The US love affair with food on a stick
US politicians have been photographed eating pork chops on a stick at a state fair in Iowa. The fair boasts more than 70 different varieties of food on a stick.
Cooked corn-on-the-cob - on a stick
There's sausage on a stick. Chicken on a stick. And corn on-the-cob on a stick. Cheese and fruit come on a stick. So do marshmallows.
Peppered watermelon cubes on a stick
But other options are more surprising. You can buy hard-boiled eggs and honey on a stick. Deep-fried brownies, apple-pie and chocolate-covered cookies 'n cream come on a stick. So does fried peanut butter and jelly, tater dog (potato) and fried butter.
For the cholesterol conscious, there is even salad on a stick.
Deep-fried Twinkie - an American snack cake filled with cream - on a stick
But Iowa isn't the only state that celebrates food presented in this way. The practice is popular at county and state fairs all over the US. According to a food historian,
"State and county fairs are the big entertainment of the year in rural America, and eating on sticks is a very American thing to do. It comes from a culture that's been around since before the 1840s. It's food you can eat strolling around.”
The all-American corn dog
The classic food on a stick in America is the corn dog. It's a sausage, dipped in batter, formed around the stick and deep-fried. It was the first to be popularized during the 1940s. Over the last 20 years, there has been a huge expansion in the types of foods that are put on a stick. Things like fried Snickers bars, fried Milky Way, fried pizzas and frozen cocktails have become common, and one of the strangest must be liver mush on a stick.
Shashlik, the Russian version of food - in this case, meat - on a stick
While the food on a stick phenomenon isn’t exclusively American – think Turkish shish kebabs and Indonesian satay – the Americans do it differently. It’s like some sort of extreme sport on a stick: what to put on a stick that nobody’s done before.
Deep-fried insects for human consumption sold at food stall in Bangkok, Thailand
It won’t be long before people will be eating cockroaches on a stick – although that might be a delicacy too far for the country’s politicians!
(All images - credit: Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence)
