Our Relationship With Food

I mentioned yesterday being critical about some aspects of American culture, and honestly, all of them are about food.

Americans have a reputation in China for being extremely friendly, nice and helpful, and I definitely noticed these qualities as I returned. It’s not that the Chinese don’t have these qualities, but they are usually reserved in the public sphere for people you are friendly with or who can help you in some way; it’s not necessary to be friendly to strangers. From the Customs agent to the guy selling me my Diet Coke at the local gas station, I am constantly reminded of this aspect of American culture that I really appreciate.

But advertisements for food, and the process of eating out, have really disappointed me. Disclaimer: I haven’t seen any American advertising in a year, so suddenly being bombarded with it perhaps causes a heightened reaction to it.

Here is my overall concern: why do we spend so much time and effort trying to make unhealthy food ‘healthy’? Chips and cookies and flavored drinks are not healthy, but it seems from the advertising that these companies are trying to market them as healthy options. Well, why? Isn’t it better to eat in a healthy way by eating fresh fruits, veggies*, whole grains and other non-overly processed foods, and save the bad stuff as an occasional treat? Junk food isn’t bad, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that it IS junk, and should be eaten sparingly and as a treat. This is all just my humble opinion, of course. But I find myself looking at these print and tv advertisements trying to convince me otherwise with a very critical eye. And the magazine ad about changing the shapes of chips so you can get every last drop out of the bowl? Really? We need this??

And I am surprised by the sheer number of commercials telling me how fat I am, but with their product, I can be sexy again. Now, in China I am in fact fat because I am about 60 lbs heavier than the average Chinese woman. It’s been a hard thing to deal with there, but at least I wasn’t being bombarded by television commercials telling me how unsexy I am! Phooey on you, tv commercials. I don’t like you AT ALL.

It seems I have also adapted to the Chinese way of eating, which is fresh food prepared at the time you order and small servings of a lot of different flavors and textures instead of a big plate of one or two things. It’s just not that exciting to me anymore to take 20 bites of the exact same thing. And honestly, it tastes processed and chemic-ly. Which is kind of sad to me, because man, I love me some Chili’s boneless buffalo wings! Or, I used to. It just doesn’t taste like real food anymore.

However, I am so happy to be eating greek yogurt again! I’ve really missed it. And the first thing I ate after coming home was an avocado with cubes of pepper jack cheese, and that was just heaven in my mouth. (I’ve eaten 5 avocados in the last five days, and I have no regrets.) And don’t even get me started on salsa and hot sauce….I’d bathe in it if that were acceptable.

We have awesome, delicious foods here. I just wish we had a better relationship with food so we could focus on the tastes and quality and what it can do for the true health of our bodies, and not how sexy or pseudo-healthy it will make us.

*I do see one problem here: we ship our fruits and veggies and so they are often lacking in flavor because they are picked early to avoid spoiling in transit. Chinese veggies might have poo all over them, but they taste a lot better because they come from a few miles away, not a few thousand miles away, and have time to ripen naturally.