It is unavoidable, one of the things that everyone can think of when talking about the US is the food. You can get delicious food, really tasty, all ready to go whenever and wherever you want. The food offer is so big, that I can hardly believe that the places can be profitable, mostly thinking that some of the places are open 24 hours a day!
It is the way we dreamed about when we were kids, and wanted to get every day pizza, or Burger, or french fries... However our family didn't agree with us in that point, and obliged us to eat some healthy vegetables that didn't taste at all how we wanted. I remember asking my grandmother what we were having that night for dinner, she always answer: "Comida" (=food). She never explained what she was cooking, in fact, she didn't even want us kids in the kitchen, that was her business. Then, at the table, we would say that we would not want the food that she cooked. And she answered that she hadn't asked if we wanted it or not. We HAD to eat it. The argument was then over. I remember one time we had asparagus with mayonnaise for dinner, and my brother took a baguette and made one big sandwich for every single asparagus, loaded with so much mayonnaise that we would not notice the taste of the asparagus. one other time i had to eat a salad in the school cafeteria, and I disliked it so much that I threw up. Thinking about that, it is hard to think how I got to like salads...
Then coming here, those feelings come to mind again, and you get anxious to taste all these things as soon as possible, since they are not like the things you eat at home. All these delicious steaks, sauces, appetizers, etc. And this makes that the first days or even weeks you enjoy this new eating style like little kids. It is true that you have fast food in Europe and all, no one does it the way the Americans do it here...
However, at a certain point, you realize you don't want that anymore. First of all, the food from the restaurants is very tasty, maybe even too tasty. In fact, the salt content of the food here is huge in comparison with what we are used. Even if you order a salad, although you just want something fresh, the dressings are very taste full, that you end up having a heavy digestion. This is nothing surprising or necessarily negative, it is one more aspect of the cultural shock, that makes you want to go home and start cooking yourself.
We learned recently that we are very lucky, because we were taught how to cook, and can do it ourselves at home every day, unless we don't want. Unfortunately in the US, there's a lot of people who can't cook, never learned how to do it, and probably will never do it in their lives. We came to that conclusion after starting watching a series from the famous English cooking chef Jamie Oliver, named "Jamie Oliver's food revolution". He is in one small town in the US, and visits different schools, getting shock after shock because of what he sees.
That is a big shock for us, coming from Spain, where still now, despite long hours at work or busy lives, families and friends reunite for dinner and enjoy a home made dinner together. And it was hard for me to believe, for instance, that the kids in the schools shown in this series didn't recognize the vegetables they were shown (even common tomatoes, onions, potatoes...). That can only mean that they don't see them raw at home, but only processed in form of ketchup or french fries.
Pre-Processed food is being considered as a problem for the last years, that is no new information, also in Europe there has always been studies about it. The difference here is that there are families only having processed food. You see it in the supermarkets, where people ignore the fresh groceries zone, and go directly into the frozen department or the pre-cooked meals, or what they call here, "convenience food".
And the problem is that we just know too little about the ingredients that are used to do these meals. For instance, listening to the radio the other day, it was said that the macaroni & cheese from the brand above used 2 additives (yellow dye 5 and yellow dye 6) in their US version that are banned in the other countries where the same product is sold. And the reason for banning them is that they seem to be related to hyperactivity in children, allergies, and perhaps even cancer. You can imagine that the least thing I want to do is try this product :) And similar to that is the substitution of common sugar by corn syrup, because it is cheaper, however it has been proven to be much more unhealthy than sugar itself... And the question that comes to mind is, what else is there that we don't know?
Apart from the dangerous ingredients in the food, the size of the portions is also pretty scary. It is true that here you can ask for the rest of your food to be boxed to take home, but it shouldn't be necessary on the first place, if the sizes were proper for a meal.
Take a look at this main course, the whole tortilla barely cover what supposedly should be IN the tortilla. How many people can even take half of it?? And the problem is that it is difficult to realize when it has been enough, because we have been taught to end up our plates... Changing the habits cost a lot at the beginning, and can mean a couple of kilos as a punishment.
On the good side, there is a lot of programs going on to try to improve this problem, from the already named Jammie Oliver program, to cooking lessons offerings that take place in many cities, as well as lots of restaurants where the calorie content of all foods are listed in the menus. I think they have a lot to do, but they really need to educate the kids to eat healthy, and to want to know what is in their food.
So don't forget it: let's eat healthy food made out of fresh ingredients!!
Lots of love
Lita&Andres
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