What are your most common foods?

35 comments

1. Meatloaf, stew, chili, soup, mashed potatoes, asparagus, green beans, bean(s), cabbage, black eyed peas, cornbread (unsweetened) kale or greens ….

   Definitely leaving stuff out but this is what we commonly eat in my family

2. Barbecue comes to mind as American but not fried. There are a lot of regional variations. American breakfast often involves scrambled eggs. Lunch would be a sandwich but tacos are increasingly popular. Dinner could be anything but protein, potatoes, salad is pretty popular. A cheeseburger could be lunch or dinner. There’s a wide variety but America does eat too much fried and processed food.

3. That’s super unique to us? Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches. Almost all Americans grew up on them or have at least had them.

   The US is a melting pot of so many cultures. Watch the opening games of the Olympics. You won’t see another country that looks like ours. Our food mirrors that. We eat Italian, Japanese, Ethiopian, German, Cuban, Mediterranean, Peruvian and French Food among so many others from across the globe. What do we eat the least? The Nordic cuisines aren’t a huge hit here. Neither are certain parts of an animal… but we eat a lot.

4. I usually eat some protein with a non starchy vegetable for dinner. Grilled chicken or steak and asparagus, broccoli, etc.

   I eat a lot of salad as well.

5. Not fried foods, for sure, but I don’t eat a standard American diet. I eat low fat, slow carb (meaning ones with lower glycemic indexes), low meat, and low prep.

   I buy a lot of Taylor Farms salad kits to eat for meals, and I will add things like meat, beans, plain yogurt, or pressed or shredded tofu to it along with extras like olives, tomatoes, avocado, sweet peppers, etc. I’d add cheese except that I had to stop buying it a year or so ago because I think I’m a cheese addict and I was eating through however much i would buy way too quickly. The shredded tofu makes a decent cheese substitute.

   I keep frozen “patties” to cook – hamburgers, turkey burgers, salmon burgers, gardenburgers, black bean burgers, etc.

   Some of my coworkers buy microwaveable entrees for lunch, but my mama had us living on TV dinners a lot of the time and I’m tired of them. Some go get fast food or sandwiches from deli or sandwich shop for lunch, and others bring leftovers from dinner the night before.

   I know that fried foods are a big Southern thing. My body just doesn’t tolerate a lot of salt, sugar, fat, or refined carbohydrates any more, and staying away from them also keeps my doctor off my back.

6. Brown bread from a can

7. Hey OP, good on ya for taking that critically 😁

   I’d highly recommend Chef John for a view of the way Americans generally approach food.

   There isn’t a high emphasis on an authentic canon of foods, you just sort of put together what tastes good to you, but our interpretations on Italian, Southern US, and Mexican cuisine come up a lot. Personally, I’ve always lived in communities with large east asian populations (predominantly chinese and vietnamese), so my cuisine is what you get when a young white dude goes to the asian supermarket and picks out what looks good with no regard for national separation of foods

8. What’s common varies a lot person to person and I haven’t noticed any overall common foods that apply to most Americans. I eat a lot of noodles, especially rice noodles with peanut sauce. But I don’t think that’s common among Americans as a whole. My parents cook something different every day it seems like, but salad as a side dish is very common for them. Quite a lot of the foods other commenters have mentioned are foods that I rarely eat, which might be an individual difference, but I suspect is more of a regional difference.

9. OP, are you from a country or culture where most people eat a certain food (like rice) every day or even every meal?

   Because most Americans don’t eat that way, so this question can be pretty hard for us to answer.

10. I eat a wide variety of foods and I suspect others eat that way too. I eat Italian, Chinese and Mexican food on a regular basis with some other cultures food groups mixed in. As for a common food, I would say that eating pork and chicken is most common here, but the preparations vary widely.

    Fried food is pretty popular too, but it’s not eaten daily or anything like that. I would say it’s a weekly or twice weekly occurrence for me to eat something fried, usually French fries. I would suspect it’s something similar for most Americans.

    A lot of it is also regional too, so you’ll get different answers as to what is common (for example, coastal Americans will probably eat more seafood based cuisine).

11. I intentionally try my hardest to vary my diet to not have a “common food” for lunch and dinner. My breakfast menu has a common food: eggs.

12. Depends on where in America you find yourself!

    I grew up in western Pennsylvania, where everyone was German or Irish, so our diet was potatoes. Meat, potatoes, and a veg. Maybe 2 veggies! No spice, really, not a lot of sweets, but then again, my mother was an abysmal cook. She just had no interest in food and it showed. Things were boiled or baked, very seldom fried.

