Why don’t Americans give a f*** about what they eat?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We lived in Eastern Europe and we still talk about how when we got the peaches home from the farmer's market you could cut into one and the whole apartment would have this delightful peachy smell. The peaches you get here are not the same! I don't know if it's pesticide use or commercial agriculture or the fact that they are artificially ripened vs ripening under the sun, but they don't make your whole house smell like peaches and they aren't nearly as flavorful. It was much easier to like fruit and to prefer it for a snack when the fruit was fresh and flavorful. Often here the melon or the tomatoes, etc. just isn't as flavorful. The peppers here are very crunchy but don't taste nearly the same. I think it's because sun-ripened things have a lot more flavor, but I'm clearly not a scientist. Maybe people here don't like fruit as much because it doesn't taste as good as it does elsewhere.

The answer is how far fresh produce travels. I grew up out West with amazing produce. Cheap, beautiful, and ripe strawberries. They were farm picked fresh. Not picked early to ripen en route in a jumbo jet. When produce ripens naturally it taste amazing. You don’t like produce hers because it’s shipped from far away. The US is huge compared to Eastern Europe and there are different growing zones.

This. If you go to a farmers market and find peaches from a local farm, when peaches are in season locally, you will have that taste and smell experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I’m in Florida now, at a beach resort. There are two restaurant in the hotel. Kids eat free. Here is the kids menu:
- cheese pizza with fries
- cheeseburger with fries
- mac and cheese with fries
- grilled cheese with fries
- fried chicken with fries

The existence of these foods on a kids menu at a resort does not relegate parents to feeding their kids nothing but french fries forever. Most of us don't spend our time primarily at resorts. And there is nothing wrong with eating this stuff sometimes. (Many kids, mine included, had a chicken nugget and pizza phase that they outgrew). I'm sure you could get your hands on some fruit or a different side.

I've been overweight from eating too much junk food, but I don't blame "America," I blame my own personal indifference and enjoyment of tasty things. It wasn't because I'm some sort of imbecile who doesn't understand healthy eating or because of the middle class American food culture I was raised in. It took me about 6 months to lose a decade's worth of weight gain and all I really had to do was walk and cut out sugar and processed snacks. If 10 years of bad eating didn't ruin my health, I think your kids will be OK if they have a french fry on vacation.

Yep. This thread is basically a 45-page exercise in OP blaming everyone but herself for her poor dietary choices.

[Anonymous]

I don’t the idiotic persistence of surrounding people with junk food (95% is junk) and then blaming them for eating it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t the idiotic persistence of surrounding people with junk food (95% is junk) and then blaming them for eating it.

Lol. Hey OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Can you give me an example of a specific country where the quick and easy foods are healthy? I hear a lot of people on this thread saying they don’t have time to cook from scratch so they would like to pick something up that is not filled with sugar, preservatives, whatever else. What kind of food can a working mom pick up for her kids that is healthy and quick in those countries? Is that not available here in the US?

I don't see it so much about availability of healthy options as about what is in cultural demand. NP here. Culturally, I'm American and lived many years in the DC area. But I was born in Thailand, and lived in France & Japan and am currently living in Portugal. It strikes me that in so many other places, people seem a lot less focused on sweets & snacks vs the US. I'm not sure why.

Searching for recipes on local websites and local news channels in PT, FR, Japan & Thailand, the top hits generally leaned toward savory meals. But when I did similar searches for popular recipes on US sites like epicurious, Food52 or various blogs, I wound up with 1/3 to 1/2 of the results as sweet breakfast food or desserts. In the US, we always had ice cream in the freezer and cookies in the pantry. When I was a kid in the 70's, every packed lunch had a Twinkie or a Little Debbie oatmeal cookie sandwich in it - but these weren't nefarious foodstuffs. For my mom, these were wondrous, shelf-stable inventions that let her spoil us with minimal effort. My American husband won't get into the car without packing an emergency trail bar, just in case he gets hungry. I remember being terrified of taking my kid to the playground without baggies filled with goldfish crackers, cheese sticks, etc. just in case, God forbid, DC got hungry in the 3 hours between meals. I'm not sure how we came to be so scared of feeling hungry or passing a day without at least one sweet treat?

