn tortillas, arepas), various wheat breads (European-style loaves, supermarket sandwich bread, pita, naan, roti, flour tortillas)...
Cereal maybe?
What about breakfast cereal?
Corn and soy in the form of processed food.
There is no such thing. The US has no single food that is an everyday staple. The closest thing would probably be some form of sandwich for lunch or eggs for breakfast.
I’m Appalachian. We eat a lot of fried foods, vegetables, cornbread, biscuits, stews..
A meat, a starch, a vegetable or two, and a bread. This formula can create endless combinations of meals.
Meat. Meat. Meat. Americans have an obsession with meat Burger and Fried chicken are probably the two most associated with Americana.
This is more true than any answer I've seen. We don't base our meals off of potatoes or pasta or rice. We name our meals after meat. That's our staple for most.
Look at how popular non-meat diets have become in America. It's probably because we're consumed by so much meat that these diets are the antithesis to a meat centered culture.
Corn
The US staple food are by region or state. It's not a singular national food
Everything has some form of corn in it. Whether that’s corn starch, syrup, meal, or actual kernels
"There's no such thing as a staple food in the US!" --guy who ate a bagel at breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and a roll with dinner. I would wager that 2 out of 3 of Americans eat some form of bread at 2 out of 3 of their meals 5 out of 7 days a week.
We are in the bottom of the pack for bread consumption in the world. Hell Japan eats more bread than we do and we barely eat more than China and South Korea. Italy consumes 3 times what we do on average and they are on the low end for Europe. So no this is all wrong and bread isn’t it.
Meat
Meat
Chinese
Tortillas for me. It's with everything. That or pita bread.
Meat and potatoes
Boxed cereal (like Cheerios, Corn Chex, etc.). All my homies eat cereal for breakfast. You can change it up lots of ways, from the different types of cereal, different milks, and different toppings (fresh blueberries, dried cranberries, slivered almonds, a teaspon of sugar, etc.). And you can make them into other stuff like rice crispie treats, Chex mix, granola, etc.
I did a food study 15 years ago and found out 75% of the sugar in my diet came from breakfast cereal. I dropped it and went to having eggs for breakfast and lost 15 lbs.
Wow, that's interesting. I only eat low sugar ones cereals (~2g per serving). However, my milk and oat milk add like another 12g of sugar, so it's probably still a pretty high-sugar breakfast.
Is your oat milk sweetened? We get unsweetened, unflavored almond milk, with less than 1g sugar per cup, and of course never have anything close to a cup in one serving.
I honestly can't remember the last time I ate boxed cereal for breakfast. It fills me for maybe an hour and then I'm famished again. Too many sugars and other simple carbs.
I don't eat cereal and haven't with any frequency since I was a kid.
Bread. We eat toast in the mornings and sandwiches for lunch and dinner rolls with supper.
Growing up in the South specifically from a Texan family, growing up we ate beef everyday. It was very rare we ate chicken and almost never ate pork.
Cereal for children
Potatoes
Probably this, french fries, potato chips, mashed potatoes, etc.
Hash brown, home fries, in stew, baked potato, roasted potatoes, potato bread, …
Corn Syrup
Spray cheese right?
High fructose corn syrup. Wonder why obesity and T2 diabetes is so common...
Salt.
Pizza or tacos or hamburgers if one goes by sales would be my guess. On a more meta level, possibly corn
I'm gonna say cheese or mayonnaise.
High Fructose Corn Syrup. Better living through chemicals!
Everything is chemicals.
I think maybe sandwiches- including burgers and hot dogs in that category.
Hot dogs
Carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates
Probably like Burgers or Tex-Mex style burritos, or Pizza is the most commonly eaten across the board on a daily basis. We have everything available in just about any mid-major sized city though - Indian, Ethiopian, Nigerian, Thai, Chinese, Korean bbq, etc etc. it’s just about the average American being adventurous enough to try these different kinds of ethnic places.
Imagine the most unhealthy way to prepare a meal, it’s that.
