Changing Demographics Influencing Taste Buds; Salsa Beats Ketchup!

Salsa overtaking ketchup as America’s No. 1 condiment was just the start.

These days, tortillas outsell burger and hot dog buns; sales of tortilla chips trump potato chips; and tacos and burritos have become so ubiquitously “American,” most people don’t even consider them ethnic.

Welcome to the taste of American food in 2013.

As immigrant and minority populations rewrite American demographics, the nation’s collective menu is reflecting this flux, as it always has. And it goes beyond the mainstreaming of once-esoteric ethnic ingredients, something we’ve seen with everything from soy sauce to jalapenos.

This is a rewrite of the American menu at the macro level, an evolution of whole patterns of how people eat. The difference this time? The biggest culinary voting bloc is Hispanic.

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With Hispanics making up more than a quarter of the U.S. population today–and growing fast–experts say this change is dramatically flavoring the American culinary experience. Hispanic foods and beverages were an $8 billion market in the last year, according to consumer research firm Packaged Facts. By 2017, that number may reach $11 billion.

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As the entire menu of the American diet gets rewritten, the taste is getting spicier, with salsa and chipotle popping into the mainstream vernacular. {snip}

From queso fresco to chorizo, traditional Hispanic foods–or even just the flavors of them–are making their way into our everyday diet, particularly among the millennials–those born between the early `80s and the turn of the century. Generation Y’s Hispanic community was born into an American culture but still holds onto its traditions, often eating white rice and seamlessly switching between English and Spanish.

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Another Hispanic beverage making ever more rounds in households across America is tequila.

In 2006, nearly 107 million of liters of tequila were exported to the U.S., a 23 percent increase over 2005, according to Judith Meza, representative of the Tequila Regulatory Council. Tequila entered the top 10 of liquors in the world five years ago, she said.

Even our choice of side dishes is feeling the influence. In general, Americans are eating fewer of them. Except white rice, a staple of Hispanic cuisines, says Darren Seifer, a food and beverage analyst for The NPD Group, a consumer marketing organization.

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Why has rice resisted the death of the side dish? It’s one of the traditions millennial Hispanics have held onto, says Seifer.

And that’s just the start. Rice also was the top-rated side dish in a National Restaurant Association chefs survey of what’s hot. The same survey also found chefs touting taquitos as appetizers; ethnic-inspired breakfast items such as chorizo scrambled eggs; exotic fruits including guava; queso fresco as an ingredient; and Peruvian cuisine.

The influence goes deeper than the numbers. Like Italian food before it, Hispanic food enjoys broad adoption because it is easy for Americans to cook at home. Few Americans will roll their own sushi, but plenty are happy to slap together a quesadilla. Hispanic ingredients also are more common than those of Indian or other Asian cuisines. Ditto for the equipment. While nearly every American home has a skillet for sauteing (a common cooking method in Hispanic cuisines), only 28 percent of homes have a wok, according to NPD.

All of this has meant a near complete loss of ethnicity for many Hispanic foods. Americans now more closely associate tacos, tortilla chips and burritos with fast food than with Hispanic culture.

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As testament to their popularity, the Tortilla Industry Association estimates that Americans consumed approximately 85 billion tortillas in 2000. And that’s just tortillas straight up. It doesn’t include chips.

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