Fat Americans

Brett — and, probably, environmentally sound (though not, I’d guess, very green in any other sense).

If you read La Physiologie du Goût you see descriptions of meals that we’d think of as feeding a family of eight. There’s one in which someone eats six dozen oysters… as an appetizer. (Actually, I think that’s Brillat-Savarin reporting what someone else told him, not describing a meal at which he was present.)

Brett — I’m guessing it is because good food tastes good the first time round, but not so good thereafter. TO be honest, most Europeans I know have been amazed – but in a postiive way — when first encourntering the doggy bag.

This strikes me as a curious comment in light of the prix fixe, multi-course European meal.

“This strikes me as a curious comment in light of the prix fixe, multi-course European meal.”

Posted by Slocum

But those *could* include a tasty beagle or pomeranian :)

But this is just a “natural” process isn’t it? I think Robert Reich would agree with Brett.

in one gordon ramsay’s kitchen nightmares, ramsay mercilessly rips into the restaurant-owner for the portion-sizing: partly this is about costs (the business is going under), and giving away too much for free, but partly i think it is ramsay’s own attitude to cooking, which is not so far from the one harry b elaborates — that the art and heart of it is excellence now

(ramsay’s line on almost everything is aggressive conventionality of course — don’t be fancy or weird if you can’t hack it — and he’s utterly unphased by the issue of snobbery about money, but it was funny how appalled he was the portion-size)

Now here’s a novel approach to combating obesity: The Texas Obesity Research Center in Second Life. I wonder if I could get a grant to research the effects on obesity of encouraging people to put away the Doritos, shut off the computer, and play outside.

It’s an important part of the myth of America that everyone can have Wealth. A big pile of glop on your plate lets you be the gluttonous feasting lord for an evening.

Those who are the actual lords go to restaurants where the portion sizes don’t need to represent their dreams.

“Those who are the actual lords go to restaurants where the portion sizes don’t need to represent their dreams.”

Not true. Or rather only true for those Lords who style themselves Europhiles and or Foodies.

100% in this family. We DO have a doggy, after all. ;) Anyway, I find that while prime rib, for example, isn’t nearly as good the next day, it still makes a great sandwich on an onion roll with a bit of horseradish sauce.

“Okay, Americans. What percentage of your “doggy bags” actually get eaten—whether by you or the kids or the dog. And what percentage gets thrown out a week later?

In our house, it’s got to be less than a 1/3 eaten.”

Posted by Rich B

Seconding Brett here (I’ll then take a long shower), it depends on what. Some foods make a great lunch the next day; others are pretty bad when reheated.

But 1/3 eaten might be a good figure for me, also.

Or rather only true for those Lords who style themselves Europhiles and or Foodies.

You don’t have to style yourself anything if you just go to the places where what you spend represents your wealth more obviously than what you are able to consume.

Anything with Alfredo sauce is terrible the next day, (Not that the dog minds, he LOVES Alfredo.) but neither I nor my wife are fond of that fatty stuff. The dog has gotten it when we ate out with family.

Chinese makes great omelette filling the next morning.

And cold pizza is indeed the breakfast of the gods.

We usually order steak or prime rib when eating out, for the change, since our diet at home is mostly chicken or pork adobo. (My wife’s adobo is to die for!)

Hm, this subject reminds me, I’ve got a ham bone in the freezer, and it’s got a date with some lentils. I’d better thaw it.

RE: the “what people eat around the world” link.

Is it just me or does the diet generally look healthier the poorer the people? (With the refugee as an exception)

Is it just me or does the diet generally look healthier the poorer the people?

This really shouldn’t be a surprise, most places that aren’t suffering an actual lack of food have better diets than the US & Britain.

Twice the food for half the price, better variety, faster, better service, more space.

This much is mostly true. Shame about the food though (only somewhat unfair).

abb1, how true about the bread. In general. That’s strange — good bread has become readily available retail, but restaurant bread quality hasn’t gone up.