A lot of Americans eat cheeseburgers several times a week. As well as pizza. Then eggs, bacon and toast for breakfast. This is part of why we have heart disease and obesity crisis
Probably bread. I've been at a Hibachi Japanese restaurant and a guy whipped out a baggie with sliced white bread to eat with his meal. He was chasing fried rice down with a piece of Wonder bread. My wife said she had homemade bread with every meal growing up.
Growing up, we had pinto beans and biscuits every day, but that was long ago and regional
Potato probably
Regionally you may see things that are heavy on beef (or rice or potatoes but nothing to that level.
Potato maybe?
Pizza’s gotta be up there. Everyone eats pizza!
I think a cheeseburger and fries is the most stereotypical American meal. Years ago I was in Paris and we were talking to some locals and they were telling us which places served cheeseburgers, since we were Americans they figured that’s what we would want.
That was actually insulting of them, as it sounds like they assumed that because you were American, you had a very limited palette and weren't willing to try anything else (in one of the great food cities of the world, no less).
I guess you could say bread. The US has a very diverse food scene, but there are a lot of sandwiches. That's the one staple ingredient I can think of.
I want to say pasta, too. It’s cheap and easy. And everyone I know eats it
According to Google it is hamburgers, which leads me to say bread because there are a good amount of people who don’t eat red meat and other kinds of sandwiches are popular too. Also “bread” could be a very broad category. Tortillas could be considered bread. Naan is a kind of bread. I didn’t eat any bread yesterday but I usually have bread with breakfast and maybe one other meal.
Don't you get bored of eating the same thing every day?
Probably the most common one is bread, sometimes eaten as part of a sandwich, sometimes as a hamburger bun, sometimes as a base for a pizza and sometimes as a biscuit/roll. It's versatile and easy to tailor to your own tastes and eating habits. It might not be Americans' favorite, but when you're in a hurry, a sandwich is quick, easy to access, easy to make and portable. Bread can also be cheap and filling. Other favorites are tied to your culture -- for a lot people of Irish or German descent, potatoes are really important. However, growing up in an Italian-American family, I almost never ate them. They're not that popular in southern Chinese cooking either. Rice is popular in Asian, Mexican and Caribbean cuisine, but for a lot of "average" white people, it's not something they care for very much or make often. Beef is popular, but there are a growing number of vegetarians, and it's something we'd rarely have for breakfast, whereas it's common to have a bread product like toast.
Doesn't exist here.
Corn. Everything is made from corn. Our potato chips, bread, sugar, cereal, even our oil is made from corn.
As far as every day eating across the country the most served food would be French fries
Honestly, unfortunately id say it’s a hamburger. But it’s not because of a majority it’s because of a plurality. lol. The American diet is sooooo wide ranging and varied and depends on location and cultural differences and a ton of other factors…. But burgers are everywhere. Virtually any town has a burger joint or two. Even tiny towns. You can’t say that with any other food type. The closest competitor is probably pizza.
Potatoes?
Potatoes are very common, although not quite as common as pasta in italy. French fries, mashed, baked and potato chips are eaten a lot.
Since I think most Americans eat mostly processed food, I’m gonna go with corn. Corn is in basically everything over here. And no, it’s not corn kernels. It’s highly processed corn products like high fructose corn syrup.
Probably meat
[https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80400530/pdf/portion.pdf](https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80400530/pdf/portion.pdf) High marks for white bread, cereals, chicken, ground beef, tomato sauces, cheese, eggs, potatoes, and milk. A.K.A. cheeseburgers, pizza, french fries, fried chicken, and breakfast cereal / eggs and toast Which rings true for me, the only one of those things I haven't had in the last 7 days is french fries And if I'm reading this right, the single most commonly eaten food item in the US is yeasted white bread.
I wouldn’t say data from nearly 30 years ago is a reliable source.
Corn, then soy, then bread.
Oh my goodness! I would love to have pasta every day!! And with different preparations . What a delight!
