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I’m biased towards European cuisine as an ethnic European (English+Polish) but I think every cuisine has their healthy and unhealthy parts. The US, for whatever

by mikrl 4y ago

I’m biased towards European cuisine as an ethnic European (English+Polish) but I think every cuisine has their healthy and unhealthy parts. The US, for whatever reason, allows people too easily to avoid the healthy parts. You shouldn’t eat pie and chips for every meal in the UK. You can also scoff pease pudding, kippers, porridge or mashed turnip to be healthy. Asian food is super popular and available too. Similarly in Poland you aren’t scarfing down kotlet and szarlotka every day. You have salads, pickles, cabbage rolls and soup to round it all out. In the US I think it’s considered somewhat normal to live off fried foods, hungry man and hamburgers at least among certain groups. You have interesting healthy cuisine of your own like succotash, collard greens and various squash yet I’m not sure if these are all too popular across the shared US culture. Also, I think a Pole who didn’t like bigos, or a French person who didn’t like pot au feu would be slightly ashamed to admit it, but in the UK some people seem almost proud that they won’t eat something. Maybe the US is similar there too.

legitster 4y ago
It's funny, as an American I had this high impression of European cuisine... until I spent time in Europe (lots more fried food than I was expecting!). I know a lot of people who had this stereotype that all Americans were fat and overweight, and then they get here and say "oh, it's really just the same as back home". I think the only difference in America is that there is this long tail at the end of the distribution. 95% of us look and eat roughly as healthy as any other population, and then there is this 5% of extremely obese people that they show facelessly on the news.
- mikrl 4y ago
  I bet you were on vacation though so I wouldn’t blame you for eating all the good fried stuff. If you grew up there and had food from your granny or something I bet you’d be eating less exciting (and more boiled) food.
  - legitster 4y ago
    Haha! Fair enough. My takeaway is that there was nothing magically different about the average diet in both places. Maybe slightly more sugar in one and more cheese in the other.

by mikrl 4y ago

legitster 4y ago

It's funny, as an American I had this high impression of European cuisine... until I spent time in Europe (lots more fried food than I was expecting!). I know a lot of people who had this stereotype that all Americans were fat and overweight, and then they get here and say "oh, it's really just the same as back home". I think the only difference in America is that there is this long tail at the end of the distribution. 95% of us look and eat roughly as healthy as any other population, and then there is this 5% of extremely obese people that they show facelessly on the news.

mikrl 4y ago
I bet you were on vacation though so I wouldn’t blame you for eating all the good fried stuff. If you grew up there and had food from your granny or something I bet you’d be eating less exciting (and more boiled) food.
- legitster 4y ago
  Haha! Fair enough. My takeaway is that there was nothing magically different about the average diet in both places. Maybe slightly more sugar in one and more cheese in the other.