Bubba, expensive steak houses don’t serve small portions. In Texas, Nebraska or New York.
In this country cultural elitists and those who want to be seen as part of that elite tend to eat less. The European style of diet is not normative in this country. It’s a “lifestyle choice” or an ideological choice. People don’t change their diet they “go on a” diet. That’s why I made the reference to Robert Reich: It’s all about freedom. Everyone claims to be reasonable, rational and in control.

And find a picture of Brett (use google). He’s fat.

You eat more when you eat faster, don’t you? The next useful study would be of eating speeds now and 20 years ago, and in the US vs. Europe. I’ll bet there’s a correlation between portion size and rate of gobbling the stuff down.

Bubba, expensive steak houses don’t serve small portions. In Texas, Nebraska or New York.

Are we talking exclusively about expensive steak houses?

I do agree that individuals who like Diet A may continue to eat Diet A when they’re wealthy, but they certainly have a better shot at portion control at the French Laundry than they do at Denny’s.

Far more troubling is the fact that a lot of 20-somethings eat out for every meal. I have no problem, personally, dealing with large portions at restaurants because I can eat a lot of food quite happily but I eat out at most once a week. The rest of the time I’m cooking.

The phenomenon is also far from universal. I suspect there’s a certain price range of restuarant where you’re obviously not going there for quality, so they compete on quantity – being basically any chain restaurant. But a lot of the unique local restaurants I go to serve what I think is a reasonable amount of food. Maybe Europeans would still be shocked.

“And find a picture of Brett (use google). He’s fat.”

Was fat. I dieted down from 250 lbs (My peak when I was clinically depressed.) to 170, and am currently bouncing between 190 and 195. Which is heavier than a like, but a lot lighter than I used to be.

Congratulations, Brett! I know that kind of lifestyle change is hard to do.

I remember my honeymoon somewhere in N America and the portions were just out of this world. Starter was three complimentary pumpernickels each, and then came a plate with more chips you could shake a stick at AND a burger so huge I had to split it in two to eat it. And then never ending coke top ups too. It was amazing I could fit into one seat on the plane home …

It doesn’t matter if you take a third home in a doggy bag or not, if there’s too much food on your plate you’re going to get fat.

Another excellent and useful comparison is ’80s music videos, especially from before ’84. The models are fatter than modern models (if they’re girls) or thinner and smaller and generally less muscly (if they’re boys, and not in a C&C music factory video), but everyone in crowd scenes or street scenes is thin. And I mean everyone. It’s really shocking to compare it with modern music. The world has changed, in a fat and slobbery way, and none of us are better for it.

Many people have not learned to do this – like many animals, it is probably hardwired into us to keep eating everything is gone.

No, it’s not — do you eat until your fridge is empty, your cupboards are bare, and you’re out of money so you can’t replenish them? You know that appetite mechanism that came as a standard feature of your ‘reptile brain’? It works — which is why you stop eating when you’re not hungry any more rather than when your house is out of food.

Where was that study showing people reduced other calorie intake when they eat out? Here it is:

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/06/does-fast-food.html

So why is everybody getting fatter? Sedentary lifestyle, mostly. The big change has been for kids — who now spend far more time with game consoles and far less time running around outside.

“The original coke was made with sugar. The 20oz coke is made with cheap cheap high fructose corn syrup.”

High fructose corn syrup is only cheaper than sucrose because of high sugar tariffs. IOW, the corn syrup didn’t lower costs, it became competitive when the tariff raised them.

Remember the Archer-Daniels-Midland commercials some years back on the various Sabbath Gabfests explaining how cheap sugar was in the U.S., at least when measured by percentage of income Americans spent on it? This was a defense of sugar tariffs by a company that doesn’t make sugar. But irt makes megatons of high-fructose corn syrup.

Who in their right mind wants a Horn of Adequacy?

“What percentage of your “doggy bags” actually get eaten—whether by you or the kids or the dog. And what percentage gets thrown out a week later?”

3/4. But there’s an economist in the household.

