Comments on: Fat Americans

By: UK Katherine

UK Katherine — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 08:08:36 +0000

Yup, as a “European”, the idea of a doggy bag from most of the places I eat out is pretty horrible. How would my asparagus risotto survive? I can’t imagine that being nice to eat the next day.

I can see it working for some sorts of food (yes, I eat cold pizza and last night’s Chinese takeaway), but for most proper restaurant experiences, nope. But then, I suspect that, as someone said above, for the most part if I am eating a restaurant, I am expecting a special culinary experience.

By: Eric H

Eric H — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 03:41:06 +0000

I once ate at a Chinese restaurant in Mexico with some friends. Way too much food (we each ordered an entre and then passed them around, but each was enough for 2). But in trying to figure out how to ask for a doggy bag, I decided that it might be unwise to translate literally (“Bolsa de perrito? Sure thing, be right back … [from the kitchen: yipe, yipe, yipe, bang!] … almost ready, sir, more water? And how about a box for your other food?”)

By: roac

roac — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:04:29 +0000

Did I really see somebody saying nice things about Subway? Subway has one virtue only—it is CHEAP. To see why, all you have to do is walk up to the counter and look at the ingredients, which on casual visual inspection reveal themselves to be of the lowest possible quality.

As for healthful, I dunno. Their spokesman used to be that guy who supposedly lost a whole bunch of weight, but they appear to have replaced him with the father from “Family Guy,” who has not.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:12:22 +0000

Go to Paris, sit down in a neighbourhood cafe, discuss the daily specials with the waitress, eat, read the paper, finish it off with a petit cafe, smile….

Unless you’re paid in dollars, of course…

By: Britta

Britta — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:25:55 +0000

sg
-I thought coffee sizes in Australia were small, at least compared to America. You’d be horrified to see the “large” size there, enough caffeine to kill a small horse. In Oz, most of the coffee places I go are more like cafes, that serve your latte in an 8 oz cup with saucer and don’t give a size choice, so there might be more “Starbucks” style places I don’t know about though.

I think in America at least, the whole “coffee dessert” thing hasn’t seeped in, most people view their frappacino as a beverage. Also, people seem to follow whatever food fad to an extreme, even if it obviously isn’t healthy from a common sense point of view. It used to be carbo loading on refined carbohydrates and “low fat” sugary things, now it’s stuffing oneself with high fatty foods and avoiding any and all carbs like the plague. I had someone criticise me for eating carrots because they were too “high carb.”

Another difference (though it doesn’t seem to keep Aussies much thinner) is how expensive junk food is here compared to America. Candy bars are $2, and a family size bag of chips is $3. A can of coke in the supermarket is over $1. In America, junk food is often dirt cheap—bags of chips 2 for 99 cents, 50 cent cans of coke, etc. A doughnut in America is about 80 cents, here it can be $2. The price certainly makes me less likely to make an impulse junk food buy, esp. when I can get a bag of green beans for 75 cents.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:25:08 +0000

When I was a kid I could get a 6oz Coke out of a machine for a nickel. Now I’m 56 and I buy wine at Trader Joe’s: Clos de Bois Zinfandel, $7.99 for a 750ml bottle.

By: SG

SG — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 07:39:15 +0000

well it’s true Adam, I have never eaten anything from Maccas except 3 or 4 “fries”, which were disgusting. I suppose one shouldn’t judge a fast food restaurant by its fries,eh? Regardless of whether it is actually objectively tasty though, surely maccas food is like grunge music – it cannot deviate outside very narrow definitions of taste, and so has to compete in a packed marketplace through other points such as price, speed and regularity…?

And look, I can remember when the small coffee size disappeared at the coffee chains in Australia, maybe 5 years ago. I can also remember how much bigger everything was when they first opened. I remember when krispy kreme doughnuts (which I also haven’t eaten) opened. These are moments in time when the calorie-intensive binge-eating choices available to Australians not only widened, but began to trump on price the healthy options. And the claim that these chain stores are producing more healthy food is laughable – maccas salad bar options have been shown to have as many calories as their burgers, but more of it as sugar. I can’t believe people are even trying to deny this phenomenon, it requires the dual traits of no-historical-memory and wow! how-did-all-these-people-get-so-fat naivete at the same time. It’s the food, people!!

