Analyzing the results of the 10 Worst National Cuisines survey, Nate Silver-style

The results are in: more than 2,000 travelers voted in the Titanic Awards survey of the world’s worst national cuisines.  Now is the time when folks are checking the list, hoping not to find their homeland among the losers (or maybe they are).  Some will no doubt be offended that others were offended by their delicacies.  But before they start launching latkes and plates of haggis into the air in protest, have they considered how much weight this list should carry?

First, let us have a look at their bottom ten (followed by the percentage of votes):

10) Netherlands 1.7%

9)  India  1.7%

8)  Philippines  1.8%

7)  Ireland  1.9%

6)  Australia 2.2%

5)  Germany 2.7%

4)  Russia 3%

3)  China 3.8%

2)  USA 10%

1)  England 24.6%

Having a numbered, ranked list pertaining to a country’s food is generalizing at its very best.  But hey, our appetite for oversimplified top ten lists (and bottom ten lists) is apparently insatiable, especially when reading travel mags, so I suppose we’re getting what we demand.   

For me, such a list could only make some sort of sense if a voter takes into consideration many different dishes from each country.  In other words, the voter creates an average of the tastiness of the offerings.  Assuming an average has been built from a decent number of data points, if the tasty stuff is more than counteracted by the nasty stuff, then a country would warrant a negative ranking.  For the Netherlands, for example, one could make the case that for every order of yummy, street-cart french fries with mayo (which isn’t really Dutch anyway, but let’s roll with it), there is a vile gravy burger lurking at Febo that brings down the goodness of the fries twofold.   

Similarly, Japan may owe its omission to the positive reception to offerings like sweet mochi ice cream and smooth tuna sushi, together overpowering the telltale pungency of natto (slimy, fermented soybeans that smell like something scraped from the bottom of a garbage pail. A suitable candidate for the “acquired taste” category).

But the survey did not make it clear that each voter carefully considered a wide variety of a country’s cuisine before voting (The Titanic Awards survey simply asked to “Please draw from your own personal travel experience”).  It’s entirely possible that an encounter with revolting pickled vegetables in Russia or an undercooked, congealed New York City pizza slice may have scarred a voter’s palate so profoundly that it was enough for the voter to sentence the entire country to the culinary cellar.  Since China and India have a large variety of regions and culinary styles, I suspect they ended up here due to travelers’ singular, traumatic episodes that possibly involved multiple ferocious visits to squat toilets.

The list may also be skewed by the popularity of some travel destinations over others.   Countries visited more often would be the ones more often considered for a vote.  That means that Poland’s bland, overboiled vegetables hay have flown under the culinary radar, since Poland is not visited as often as, say, England, a country that serves comparably bland, overboiled vegetables.

The distribution of the vote percentages may also soften the blow for at least some of the unlucky countries listed above.  If you look at the vote percentages for all the countries except England and USA, they run from 1.7 to 3.8 percent of the votes.  Not terribly significant.  More telling, the bottom 10 only accounted for 53.4% of all countries.  There is probably a long tail of similar percentages beyond 10th place, and therefore I suspect that the 40th place country’s cuisine was not viewed as much grosser than 10th place, probably by not much more than one percentage point.  If the cuisine of your favorite country appeared in any position after #2, I do not see any reason to be terribly offended.  

While America — birthplace of fast food, Cheez Whiz, and lunch al desko — finished as the second worst, I believe we dodged a bullet.  Gathering only ten percent of the vote means that nine out of ten voters picked some other country to pick on.  Remember, kids, a vote for another country’s awful cuisine is a vote for a Big Mac.

And if you’re from England, the country that scored the only significant percentage in this survey — almost a quarter of travelers’ votes — it could be that old stereotypes die hard and unjustly did you in.  Or not.  (I mean, you could do without the marmite.  I’m just sayin’.)  I suppose you can take comfort in the fact that your very own Jamie Oliver is showing kids from America how to eat healthier, and it’s happening on a major network during prime time TV.  Just don’t push mushy peas on the tots, will ya Jamie?