“What really influences our eating, he says, are visibility and convenience.”

Oh come on. I’m sitting in my office right with nary a bite to eat in sight (invisibility) but I’m super hungry. You better believe that as soon as I can get home (inconvenience) I’m gonna cook up a huge meal and woof it down. And it’s gonnnnnaaaa be gooooood! That Wansink guy is flipping things around. Because we’re hungry we arrange for food to be convenient. And visible.

The idea of taking home a “doggy bag” is totally grossing me out right now – is this a family thing, for the kids? You don’t do this on a date, right, or when you go for drinks afterwards? Call me a snob, but it’s so lacking in style. Doesn’t it smell?

If you don’t know what to do with your doggy bags, consider asking homeless people along the street if they would like them. I’m in Chicago, and there are many homeless people – most are hungry and will happily take your doggy bag. If my doggy bags actually made it home, I would probably eat them, but I am fat and other people are starving, so this seems like a better solution.

Twenty years ago Today’s Burger
333 calories 590 calories

According to a 2007 paper published in the Journal of Public Health Policy, portion sizes offered by fast food chains are two to five times larger than when first introduced. When McDonald’s first started in 1955, its only hamburger weighed around 1.6 ounces; now, the largest hamburger patty weighs 8 ounces, an increase of 500 percent.

Yeah, but you can still get the 1.6 ounce hamburger for, like, 59 cents at McDonalds; they haven’t taken it off the menu. If you feel like being extravagant you can get the double cheeseburger (3 oz. of beef) for $1.00 plus tax. You can also select a small order of French fries; you aren’t forced to buy the Extra-Super-Mega size. As far as that jouissance talk goes, if you go in when they’re busy and everything is fresh-cooked and hot, the McD double-cheeseburger (only onions, plz) is pretty tasty and their fries are absolutely tee-riff.

But now you try going into a convenience store or gas station anywhere here in Florida and getting one single 12 oz. beer! There’s not one in the cooler, ever. Some of these places don’t even have 16 oz. beers, the smallest size they’ve got is 24 oz.

This reminds me of my last trip to the US. I had a stop in Detroit. Coffee came in two sizes: Grande and Extra Grande. A muffin I ate was the size of a small pie. In my final destination Chicago I saw people eating ( I could say “wolfing down” or munching or devouring ) large pieces of meat. And they wonder about the increased prevalence of obesity in the US. It’s high calory content and a sedentary lifestyle. I think the New Yorkers may be better off because they tend to walk more and use public transit. Then again, my American friends tell me NYC is very different from the rest of the US anyway.

Here is a look at obesity rates in the U.S., state by state:

http://calorielab.com/news/2007/08/06/fattest-states-2007/

The fattest states tend to be in the Appalachian, Southern, and Rust Belt regions. The leaner states tend to be in the Northeast and the Mountain-West.

laura, isn’t it only illegal in Melbourne?

I cannot believe that it’s all sedentariness only. There are sinister tricks being used to make us eat more (because then we pay more). For example the smallest coffee at Starbucks is not actually on the menu – you have to know the word and point at the cup to get it. In Australia a main meal at a restaurant is routinely twice the size you need, but when one goes in one wants to taste more than one thing, so one ends up eating too much. It’s not rocket science for businesses to fix things this way, but it sure is wasteful. Food in the bin, and we’re getting fat.

Some public health journals covered some of these tricks a year or 2 ago and they really are shocking – hiding the small sizes, always offering a size up, and those bigger sizes being not commensurately more expensive all add up to make you eat too much – especially if they’re cramming more calories into the same size.

The marginal cost to the restaurant of an additional 30% percent in portion size is very small compared to the total cost of bringing the customers in and serving them.

From the restaurant’s perspective it’s a matter of not wanting to disappoint your customers. A customer who gets more than they wanted to eat won’t mind, but a customer who gets less than they wanted will not be back. When so many of your customers eat so much, you have to adapt.

“The food here is terrible, and in such large portions, too.”

