Why is "fast food" burgers, fries, and chicken?

You should do a video on 1950s-ish American dinners. Like fried chicken, meatloaf, Salisbury steak. You know what most Americans consider home cooking.

I love little linguistic shifts like {Hamburg}+{er} to {Ham}+{burger}, then just swap out that morpheme for chicken, bacon, salmon, veggie. Its fascinating

As an American living outside of America, I've always found it ironic that our culture is criticized for "imposing" these fast food classics to the rest of the world, as if they weren't incredibly popular everywhere.

Growing up as a first gen child of Portuguese immigrants in the sizeable Portuguese community of Toronto, we used to get Portuguese take out a lot, which always came with this orange rice that I always thought was distinctly Portuguese. Every Portuguese rotisserie place sold the exact same sides of Parisienne potatoes and parboiled orange rice. However, when I’d go to Portugal on family trips and have rice there, it was a dry white rice (Carolino is the type of grain, I believe) with a different texture. And it was the same everywhere there too! Years later, when I wanted to make the orange rice at home from scratch, I searched ‘Portuguese style rice’ and got the kind that I would have in Portugal, not at all the takeout spots in Toronto. I had also bought this style of rice at hot foods counters in supermarkets like Metro and Sobey’s, where it’s sometimes sold as ‘deli rice’, other times Mexican rice. I search for Mexican rice and immediately find Spanish rice, which all look very similar to the “Portuguese” rice in Toronto. Overwhelmed, I closed the tab and never really went back to researching it beyond that but your line about how immigrants just cooked whatever was available in their own style rings true, they probably just decided to make a flavoured rice from an affordable recipe and this was the one that stuck.

It's always funny, when tourists coming to Germany expect Hamburg to be the Hamburger capital of the world - and then are wildly disappointed when they find out, that Hamburg cuisine almost exclusively revolves around fish and crabs. 😜🐟

Three suggestions: 1. Have you done the American "Breakfast Canon" yet. Pancakes, grits, eggs, bacon, breakfast sandwiches, etc. 2. I think the popularity of Tex-Mex should be explored. One thing I noticed oversees was you didn't really get to the American dominant areas until you saw a Mexican restaurant. Also is this a cultural divide between America and Canada? 3. A timeline of American Health Crazes and Fad diets. We seem to have a new one every decade or so, so going over the rise and fall of certain foods in response to health crises.

I've always thought that garage sales/yard sales are a uniquely American cultural phenomenon that could be an interesting video.

I don't know why I found 12:24 so funny, it just felt like such a departure from the very clean and structured presentation style of JJ. Having fries thrown at the screen is something truly worthy of an award winning video. 10/10 JJ You've done it again!

What I love so much about JJ is his straightforward honesty. Tons of channels just state things as if they are 100% certain. But JJ talks about how we don’t really know, and maybe this thing is true but maybe it’s not. It feels like he treats us like adults, who can handle nuance and uncertainty, instead of like children.

I absolutely love having JJ's perspective on these quintessential American lore highlights. As an American myself, I feel like I am too close to really see things from the outside like this. Thanks for another award winning video, JJ!

i would love a video on the history of the “standard” soda flavors (cola, lemon lime, ginger ale, orange, grape, root beer)

It is worth noting that in USA, burger currently refers to a ground meat patty on a bun. Even though many other countries call chicken (or other meat) on a bun a burger, a bun with filets of meat in the USA is usually referred to as a sandwich.

I would love a video on how French cuisine came to be seen as the quintessential "fancy" food in America

I think Russia and Ukraine both have a McDonalds. That might have been the first war to break the Macers Peace Pact.

JJ may not be pregnant but he never fails to deliver

I think you could easily expand upon the dipping sauce segment and make an entire video on the history of the great American condiments. Like how did ketchup and mayo earn the status of being the salt and pepper of the condiment world? I demand to know!

Yeah when I was 16-18 and worker at McDonald's I was shocked to discover that many customers ordered honey with nuggets. But that got me to try it, and it wasnt that bad tbh.😊

Something I’ve always found interesting about American burger culture is how Hamburg-er morphed into ham-burger, even though Bürger is already the German word for ‘citizen’ Also your first point is exemplified by Checkpoint Charlie proudly standing between a McDonald’s and a KFC

I would look seriously into the evolution of soda flavors more, as there are basically three big companies that each produce their own version of a number of basic "canonical" soda flavors. Seeing how each of these evolved and how caffeination factors into the distinctions between them would be really interesting I think.

J.J. really has got to be the only YouTuber who alternates between tactful, skilled geopolitical analyses and equally thorough explanations of our food culture THAT quickly and successfully... Bravo!