Thread: Myths About Russia?

So far, every single myth/rumor/belief/stereotype/bias that I've come across concerning Russia, Russian people, Russian culture, has pretty much been wrong.

That said, some Russians love to tease and play into these myths, just to upend them on you later =)

As an example.. It's not true that Russians sit around and drink vodka all day (of course!), but I've seen a person suggest such a thing to Russians, and instead of denying it, they played along until they positioned the speaker to become the butt of the joke. Neat trick, that.

When I first took an interest in Russian cuisine, people told me: "Russian food is unhealthy and that's why Russians have short life spans." What a crock that turned out to be.. Russian food, it turns out, is very often WAY more healthy than standard American fare (a lot of the food is farm-provided, from what I've been told, and the incidence of mystery-meat like ground burger and such is far lower).. they eat tons of salads and fresh veggies, and kind of put our subs-and-pizza existence to shame =) ... and I'm not even sure the bit about lifespan is accurate, either.

In general, it's safest to assume all generalizations are wrong, and make your judgments from experience.. When you arsume, you make an arse of u and me =)

Originally Posted by kidkboom

When I first took an interest in Russian cuisine, people told me: "Russian food is unhealthy and that's why Russians have short life spans." What a crock that turned out to be.. Russian food, it turns out, is very often WAY more healthy than standard American fare (a lot of the food is farm-provided, from what I've been told, and the incidence of mystery-meat like ground burger and such is far lower).. they eat tons of salads and fresh veggies, and kind of put our subs-and-pizza existence to shame =) ... and I'm not even sure the bit about lifespan is accurate, either.

I think this is interesting. I had a Russian over for dinner last night. He commented that American food is healthier than Russian food because it is fresher and less cooked. (He said he could tell that the squash I had served was from a garden, not from the store. He was correct.) He was comparing Russian home cooking to American home cooking. I don't think comparing Russian home cooking with American fast food is a fair comparison.

Originally Posted by christineka

I think this is interesting. I had a Russian over for dinner last night. He commented that American food is healthier than Russian food because it is fresher and less cooked. (He said he could tell that the squash I had served was from a garden, not from the store. He was correct.) He was comparing Russian home cooking to American home cooking. I don't think comparing Russian home cooking with American fast food is a fair comparison.

Christineka,

I respect your opinion. I was careful in the way I phrased it - either cultural cuisine could be slid toward either extreme. My point was to show that generalization is pretty stupid, especially in the place of adaptive learning and dynamic self-assessment.

The movement of people who believe that all food is healthiest when uncooked is a movement of people that accept bar-none that the goal of eating food is to get the most nutrients in unchanged forms all at once into the gut. Others disagree with this logic. There are some, spurred on by scientific revelations about lifespan increases in response to caloric deprivation, who think this is madness.

The only safe thing to generalize is the vast amount of information we don't have. We can't even safely define what's healthy, so we go on the same thing I was mentioning above - adaptive learning and dynamic self-assessment. This is how all dietary/medical information comes about in our society. People from hypotheses, test them, develop theses, test them, and move towards a clear-cut principle.

That being said, I suspect that less fresh vegetables get consumed in the average american kitchen than in the russian one, and probably both still less than in the japanese or chinese one. This is of course a vast generalization and safe only for purposes of encouraging people to eat better themselves - not to expect that they know what people in Shanghai are eating.

And no matter what, it sounds like the food being served at your house is great!! =) My grandmother used to grow greens in her garden out back and serve them for salad with dinner.. it's a great feeling and fresher than anything you can get in the store - zdorovo!!