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Name literally any fast food place and you can get a plain salad with tomatoes, lettuce, sometimes spinach, carrots, broccoli, etc, as well as various types of
by txcwpalpha 6y ago
Name literally any fast food place and you can get a plain salad with tomatoes, lettuce, sometimes spinach, carrots, broccoli, etc, as well as various types of plain grilled meat if you want protein. It won't be delicious, but vegetables certainly are not hard to get, even at fast food places. And that's before considering places that actually make a concerted effort to provide healthier options like Panera Bread, which has an even higher variety of different vegetables you can order.
>"Starbucks is on every corner and sells plain vegetables, plain fruit, plain eggs"... if you're lucky. Usually, it's sold out fairly quickly.
I've been throughout the US, both urban and rural, and never noticed a particular issue with it being sold out. And Starbucks was just one example; there are plenty of convenience stores that sell the same. I can't remember the last time I was in a gas station or 7-Eleven that didn't have plain fruit or plain nuts available.
I've been abroad as well (mostly in Asia, though some months in Europe) and I really do not at all have the same experience as you. Eating healthily is trivial in the US. I will acknowledge that it is not actively shoved in your face (sometimes you have to specifically ask that a dish be made without sauce, for example) but I have never, ever had a problem with the availability of healthy food.
If anything, I found that eating healthily in Asia was actually more difficult because in many situations it actually is not possible to get a dish that isn't based on some type of high-sodium/sugar sauce, white rice, or noodles. (The nice thing about Asia though is that even if their dishes are full of sugar and sodium, the portion sizes are relatively small, so it isn't as big of a deal.)
- groby_b 6y agoThis is really interesting - I'd love to sit down and compare notes how we arrived at two completely different views of the food world. (It even holds for the "plain nuts" comment - I find it incredibly hard to get nuts that aren't roasted and/or salted)
- david_shaw 6y ago> I find it incredibly hard to get nuts that aren't roasted and/or salted I don't see plain nuts as often as I'd like in stores, but they are super easy to find online: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=raw+almonds https://www.amazon.com/s?k=raw+almonds
- groby_b 6y agoHere's where Amazon's reputation for cheap fakes is biting them - I'm not risking food from them, since I can't fully trust the integrity of their goods. But Trader Joe's usually has them too. Safeway sometimes does. It's not that it's impossible, it's just that they don't have the same "staples" status they have in Europe. Usually, you find raw nuts in the cooking/baking ingredients area, while salted & roasted are considered "party food". And they're more likely to not have the party food variety than the raw variety.
- gen220 6y agoIn my house, we've been buying costco-brand (Kirkland) walnuts in mega-bulk from amazon for at least a year, and we've not yet encountered issues with their quality. Trader Joe's has decent nuts, but their prices are not competitive when you buy in bulk. Walnuts, in my opinion at least, don't vary in flavor that much (compared to almonds for example). So... walnuts are walnuts: always buy the cheapest! :)
- gdebel 6y agoYou are right you can find vegetables. But they will have a weird taste and/or have a sweetened sauce (or, you just have to sweeten it in order to eat it). This is the same in fast-food restaurants in France thought, Not a critic toward the US