But I agree adam, the shift to low-fat foods I suspect reflects some industrial effect which we have been fooled into thinking the companies introduced as a response to our demand for healthy food. I suspect it is related to sugar subsidies.

By: abb1

abb1 — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 07:33:15 +0000

I don’t feel that McDonald’s food is tasty. They have good marketing, but every time I actually try it – I feel disappointed. Real McDonald’s food is nothing like the idea of it.

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:54:57 +0000

@sg : high quality nutritional meal and tasty don’t always go hand in hand. McDonalds is terrible for you, but it is tasty. I’m not saying you should eat it, but anyone how makes the argument that their food doesn’t taste good hasn’t really had it. (and yes, I know that there is better – the fact that tastier food exists doesn’t make McDonalds any less tasty). The same goes for Starbucks. I’d prefer to sip espresso in Italy, but I don’t get to do that. For all the gripping people do about Starbucks, it is also fairly tasty. I just object to people treating mochas and frappacinos (sp?) simply invigorating beverages when they are really desserts. If you want to drink a coffee based dessert, feel free to drink a Starbucks milk-drink. But don’t pretend it’s equivalent to a regular coffee.

Also, as far as the sugar content of tomato sauces, that depends when “when we were kids” was. I’m 26, so when I go back to “when I was a kid”, sugar was already highly prevalent. That was right around they started hyping “low fat” foods which really just boosted the sugar content. My only beef with that article is that if you go back 20 years, a lot of the transitions to mega-sized foods had already happened – that was my childhood and adolescence. To a certain degree, many fast food restaurants have already begun backing down on this.

By: Slocum

Slocum — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:58:20 +0000

katherine, are you seriously trying to deny that serving sizes – particularly at fast food chains – have increased over the last decade? ‘cause that is crazy talk!

Nah—the Big Mac, the Super-sized Fries and all of that are much older than 10. The trend during the last decade in fast food has been toward lower fat meals with fresher ingredients—Subway, PotBelly, Chipotle, Baja Fresh, QDoba, Panera Bread, Noodles & Company, Cosi, etc. The burger chains haven’t been growing nearly as fast as the (healthier, better-tasting) alternatives.

By: SG

SG — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:28:57 +0000

In fact,it would be a ridiculous indictment of the food industry if this weren’t true. Mcdonalds et al are industrial food producers, not providers of high quality nutritional meals. Under the increased cost pressure of 20 years of growth in that industry, they must have found ways to lower costs and increase profit, and the simplest way they can do that is by using shittier and shittier ingredients, within a taste paradigm that is obviously high-sugar high-fat low-vegetable.

The same is true of starbucks et al. To compete they have to diversify their product line and find ways to make it appeal more than the competitors. The 2 obvious cheap ways to do that are value for money (more coffee and milk for the same cost) and sugar flavourings (those godawful syrups). To make equal profits they up the size.

After all, it’s not as if taste is the selling point for either of these chains.

Surely any other outcome would mean they were very poor industrial outfits?

By: SG

SG — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:25:03 +0000

katherine, are you seriously trying to deny that serving sizes – particularly at fast food chains – have increased over the last decade? ‘cause that is crazy talk!

(And remember it’s not just about the size but about the calorie content – I bet the tomato base in that pizza, and the dough, contain a lot more sugar than they did when we were kids, and are comparatively cheaper than they were, while a healthy snack is much more expensive)

By: fatty arbuckle

fatty arbuckle — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:50:16 +0000

A new study concludes that Australians are now more obese than Americans:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article4171160.ece

By: Barry

Barry — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:35:15 +0000

I noticed this was up to 120 comments – what a nice, fat juicy comments thread!

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:25:53 +0000

The default soda size is definitely true for bottles, but when I was a child (~20 years ago), convenience stores were already selling ‘big gulps’ and whatnot. The bagel size also seems misleading to me. The bagel quoted as ‘standard’ 20 years ago looks like the “Lenders bagel”. However, any New York bagel shop would have a much larger size bagel than what you would buy in the supermarket.