I saw doggy bags handed out in China. That’s not because portion size is so gigantic there. Rather, when the Chinese take you out to eat, they go all out to make the meal a memorable experience and offer lots of dishes. At the same time, it’s considered acceptable, in some situations, to take leftovers home so that no food will be wasted.

Industrially produced meat is just awful, nutritionally, hygenically, gustatorily, and ecologically.

“American restaurants are much, much better. Twice the food for half the price, better variety, faster, better service, more space.”

I’d agree on the more space, anyway.

Since nobody can come out and say the obvious, I will sniff it: American restaurants are just another example of Americans concern with quantity rather than quality. Quality requires taste and is considered elitist, but anyone can judge quantity.

oops, I meant I agree with @81

sg,

Let me just take a bite of my leftover pizza made with amazing chewy yet crisp crust drizzled with olive oil, sea salt, tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella and basil before I answer your post. It’ll have to be quick, because I’m about to go on a cheese and wine tour of the McLaren Vale, where I’ll sample some basket press Shiraz paired with fresh goat cheese. :)

But seriously, I will have to visit Hiroshima some time, I never knew they were known for good food. I’ve always wanted to go to Japan, hopefully I’ll make it there in the next couple of years.

(BTW, did you know Adelaide has amazing sushi? :)

Re #81 & #83, I guess the point is that a European eating out will (in my experience) feel let down if the food is not better quality than he/she could have cooked for themselves at home, whereas Americans, by the looks of the previous comments, eat out more for better quantity and experience. (I certainly hope that using that most people using decent ingredients could cook better than the average low-end mid-West restaurant). And that’s fine, it’s a cultural choice – but it probably is linked to the higher level of obesity
sg: Good call on the culinary glories of Hiroshima – if I could find a good okinomiyaki place nearer to home I’d be consuming excess calories in no time!

what is the social history of US doggybag? is it quite recent? did it in fact start with chinese restaurants (totally a guess — but takeaway culture plus the chinese courtesy thing noted above somewhere would make this make sense)?

i can gin up a good improvised (non-sneery) cluster of reasons why it’s been longer developing in the UK, tracing back to the fact that british food when eaten out before c.1975 was VERY LARGELY PLUPERFECTLY AWFUL whatever yr class background, so no one would actually WANT to take any away with them — and that the (fairly successful) battle to inject quality since then would have been VERY leery of mere-quantity-as-substitute (hence gordon ramsay’s tantrum outlined above, which i judge a late outlier)

(ethnic takeaway culture took hold largescale in the UK c.1965-75 i think — maybe earlier in london and the western ports)

sir henry rawlinson: “that was inedible muck! and there wasn’t enough of it!”
guest: “was there not too much gristle in the blancmange?”

I actually eat more than half of the doggy-bag food, I’d say. When we eat takeout, which is pretty frequently, it’s even more likely because the initial serving is not so different from the subsequent ones.

However, it’s absolutely true that I tend to eat more when the portion size is bigger. And when I was in Spain the autumn before last, I was struck by the rational portion sizes I got at restaurants; the portions would look really small for a few seconds before I realized that I’d just been given as much as I could reasonably eat.

First, elect a Democrat.

Yes, bad jim, because your politics are so clearly relevant to portion sizes and exercise habits. Ah, for the halcyon days when Bill Clinton was in office, a model of restraint and fitness to us all! And damn W anyway, with his pointless running and bicycling and brush-clearing and what-not.

Re transit, to an extent it’s true. But New York is the most heavily transit-supported city in the U.S., and believe me, New Yorkers as a whole are no model of fitness for the country. Must be all that eating-out they do…

In my experience, Americans cook a lot less than Europeans, perhaps to some extent because they are ahead in a trend to work more and use the money to buy good-quality takeaway or eat out.

I know Americans who never ever cook a meal, which is unbelievable for my parents, weird for me but will perhaps be normal for my kids ( I hope not).