    When I lived in Arkansas, it was chicken and rice. Fried chicken is always tasty, but it certainly wasn’t the one and only way we ate it.

    Here in New Orleans, it’s seafood. We boil it, grill it, fry it, serve it up with rice or on French bread. It’s easy to wander along for several months before realizing golly, I haven’t had red meat for a few months now.

13. If you’re curious, here’s what I made my family for dinner last week.

    This is unique to every household of course.

    Chicken Parmesan

    Weekly pizza night (we get a takeout pizza)

    Tortellini soup

    Chicken enchiladas

    Barbecue ribs

    Breakfast casserole (eaten for dinner, we always do breakfast for dinner on Fridays at my house, it’s just our tradition)

    Hot dogs

14. I think the big hallmark of the American diet is variety.

    We don’t have something like rice or bread or even tea with every meal. We mix things up a lot. Breakfast and lunch might be the same thing for most people. For me, breakfast is usually instant oatmeal and lunch is usually a ham sandwich with yogurt and an apple, but even with lunch I’ll mix it up occasionally. A couple weeks ago, I was making reubens instead of ham.

    Dinner, the evening meal, is our big meal of the day. It’s where we’re all sitting down as a family, and this can vary wildly from steak and potatoes, to an Asian-inspired stir fry, to Italian, just kind of whatever we feel like cooking.

15. I have coffee for breakfast. I am always very nauseous in the morning, so if I do eat, it might be a roll or a piece of toast. But usually just good dark coffee.

    I usually eat a sandwich every day for lunch. Heavy on protein, romaine lettuce is usually the only veggie on the sandwich. Carrots, celery, or cucumbers on the side. Or Pickles.

    Dinner will be veggie burgers or vegetarian “chicken” patties, beans and rice, a baked potato with all the fixins, or a couple of slices of pizza if I’m up to making pizza. I do vegetarian pizza and put all sorts of stuff on it, olives and artichoke hearts are a must. I also make pretty good bean burritos.

    All bets are off if my daughter is cooking dinner. She makes really good pasta in homemade pesto. Her soups are really good too, she gets creative, but they’re always good. She does breakfast for dinner a lot, and I love that too.

    I don’t think we have a common anything, really in the US. A lot of veggies, maybe? I would eat veggies every meal if I could. I’d eat only veggies if I could. And blueberries. But unfortunately, that wouldn’t be super balanced, so I add other things.

16. I’m a chef, I’ve worked in some very middle American restaurants. A typical meal at restaurants often consists of a protein, traditional meat of some kind, usually beef or chicken although this is changing and vegetable protein sources are becoming more common, a starchy vegetable, rice or potatoes most often, and a non starchy vegetable, corn, carrots, greens or squash for example. This is often reflected in at home prepared meals as well.

    I currently cook at a small liberal arts college, the student are mostly under 22 years old and are served a variety of dishes influenced by many global cuisines. Every day in the dining hall we offer pizza/ Italian inspired dishes, vegan dishes with plant based proteins and sides that have flavor profiles drawing from southern American cuisine, Asian or Latin cuisine most often. We also serve grilled chicken breast and burgers with two types of French fries, sandwiches made to order, some kind of comfort food whether classic American or global cuisines. Sunday we served curry lamb stew, yesterday we served Jamaican chicken. In the last week we’ve served American meatloaf, southern fried chicken, bbq brisket, all with side dishes like mashed potatoes, sautéed greens, Brussels sprouts, rice and carrots. We also always serve Latin inspired foods which are very popular.

    I listed all that to show that Americans eat a large variety of foods as a typical diet. With some families sticking to the stereotypical meat and potatoes, to vegetarian/vegan to the ethnic cuisines of their family backgrounds to a variety of different dishes.

17. A normal week in our house will have chicken (normally thigh meat) or pork loin baked in the oven. Cauliflower and squash are regular vegetables but we also regularly have salad, carrots, broccoli, brussel sprouts.

18. I eat a lot of chicken, but very rarely fried. I do make mashed potatoes a lot.

19. So many choices…the things that are in my regular cooking rotation – .tacos, spaghetti & homemade sauce, roasted whole chicken, teriyaki pork tenderloin, oven roasted potatoes, tossed salads, smashed potatoes, parmesan encrusted pork chops, tortellini with an herbed garlic sauce, risotto, rice pilaf, homemade soups, various vegetables. For breakfast I usually have a bowl of cereal. Today it was Special K protein. Lots of days for lunch I’ll have a sandwich and fruit. Fried foods are rare. But everyone is different. The sheer variety of foods people eat every day is huge. At work I sit in a room with 14 people. It’s very rare that anyone will have a similar lunch except on the rare days we order takeout as a group.