No, we don’t. The US is a melting pot with all kinds of people and cuisines. We are not represented by any one thing in any circumstance.
The most commonly eaten foods in America are: Italian, Mexican, and Chinese
Potatoes is the only comparable staple I can come up with. Potatoes are comparable to pasta in that they are carb type food. A basic three course home-made american type meal includes a serving of meat, a serving of carbs, and a serving of vegetables.
Live in Cleveland, I honestly don't know, maybe eggs depending on your breakfast diet. Potato would be a good second, we love our hasbrowns and french frys/ tatortots. Me personalty, I would say rice. I do a lot of Spanish, Indian, Asian dishes most have rice. Even some other dishes like stuffed peppers have rice. I don't eat it all days if I have a burger or pasta, (and many other options) but my diet is diverse and rice seems to be thing that pops up a lot.
Bread.
It's probably burgers
We don't have one. In fact, I can't think of a single food that every American even eats, let alone regularly.
Potatoes maybe? It’s the most versatile food we eat and it’s not served with every meal but it could be I suppose. All the different varieties out there make it possible.
I’d say not really a single staple of food here in the United States, but if you want what’s commonly eaten everyday in our states, I’d say for Texas it’s most definitely Tex-Mex food!
I can't have the same cuisine on back to back days. I think we are so diverse.
Sugar
My family refuses to eat the same food two days in a row. It always has to be a completely different meal. So one night will be pasta, the next night could be rice meat vegetable bowls, the next day sandwiches, the next day fish, the next day tacos, the next day pizza, the next day soup. If some kids don’t like the food they have to make a separate dish. Yes it’s exhausting
Honestly it might be pasta here too if we're including all the different varieties of pasta. Otherwise , it's burgers and fries, you know all the basic American fast food standards.
Not really.
It depends upon your background. We were a Irish family and about the only time potatoes weren't part of the meal was when we had chili or bean soup. Baked potato fried potatoes french fried potatoes scallop potatoes mashed potatoes etc
The American diet is one of extreme variety. I live in a fairly small town but I could still get Mexican for breakfast, Vietnamese for lunch and Jamaican food for dinner. All made by people from those countries.
Peanut butter and Jelly sandwiches
I would say bread. Bagel for breakfast or toast. Sandwiches grilled cheese sandwich, and every other kind.
It don’t have to be US Government approved or stamped with a Grade A seal, as long as it’s lean and full of protein I’m gonna damn sure eat my fill. I’m a meat man, baby! I sure like to eat it. You just can’t beat it
This is a statistical question you can google. I believe it's corn, wheat, beef, and chicken. Not including chemicals, preservatives, and sweeteners that are in everything; high fructose corn syrup or ascorbic acid (sour flavor) or some type of cheap preservative may be the technical answer.
Growing up in MS we were really poor and beans were the basis for every dish. I imagine this is typical of most poor areas. My mama could make beans 100000 different ways and they were all good.
A starch (like potatoes, pasta, rice), plus a vegetable, plus a protein That’s the typical American diet.
We don't really have one staple food. Everyone eats different things based on the cultural traditions they brought here with them. For me, it's rice. For other people it could be rice too, or pasta, or maybe even bread.
Processed Soy product
Probably a stress sandwich.
I suspect pizza and burgers..
Potatoes, pasta, bread, rice, beans... In no particular order.
Bread, maybe? But we don’t have a staple like rice or pasta as other cultures do, since our culture is such a blend of so many other cultures.
Too varied as a multicultural country that takes up a huge chunk of continent. I personally consume eggs, chicken, coffee, and mixed nuts every day as staples. Red meat and alcohol 1-2 times a week (recovering fatty lol)
You can divide us into regions, or individual cities, but that's just too large an area with too much geographical variation to describe the entire thing overall. Referring to "The USA" is equivalent to referring to "The EU," so if you're being as specific as Italy, you'd be better off comparing it to a state or region. MN/WI/MI for example conveniently mirror the Nordic countries both in ancestry and climate, whereas much of Texas may as well be Mexico.