As a result, Americanns see eating out more as a stndard alternative for eating at home, while for Europeans ( or at least in some countries of Europe) eating out relates to eating at home as going to the cinema relates to watching TV.

If you don’t cook paying, say, 30% more to get a double portion and a doggy bag makes sense. For me, I would prefer to use the 30% to cook my own meal the next day.

But many people do not enjoy cooking. For them the ‘American’ approach is attractive, and I think it is slowly catching on here, sadly including the fat people.

what is the social history of US doggybag? is it quite recent?

The practice was common in the ’50s (I speak from memory), but always with the pretense that the dog was going to get the leftovers — hence the term “doggybag.” The restaurants played along with a straight face. Some of them bought special bags from their suppliers. I remember one where the bags said “Bones for Bowser!”

(The paradigm restaurant meal in those days was “prime rib” — I don’t know what it is called outside the US — a standing rib beef roast. The meat next to the bone is the best; it would be a sin to throw it away. You pick it up and gnaw it to get every morsel, which you could hardly do in a classy restaurant, even today.)

As far as my experience goes it is universally assumed that the food will be eaten by people. It is a little surprising that “doggybag” persists.

clew,

What does it matter who was born rich or poor? I was just pointing out that electing a Democrat does not lead to better eating or health habits in the U.S. population. The trends toward weight gain and lack of exercise were the same with Clinton as president as they are with Bush; they’re just now more advanced.

It is remotely possible that federal policies set by the President could make a marginal difference — but I can’t imagine it actually happening. Congressional action is slightly more likely to matter, as Congress determines things like national transportation policy and funding. The actual political swing-point is local — cities and municipal regions. And there, (D) or (R) makes almost no difference.

One factor in the expansion of restaurant portions in the U.S. is the rising cost of everything related to running a restaurant, _except_ food. Restaurants have to raise their prices to keep up with the increased costs of rent, labor, cleaning supplies, permits, and taxes, none of which provide visible increased benefit to the customer. So they increase the prices just a little more, and significantly increase the portion size, so the customer sees a tangible benefit to the increased price.

The pizzeria probably had take-away too, no? That would explain the abundance of boxes. And it might generally be more common in places that have take-away, but I’ve never ever seen somebody asking for a doggy bag myself, so it cannot be that common.

I think haute cuisine restaurants might take offense at you planning to reheat their creations ;)

so it is only the main course you can put in your box? Could you put, say, half a bowl of chowder, one lambchop, and two profiteroles in it?

Mmmm, clam chowdah… Mm-mm…

sg-
$30 for all you can drink cocktails is definitely a reason to go to Hiroshima. I’ll probably be living in China at some point in the next couple of years, so I can hopefully make it over there. Did they have good yakitori as well? I’ll need a midnight meat on a stick snack if I’m going to get the full benefit of all these cheap cocktails ;)

Speaking of China, it’s not as good as cheap cocktails, but if you’re ever there, try to get your hands on some Qingdao (Tsingtao) draught beer brewed in Qingdao, it’s an arm and a leg better than the bitter pisswater they sell overseas as Qingdao.

britta, you will find much good yakitori, and when last I went to a yakitori restaurant it was recommended in the gethiroshima map (I cannot overstate the goodness of that map). Hiroshima is about so much more than the Peace Park, it really is a wonderful town to visit or live in – I recommend it thoroughly.

I enjoyed Chinese beer when I was there, except when it dehydrated me in the mountains…

“$30 for all you can drink cocktails is definitely a reason to go to Hiroshima.”

There are also a couple of really great bars in the Ground Zero neighborhood that are a great reason to visit New York! Good times!

That article on portion sizes is kind of a crock–very much cherry picked. Pizza slices seem exactly the same size to me as they did in elementary school. The closest equivalent to an 8 oz. cup of coffee is a 12 oz. cup of coffee, not a 16 oz. mocha with whipped cream. Small hamburgers are still widely available. etc. etc. etc.

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.

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

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

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?

@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.

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.

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.

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.

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.