    ETA my husband cooks too just not as often. His regulars are Stromboli, homemade mac-n-cheese, and barbecue on his smoker (brisket, ribs, pulled pork).

20. I love steak, BBQ, and burgers. Mostly consisting of some sort of meat with vegetable’s such as potatoes, brussel sprouts, or broccoli.

21. My breakfast is usually muesli and nonfat Greek yogurt. Lunch is commonly toast with a topping of beans, or mozzarella and tomatoes, or egg salad.

    Every weekend I run away least one pot of stewed root vegetables to be eaten throughout the week. I’ll also often make crepes for a weekend breakfast, although cream farina is a common breakfast as well. I’ve discovered a fantastic French toast. Meat is usually some stewed pork, or grilled chicken. Dessert is fresh fruit nightly.

22. Peanut butter

23. Like others have said, the US doesn’t really have staple foods that are eaten at every meal. A lot of folks structure dinners around a protein, a starch, and a vegetable, but even that is variable – I don’t eat that way at all. Most dinners in my household are one-pot meals like stews, curries, and pasta dishes. Lunches are typically leftovers or frozen dinners.

    I think if I had to choose one food item I eat the most, it would be either pasta or rice, but I don’t eat either of those things every day.

24. I eat several several rotating meals. Theres no set standard beyond usually serving a vegetable and a starch with some things.

25. I probably eat a sandwich of some kind more than anything else. I love a good sandwich.

    But every day is different. I love cooking and making something new all the time.

26. I doubt there are many foods that aren’t eaten here.

    My husband and I try to cook at home as much as possible, and deep-fried foods are a rarity in our diet. We do pan-fry eggs in a little butter and saute vegetables in olive or avocado oil, but I don’t think that’s what you meant by fried foods.

    For an example of our recent dinners, we had roasted salmon filets, brussels sprouts, and potato wedges last Thursday; from-scratch minestrone (Italian-style bean and vegetable soup) and bread on Friday; grilled steaks, baked potatoes, and roasted asparagus on Saturday; frozen pizza and salad on Sunday; and grilled chicken, pasta with pesto, and sauteed zucchini and bell peppers last night.

    Tonight, I’ll make a mujadra-like dish and serve a green salad on the side. I have Italian-style sausage, mushrooms, and ricotta cheese to make a lasagna-like casserole later this week. We’ll also probably make a tofu and vegetable stir-fry with rice one night, and black beans with tortillas another night.

27. Potatoes, green beans or peas are popular at my house, and some type of meat. Yesterday, it was chicken. Regular white bread is very common.

28. I don’t think I eat the same thing every day and i end up cooking whatever comes to mind or if I find a cool recipe online. If you view america as 50 small countries rather than one homogeneous nation you would get a better answer. Ie, people in new york might lean more towards italian inspired dishes wereas california has more of a latin/asian influence. That being said, I grew up eating russian food at home, because thats my heritage.

29. Cheese, glorious cheese.

30. I would break in down into regional diets. For example, its not exactly what we’d eat every day, but there are parts of the US that are known for certain foods. Southern BBQ for example.

31. Meat – chicken, beef, pork.
    Carb – rice , potatoes , bread.
    Veggies – salad , asparagus, broccoli , Brussel sprouts.

    I will make different combinations every night for dinner, but that’s the basics.

32. Bread would be the most universal food. Many meals are served with some kind of bread. Toast for breakfast, sandwich or bun for lunch, rolls or bread at dinner.

33. I’d say we don’t consistently eat the same thing, especially because the country is so big and each region has its own variety of cuisines. And every immigrant group in different parts of the country also more or less eat different things too.

    If there are common overlaps in ingredients, it’s probably potatoes, rice, chicken, beef, seafood, onions, and/or tomatoes. You can probably find at least one of those in pretty much every major culture and subculture in the US.

34. Yesterday, I skipped breakfast, had ramen for lunch and lamb Tikka for dinner.

    Today, I had a tamale for breakfast, I’m having a hot dog for lunch, and dinner tonight will likely be stroganoff.

    That kind of variety of cuisines isn’t at all unusual here.

35. My grandparents came to the US from Poland and mostly ate potatoes with meals. I try to vary my starch so it doesn’t repeat in the same day. So one meal may have potato, another bread and another rice or noodles.

    I live in the upper Midwest and tend to eat sweet corn every day when it is available at the farm stands in the summer. I don’t know if that is true for all
    Midwesterns though.