When we first arrived in PT, we went to the beach and the thing that struck me the most was the smell. Here, the beaches smell like roasted fish, which is what 99% of the restaurants have on offer. Can you get roasted fish at OC or Rehoboth? Of course you can. But I'm used to seeing most people on the Boardwalk with fries, ice cream or taffy in their hands. Here, people don't walk and eat at the same time; they go sit at a restaurant and eat simply-prepared seafood with a squeeze of lemon, some olive oil and a light sprinkle of salt.

At my kid's school, they have soup + normal food (maybe steak & salad, or baked fish & fresh fruit), cooked on site. There is no greasy pizza Friday, no chicken nuggets, nor grilled cheese + tater tot platters. Pizza is never served at school functions or birthday parties here - other moms have told me they just don't see it as a meal.

In Thailand, my cousin didn't even have a kitchen in her apartment (just a portable cooktop) for a really long time. She, and my aunt, ate quick food from street vendors 99% of the time, because it was cheap, fast and easy. Fresh fruit. Soup. salads. Curries. They will short-order anything you want, the way you want it in the amount of time it takes to roll through a McD's drive thru stateside. Thai food cooked in the US tastes really different to me because it has so much extra sugar in it vs in Thailand, where your pad Thai is not pre-coated in soupy sauce - instead, you get the dish and accompaniments that let you add more sugar, salt, pepper or vinegar, as needed, and you realize you don't need as much as you thought.

In France, people weren't inhaling croissants and baguettes all day. Most of my work colleagues just had coffee for breakfast and normal sit-down lunches and light dinners; or if you had a client dinner to attend, you just ate less during the day. Of the three non-US places I've lived, I lost weight in Paris, and it wasn't a conscious effort. The rhythm and rituals just don't include grazing on food and having three giant meals.

In Japan, you can get onigiri and sushi even at the gas station; offices have hot bento lunches delivered. Sit down meals were much more about the presentation and quality vs quantity. Home dinners that I was invited to had a well-rounded offering of fish, rice, vegetables, etc and dessert was often ripe fruit. In the schools where I worked, lunches were made on-site and were really healthy-looking. Not a nugget to be found nor a dessert at every meal, but kids there didn't complain because eating normal food was .. normal.

Of course, there are lovely desserts and sweets and addictive snacks in all of the countries above, but they are not all-day, everyday foods, and the people around me in those cultures seemed generally ok with pacing themselves better and not snacking their way through the day.

I'm one of the PPs above who has lived abroad and I agree with this. It matches my experience.

I used to live in Italy. I remember that if I bought bread, even a loaf from the grocery store, it was so fresh that it would be inedible in two days because of the lack of preservatives. Meanwhile a loaf of what passes for bread here (really cake-bread) will last for at least a week if not more because of all the additives.

And I don’t know how I would go the grocery store every two days. I really don’t and my DH and I already work much less than most.

Yes, I agree with you, but it doesn't change the fact that American food is loaded with preservatives to make it shelf-stable, and that the food quality is correspondingly much, much poorer in the US. OP is right that Americans put up with bad quality and unhealthy food, even with normal food like bread or fruit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here.

I’m in Florida now, at a beach resort. There are two restaurant in the hotel. Kids eat free. Here is the kids menu:
- cheese pizza with fries
- cheeseburger with fries
- mac and cheese with fries
- grilled cheese with fries
- fried chicken with fries

Salads cost $12-$14 and then you have to purchase a separate entree if you want some protein.

Yup, and the salad will be tasteless, limp, and nutritionally devoid if you buy it.

Of course you are right, OP, but you will get the reactionary "git yer hands off my tasteless junk food" crowd all upset now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here.

I’m in Florida now, at a beach resort. There are two restaurant in the hotel. Kids eat free. Here is the kids menu:
- cheese pizza with fries
- cheeseburger with fries
- mac and cheese with fries
- grilled cheese with fries
- fried chicken with fries

Salads cost $12-$14 and then you have to purchase a separate entree if you want some protein.

Yup, and the salad will be tasteless, limp, and nutritionally devoid if you buy it.

Of course you are right, OP, but you will get the reactionary "git yer hands off my tasteless junk food" crowd all upset now.

