Americans are used to it but foreigners notice immediately the giant food portions in the U.S. when visiting. What’s the matter with that? Is it because people in the USA believe that bigger is better?
Chow Time: The Culture of Big American Food Portions Explained
Author: Russell, Elenasmodels.com member
The most frequent comment I hear from foreign tourists visiting the United States for the first time is about the large portions of food served in American restaurants. And indeed, many meals in America are huge in comparison to average meal portions in most other countries.
The culture of large American food portions is not about gluttony, or the idea that “bigger is always better.”
Large food portions in the USA, and of food types that are very high in calories, were born out of necessity along with the rise of the classic American icon: the cowboy.
The rise of the American icon — The Cowboy
At the end of America’s Civil War (1865), a new type of worker — a horseman with cattle skills — became a very real symbol of the country’s new identity as Americans moved from east to west by the thousands and established farms and ranches in Western states like Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming.
Their name describes them exactly: a “cow boy” had specific skills on horseback to herd and drive hundreds or even thousands of cattle north and east to the railroads in cities like Kansas City. From this work, legendary men and legendary foods were born.
A true “cow boy” was a tough, rugged, and gritty man who lived almost his entire life on horseback. These guys slept under the stars, no matter what the weather, and were survival experts.
The western states were mostly lawless places, sparsely populated, and a cowboy’s most valuable possession was his pistol.
“Cow boys” left their home towns or ranches for months at a time to live in the wilderness and move cattle to market.
Beef cattle and cowboys became one in the same image across the American west. And their lifestyles became folklore which Americans living in eastern states read dramatic novels about.
The new style of American cuisine
Along with the cowboy lifestyle came new American cuisine.
To understand this typical USA food, one must realize that “cow boys”, who worked from sunrise to sunset (or in their own lingo, “sunup” to “sundown”), burned 6,000-8,000 calories each day.
Feeding a cowboy was like feeding a professional athlete. Their daily physical demands required large, wholesome, and calorie-rich meals — 3 times a day.
The chuckwagon
To move a thousand cattle across a couple of states to a marketplace required a small group of cowboys. Large ranches spread over many square kilometres, or cattle drives across the states, gave rise to a new, mobile chef and his kitchen: the chuckwagon.
A cowboy cook carried his own cast-iron stove, and all the basic ingredients for making quick, easy, and wholesome meals: flour, potatoes, sugar, salt, spices, butter, and often a couple of egg-laying chickens. Of course, the cook had all the fresh beef he needed on hand.
From the cowboy lifestyle, some individual dishes like beef chilli stew became very popular throughout America. Many dishes, like “country fried” steak (a tenderized beef steak breaded in spicy flour and cooked in oil), became standards of the wholesome USA cuisine. These dishes were naturally large in their portions because of how they were made.
But also, the ideal American cowboy meal was simply, by tradition, a very large plate of food.
Fast forward
Today, most USA locals expect a satisfying meal to be not only tasty, but filling.
So, it is customary for American restaurants to serve large, “cowboy” sized portions of food.
If you don’t eat all the food, nearly all American restaurants will provide you with a container to take your “leftovers” home for a second meal.
So, if you’re in the USA, expect every meal to be satisfying if only to serve your most hungry self. And when it is time to eat, a cowboy will come running to the table (and you should too) when someone says, “chow time!”
Russell is an EM member as was born and raised in Colorado, a western US state.
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Howdy Partner I am not doubting your romantic cowboy story, i.e. the fact that cowboys in the 19th century ate large portions etc. But fact is that nowadays 33% of Americans are obese, and another 33% are overweight. So with this in mind, the reason they serve large portions is because; if the portion isn’t big enough to fill the hippopotamus in a baseball cap, there will be a small tip, and it is unlikely that chubby will return to the restaurant. So it’s like a competition between restaurants to see who has the biggest portions, and can attract more… Read more »
Was not just the cowboys. Loggers eat the same and more. In the day of the ‘misery whip’ as a crosscut saw is called affectionately, a typical logger who was felling timber or bucking logs would burn 7-10,000 calories in 9-10 hours. Extreme physical demand for long hours. Today the physical demands when working on cable skyline systems and hand felling timber with chainsaw are the same and caloric intakes equivalent. As someone who has been in the industry for 34 years and worked every job in the value chain, I fully understand the need. By the way, my nephew… Read more »
Try out food portions in Ukraine. 😀
I never liked to left leftovers, and that`s was hard to do.
Or an occasion when you are a guest at a family event. 😀
Oh, I could never have thought that this was connected with cowboys. Very interesting! However, I think it’s high time to change the traditions because nowadays man people in the U.S.A suffer from obesity. I don’t even feel good when I look at these portions, how can one man eat it?
Hi, I’m one of the tourists looking for answers. What’s really stunning is that the “meal” size really seems to be sufficient for two people. Your explanation is not conclusive to me: 1) The fraction of the population who were cowboys was very low. Why and at which time should New Yorkers adopt the eating style of cowboys? 2) You are implying that in the rest of the world there were no people doing manual work. What about coal miners, steel industry workers, construction workers etc. My uneducated guess is that you might have less free time (and lack of… Read more »