Many years ago we went with a group of friends to a trip to China and Thailand. Especially in Thailand I immediately noticed quite a drastic difference in terms of food culture compared to Finland: More precisely, portion sizes in local restaurants were really small. Almost laughably small.
Back then I didn't appreciate the significance of this at all, but over the years I have come to realize its importance. It appears to me that the eating culture in Thailand is quite different than it is in Europe, and especially America. People don't eat much. They eat tasty food, not tons of food. In fact, I don't remember seeing even a single overweight local during our time there. Not one. Obesity appeared to be quite a rarity there.
This is quite in contrast with Finland. If you look at people on the street, at least half of them are visibly overweight, and a good portion of them are clearly obese. (The difference between "overweight" and "obese" is that the latter is so overweight that it starts significantly increasing the risk of obesity-related diseases and problems, and lower life quality, especially with age.)
Eating culture here, especially including restaurant culture, is rather different. As a rich first-world nation people are way too accustomed to put importance on portion size, even more so than the actual quality of the food. In fact, people are way too eager to forgive mediocre food as long as the portion size is large enough. When giving an opinion on the quality of a restaurant or other food joint, portion size is one of the most prominent things often listed. A portion size that's deemed "too small" is often listed as a negative, while a very large portion size is usually listed as a positive (especially if it's large in comparison to its price.)
When you start thinking about that, it's actually quite crazy. We have, somehow, learned to give way too much importance to portion size in our food, rather than its quality, and actually consider it a negative undesirable thing if the portion size is deemed too small, while considering large portions a positive thing. This really shouldn't be so. And then people wonder why obesity is an epidemic.
Of course Finland, even with is rampant obesity problem, is healthy compared to the United States, which is absolutely infamous on this front.
One of the major problems in the United States is not only how widespread and common obesity is, but the absolute morbid extents to which individual people can become obese. We are not talking about a man weighting something like 120 to 150 kg (which is already well beyond the unhealthy obesity limit). We are talking about people weighting 200 to 250 kg, sometimes even more, which is just pure insanity.
Americans are masters at creating unhealthy food. They are also masters at making already-unhealthy food even unhealthier. It almost seems like they deliberately make food calorie content as high as humanly possible.
They put sugar in almost everything, including things that don't need it nor make much sense having it. (In fact, they put so much sugar in everything that whenever they taste food from other countries, they find it tasteless and bland.) Moreover, for some reason it's very popular to use high fructose corn syrup instead of plain sugar. This is even worse because corn syrup has more calories for the same amount of sweetness. In other words, if two foods have the same amount of sweet taste, but one has been made with plain white sugar and the other with corn syrup, the latter will have more calories.
Or consider, for instance, the holy trinity of unhealthy food: French fries. This is the "holy trinity" of unhealthy food because it has plenty of the three most unhealthy ingredients, ie. boatloads of carbohydrates, fat and salt, while having pretty much no other nutritional values. (Potato chips are the same, and perhaps even worse.)
So, it appears someone thought to themselves: "Hmm, french fries are one of the unhealthiest foods in existence, with almost no redeeming qualities. How can we make it even worse? I know! Let's add cheese to it!"
That's right, french fries and cheese is a big thing in America. As if french fries alone wouldn't have had enough calories by themselves.
Don't get me wrong. It's not like you'll die if you eat french fries and cheese. But it should be done in extreme moderation! Like once a month at most. And in small amounts. The problem is that many Americans eat it almost every day, and in gigantic portion sizes. And that's just one example of thousands of similar foods.
Back then I didn't appreciate the significance of this at all, but over the years I have come to realize its importance. It appears to me that the eating culture in Thailand is quite different than it is in Europe, and especially America. People don't eat much. They eat tasty food, not tons of food. In fact, I don't remember seeing even a single overweight local during our time there. Not one. Obesity appeared to be quite a rarity there.
This is quite in contrast with Finland. If you look at people on the street, at least half of them are visibly overweight, and a good portion of them are clearly obese. (The difference between "overweight" and "obese" is that the latter is so overweight that it starts significantly increasing the risk of obesity-related diseases and problems, and lower life quality, especially with age.)
Eating culture here, especially including restaurant culture, is rather different. As a rich first-world nation people are way too accustomed to put importance on portion size, even more so than the actual quality of the food. In fact, people are way too eager to forgive mediocre food as long as the portion size is large enough. When giving an opinion on the quality of a restaurant or other food joint, portion size is one of the most prominent things often listed. A portion size that's deemed "too small" is often listed as a negative, while a very large portion size is usually listed as a positive (especially if it's large in comparison to its price.)
When you start thinking about that, it's actually quite crazy. We have, somehow, learned to give way too much importance to portion size in our food, rather than its quality, and actually consider it a negative undesirable thing if the portion size is deemed too small, while considering large portions a positive thing. This really shouldn't be so. And then people wonder why obesity is an epidemic.
Of course Finland, even with is rampant obesity problem, is healthy compared to the United States, which is absolutely infamous on this front.
One of the major problems in the United States is not only how widespread and common obesity is, but the absolute morbid extents to which individual people can become obese. We are not talking about a man weighting something like 120 to 150 kg (which is already well beyond the unhealthy obesity limit). We are talking about people weighting 200 to 250 kg, sometimes even more, which is just pure insanity.
Americans are masters at creating unhealthy food. They are also masters at making already-unhealthy food even unhealthier. It almost seems like they deliberately make food calorie content as high as humanly possible.
They put sugar in almost everything, including things that don't need it nor make much sense having it. (In fact, they put so much sugar in everything that whenever they taste food from other countries, they find it tasteless and bland.) Moreover, for some reason it's very popular to use high fructose corn syrup instead of plain sugar. This is even worse because corn syrup has more calories for the same amount of sweetness. In other words, if two foods have the same amount of sweet taste, but one has been made with plain white sugar and the other with corn syrup, the latter will have more calories.
Or consider, for instance, the holy trinity of unhealthy food: French fries. This is the "holy trinity" of unhealthy food because it has plenty of the three most unhealthy ingredients, ie. boatloads of carbohydrates, fat and salt, while having pretty much no other nutritional values. (Potato chips are the same, and perhaps even worse.)
So, it appears someone thought to themselves: "Hmm, french fries are one of the unhealthiest foods in existence, with almost no redeeming qualities. How can we make it even worse? I know! Let's add cheese to it!"
That's right, french fries and cheese is a big thing in America. As if french fries alone wouldn't have had enough calories by themselves.
Don't get me wrong. It's not like you'll die if you eat french fries and cheese. But it should be done in extreme moderation! Like once a month at most. And in small amounts. The problem is that many Americans eat it almost every day, and in gigantic portion sizes. And that's just one example of thousands of similar foods.
Comments
Post a Comment