I’ve lived in New Zealand my whole life and one of the main things I’ve come to understand about the USA is the abundant supply of not-so-healthy food. The legend down under is that serving sizes in America are at least double the size you would expect in New Zealand.
The other common concept (not just with New Zealanders) is that Americans by and large (excuse the pun) have more obese people than any other country.
Mckenna and I have just gone to the States for two and a half weeks. Although not the purpose of going, we are both keen to discover just how much of the common myths are true.
3 questions we would like to answer are;
1. What size portions could one expect at both restaurants and fast food joints?
2. What proportion of the population are overweight and what kind of ‘healthy options’ are available on the menu?
3. Just how prevalent is fast food in America? What stand out as the most common food places?
We’re going to eat a lot of unhealthy food on this trip (and we realise that from the start). We also realise that a 2 and a half week holiday involves different eating habits than if we were actually living over here.
Nevertheless I am quite interested to see how ‘bad’ the food is over here compared to my side of the forrest.
We’ll be spending a our time in the mid west before venturing out to New York and then Los Angeles. Check back for photos and notes on the way as well as a full report at the end of our trip.
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weelittleme 08.24.08 at 1:49 am
I grew up in Canada. I live in New Zealand now. I will be interested to see what you think. I don’t think the myth is real. In my experience there is just as much junk here and the portions are just as big. From a processed food perspective I had to adjust my tastebuds a bit since I found most things in NZ much more over the top in terms of sweetness, even soups and savoury sauces are sweeter here than they tend to be in Canada. I don’t notice much anymore but I did at first.
LOL And the grease content in the fish and chips here almost killed me compared to east coast Canada where it at least tastes “lighter” in that department.
It may be different in the US. Don’t know. Australia is the fattest country now… just beat the US. In my experience in Canada the chain stores are big and they are everywhere, MacDonalds and the like. But then again there wasn’t a chip shop on every corner where I grew up either
No matter where you live I guess it all comes down to the choices you make. I came to NZ expecting to find healthier food choices and such since that is the reputation abroad… in my experience I haven’t really found that to be true.
Cindy 08.31.08 at 7:49 pm
I look forward to hearing your point of view too. Being a U.S. citizen, I find that we have a wide variety of choices to choose from and recent changes in the public desire to start going healthy has improved the options.