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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
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?[/quote]

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.[/quote]

Thank you for a very interesting and informative observation about cultures in Europe and Asia that are different from the US. I grew up in America but am a child of immigrant parents. My formative years were spent eating healthy home-made meals and very rarely American junk food. Junk foods were viewed as a rare treat. When I got married to my American husband, he had a very limited palate. Almost all processed, no vegetables or fruits, even chips as meals. I learned to cook and slowly converted him to eating a healthy variety of food that was previously foreign to him. I agree that healthy eating is not intuitive to a lot of Americans because they were raised on nutritionally empty foods marketed by greedy companies.[/quote]

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