You keep posting this. Do you not understand that you’re describing OP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here.

I’m in Florida now, at a beach resort. There are two restaurant in the hotel. Kids eat free. Here is the kids menu:
- cheese pizza with fries
- cheeseburger with fries
- mac and cheese with fries
- grilled cheese with fries
- fried chicken with fries

Salads cost $12-$14 and then you have to purchase a separate entree if you want some protein.

If laws banning certain sizes of soda were passed, we should be able to pass laws banning calling a kid meal something so unhealthy. Even taking into account the loopholes "it's now called a kid snack, because we didn't want to bother adding green beans!" it would benefit public health.

[Anonymous]

Kids night out at the hotel. Guess what they serve? Pizza and juice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here.

I’m in Florida now, at a beach resort. There are two restaurant in the hotel. Kids eat free. Here is the kids menu:
- cheese pizza with fries
- cheeseburger with fries
- mac and cheese with fries
- grilled cheese with fries
- fried chicken with fries

Salads cost $12-$14 and then you have to purchase a separate entree if you want some protein.

So order from the adult menu for your kids, and spring for a nice, healthy salad for your pre-diabetic self. Since you can afford to be vacationing at all these places, presumably you can afford a $12 salad.

So the healthy options are only for wealthy?

To order a healthy meal will be $12 for a salad + about $20-30 for an entree with protein.
The unhealthy junk is free.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here.

I’m in Florida now, at a beach resort. There are two restaurant in the hotel. Kids eat free. Here is the kids menu:
- cheese pizza with fries
- cheeseburger with fries
- mac and cheese with fries
- grilled cheese with fries
- fried chicken with fries

Salads cost $12-$14 and then you have to purchase a separate entree if you want some protein.

So order from the adult menu for your kids, and spring for a nice, healthy salad for your pre-diabetic self. Since you can afford to be vacationing at all these places, presumably you can afford a $12 salad.

So the healthy options are only for wealthy?

To order a healthy meal will be $12 for a salad + about $20-30 for an entree with protein.
The unhealthy junk is free.

This is a vacation resort. A burger and fries will be $20 too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here.

I’m in Florida now, at a beach resort. There are two restaurant in the hotel. Kids eat free. Here is the kids menu:
- cheese pizza with fries
- cheeseburger with fries
- mac and cheese with fries
- grilled cheese with fries
- fried chicken with fries

Salads cost $12-$14 and then you have to purchase a separate entree if you want some protein.

So order from the adult menu for your kids, and spring for a nice, healthy salad for your pre-diabetic self. Since you can afford to be vacationing at all these places, presumably you can afford a $12 salad.

So the healthy options are only for wealthy?

To order a healthy meal will be $12 for a salad + about $20-30 for an entree with protein.
The unhealthy junk is free.

You don’t get to complain about having to budget for restaurant meals when you are on a multi-state vacation trip staying at “high end” hotels and beach resorts.

[Anonymous]

I lived in Belgium for five years, and while I agree that the population doesn't overdo eating, I was shocked at how unhealthy the majority of food appears to be - there were very few cereals that were not coated in honey or chocolate, sweet and savory breakfast breads were plentiful, and sandwiches were thick, white bread, with butter, ham and cheese (yum! but also gross). Everything cooked in butter (yum! but too much). Side eye if you ordered anything to split (this is really a no-no...even desserts).

I will second the PP on the school lunches. They were wonderful. I loved the soup course for even the pre-K crowd, and the fact that they got fresh fruit instead of mandarin fruit cups.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kids night out at the hotel. Guess what they serve? Pizza and juice.

So? What do you feed them at home?

Maybe parent your kids, spend time with them, take them out with you for a nice meal instead of farming them off to the hotel "kids night." What do you expect?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids night out at the hotel. Guess what they serve? Pizza and juice.

So? What do you feed them at home?

Maybe parent your kids, spend time with them, take them out with you for a nice meal instead of farming them off to the hotel "kids night." What do you expect?

1. Restaurant food is not much better (see menu above)
2. I can buy my child breakfast, lunch a dinner at $30-$50 a meal, but why should this be a price to pay for trying to eat healthy? Why do I have to go extra miles? Why can’t the hotel and restaurants serve healthy options like they’re serving pizza?