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> American issues with food always amaze me. Why? It's no mystery. From a very young age American children are trained to associate daily activities with food

> American issues with food always amaze me. Why? It's no mystery. From a very young age American children are trained to associate daily activities with food. Americans have a food for everything and that food is present, in abundance, wherever profit is to be had. (Seriously, list an activity and I'll reply with at least one food pairing.) Ask any dedicated American dieter how challenging it is to go out with friends or visit family without being put in multiple situations in which they are the only one not eating or eating something far healthier than everyone else. This requires willpower of which no person has an unlimited reserve. The basis for obesity is undeniably food addiction. How can we expect addicts to fight uphill against a system and a culture which has evolved to profit from their failure?

peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> Ask any dedicated American dieter how challenging it is to go out with friends or visit family without being put in multiple situations in which they are the only one not eating or eating something far healthier than everyone else. That's exactly what always amazes me. I can't pinpoint when Americans started allowing themselves to eat unhealthy food to make someone else profit. I never witnessed it anywhere else in the World, except poor countries where access to healthy food is hard or too expensive. Of course it is not specific to USA, but nowhere it is so widespread as in the USA in my experience. As an Italian with an Italian mother, I can totally relate to the obsession for food, I am in no way fan of the constant eating and talking about food all the time, while my mother's main concern it's the perfectly stereotypical "did you eat? and what did you eat?", she's been asking the same question everyday for as long as I can remember, but it's also closely linked to eating well and healthy. What amazes me is that USA has all the potentials to be the best place in the World to eat, I've honestly ate better cooked pasta in some NY restaurant than at home in Italy, only problem is that it was unreasonably expensive, 5 times more than an expensive restaurant in the centre of Rome or Milan. Maybe it's one of those things that the market cannot fix.
cookie_monsta 4y ago
I don't think this is a definitive factor. Most societies organise around food and most activities have food either as a central component or at least available. The quality of the food associated with these activities is probably a lot more significant.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago

> Ask any dedicated American dieter how challenging it is to go out with friends or visit family without being put in multiple situations in which they are the only one not eating or eating something far healthier than everyone else. That's exactly what always amazes me. I can't pinpoint when Americans started allowing themselves to eat unhealthy food to make someone else profit. I never witnessed it anywhere else in the World, except poor countries where access to healthy food is hard or too expensive. Of course it is not specific to USA, but nowhere it is so widespread as in the USA in my experience. As an Italian with an Italian mother, I can totally relate to the obsession for food, I am in no way fan of the constant eating and talking about food all the time, while my mother's main concern it's the perfectly stereotypical "did you eat? and what did you eat?", she's been asking the same question everyday for as long as I can remember, but it's also closely linked to eating well and healthy. What amazes me is that USA has all the potentials to be the best place in the World to eat, I've honestly ate better cooked pasta in some NY restaurant than at home in Italy, only problem is that it was unreasonably expensive, 5 times more than an expensive restaurant in the centre of Rome or Milan. Maybe it's one of those things that the market cannot fix.

cookie_monsta 4y ago

I don't think this is a definitive factor. Most societies organise around food and most activities have food either as a central component or at least available. The quality of the food associated with these activities is probably a lot more significant.