Cuisine Terrible Good Morning! - Yesterday afternoon we got home from work and from a late lunch or early supper depending. We had dropped in at a Subway's, one of countless fast food meccas to pound down a foot- long sub. In order to keep the bill below 20 bucks, I went with the Sub of the month, a Tuscan Chicken Melt. My husband looked at me, "I thought, you didn't like that sub."
I shrugged it off, "Well, at least it's cheap." Then we were talking about food here in general as we often do when we eat out, and no surprise there, the verdict was just as negative as every other time. Anyway, after more than six years here and around thirty pounds heavier, I have to admit, I have finally got used to woofing down pretty much anything offered and that in scarily great quantities.
I still recall my mum's words of farewell years ago, "I just hope, you won't become like them."
Well, with respect to what I eat here on a regular base, I've got to say, by now I'm almost Americanized. Paradoxically though, I think the food here sucks quite a bit. We've been all over the country performing, but the impressions that we get from the local cuisine are frankly more than just forgettable - pretty much anywhere. Here in the Capital Region in Upstate NY, there's just one place out of hundreds of eateries, diners, restaurants, etc. that we like enough as to remain regulars.
Why is this? Okay, first of all, 90% of all meals are a pure sodium assault on your health. There are meal combos - and I'm not making this up now - that put you right over the edge by tripling the daily sodium intake with just one meal! This wakes the high blood pressure right there. Then many times food just tastes that rich and smooth because whatever this is usually turns out to be heavily marinated in butter, oil and spreads which unflatteringly explains the surplus of 200.00 up to a million useless calories at the end of the year contributing to all the nasty derailments of the human physique we tend to call (morbid) obesity. And last but not least, nothing in this country appears to land on our plates ever truly without sugar. I rarely have dessert when we eat out; at least this way I'm confident in staying away from this source of temptation. But you see, at home I'd love to correct a few occasional culinary faux pas by skipping a snack or meal and devour a supposedly oh so healthy yogurt instead. In this country of overly- abundant food choices, I usuallyly take my time to compare the goods on display. However, and this seriously cries for crisis, the lowest sugar content I've found aisles of no idea how many different brands, kinds and sizes of yogurt is 9% per serving. Do the math, if I weigh thirty pounds more than I did before, do you really think, I would ever settle with one stupid, tiny serving? Of course not, so I scoop down at least two servings if not the whole container (4 servings) which fuels my ever more sedative body with a minimum of 16% of sugar, let alone all the calories! That's quite ridiculous! The worst is yet to come. Because we store thousands of nutritionally empty and imbalanced calories, mainly carbs, sugar and fats, we constantly crave for more of the same crap. What a devilish trap indeed! Summing up, we eat a majority of foods we don't even like that much like pizza, burgers, hamburgers, etc. because the quality mostly ranges from merely boring and bland to absolutely yucky and over- salty. Sadly, food additives, taste enhancers, MSG, and God knows what else, all too well- known culprits, turn us into addicts of the very same foods. Apparently, this country has forgotten how to cook (well). I can see this collective amnesia spreading like a nasty disease especially amongst the younger generations. I'm going to address this issue separately in one of my upcoming posts. Thank God, I learnt how to cook, and whenever I'm not all too lazy, I cook mostly fresh foods and from scratch. And yet, I feel, I'm still not off the hook so to speak, as most meat products here are filled with antibiotics and on top injected with sodium!
You see, I just can't win no matter what. - Anyways, my husband loves to tease me suggesting that I should instead try and do the portion size control thing as I would clearly starve at the small meal sizes in Europe, if I decided to ever move back there. I guess, that's the trick then: Considerably smaller portions means less heartburn, less overweight, and most importantly less food addiction. This seems to be the only way to slash the risk of in- and digesting too much sugar and fat in half and thus stay healthier and skinnier. However, this does not change much about the fact that the food here still sucks, does it? - Let me know what you think.
I shrugged it off, "Well, at least it's cheap." Then we were talking about food here in general as we often do when we eat out, and no surprise there, the verdict was just as negative as every other time. Anyway, after more than six years here and around thirty pounds heavier, I have to admit, I have finally got used to woofing down pretty much anything offered and that in scarily great quantities.
I still recall my mum's words of farewell years ago, "I just hope, you won't become like them."
Well, with respect to what I eat here on a regular base, I've got to say, by now I'm almost Americanized. Paradoxically though, I think the food here sucks quite a bit. We've been all over the country performing, but the impressions that we get from the local cuisine are frankly more than just forgettable - pretty much anywhere. Here in the Capital Region in Upstate NY, there's just one place out of hundreds of eateries, diners, restaurants, etc. that we like enough as to remain regulars.
Why is this? Okay, first of all, 90% of all meals are a pure sodium assault on your health. There are meal combos - and I'm not making this up now - that put you right over the edge by tripling the daily sodium intake with just one meal! This wakes the high blood pressure right there. Then many times food just tastes that rich and smooth because whatever this is usually turns out to be heavily marinated in butter, oil and spreads which unflatteringly explains the surplus of 200.00 up to a million useless calories at the end of the year contributing to all the nasty derailments of the human physique we tend to call (morbid) obesity. And last but not least, nothing in this country appears to land on our plates ever truly without sugar. I rarely have dessert when we eat out; at least this way I'm confident in staying away from this source of temptation. But you see, at home I'd love to correct a few occasional culinary faux pas by skipping a snack or meal and devour a supposedly oh so healthy yogurt instead. In this country of overly- abundant food choices, I usuallyly take my time to compare the goods on display. However, and this seriously cries for crisis, the lowest sugar content I've found aisles of no idea how many different brands, kinds and sizes of yogurt is 9% per serving. Do the math, if I weigh thirty pounds more than I did before, do you really think, I would ever settle with one stupid, tiny serving? Of course not, so I scoop down at least two servings if not the whole container (4 servings) which fuels my ever more sedative body with a minimum of 16% of sugar, let alone all the calories! That's quite ridiculous! The worst is yet to come. Because we store thousands of nutritionally empty and imbalanced calories, mainly carbs, sugar and fats, we constantly crave for more of the same crap. What a devilish trap indeed! Summing up, we eat a majority of foods we don't even like that much like pizza, burgers, hamburgers, etc. because the quality mostly ranges from merely boring and bland to absolutely yucky and over- salty. Sadly, food additives, taste enhancers, MSG, and God knows what else, all too well- known culprits, turn us into addicts of the very same foods. Apparently, this country has forgotten how to cook (well). I can see this collective amnesia spreading like a nasty disease especially amongst the younger generations. I'm going to address this issue separately in one of my upcoming posts. Thank God, I learnt how to cook, and whenever I'm not all too lazy, I cook mostly fresh foods and from scratch. And yet, I feel, I'm still not off the hook so to speak, as most meat products here are filled with antibiotics and on top injected with sodium!
You see, I just can't win no matter what. - Anyways, my husband loves to tease me suggesting that I should instead try and do the portion size control thing as I would clearly starve at the small meal sizes in Europe, if I decided to ever move back there. I guess, that's the trick then: Considerably smaller portions means less heartburn, less overweight, and most importantly less food addiction. This seems to be the only way to slash the risk of in- and digesting too much sugar and fat in half and thus stay healthier and skinnier. However, this does not change much about the fact that the food here still sucks, does it? - Let me know what you think.
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