Americans, Czechs and Food

I wonder if there is any symbol of the difference between the average European and the  average American more obvious or visible than fitness. This is by no means a new observation: everyone knows that Europeans are fitter than Americans. The obesity levels in the USA have reached epidemic levels and obesity and obesity-related diseases have become the leading cause of death. You could probably fill a small bookstore with the volumes written about this phenomenon. And any European you ask will tell you that Americans are fat. 

Above: my typical face after eating.

When I was young, I was sold a vision of a near utopian future of the Jetsons and Star Trek, a world where we would jet off to our jobs in oblong flying cars, a world where food could be conjured in seconds by a simulator; where the menial tasks of day-to-day existence were performed by robots, where phones had been replaced by screen-to-screen communication, and astronauts communicated to people on a given planet with small hand-held communicators and walked around with glassy gleaming computers to analyze their surroundings--and it all happened in a  a world where everyone was fit and trim and ready to get  down and dirty in wrestling matches with hairy monsters -- or fair alien maidens -- from outer space.

Above: a typical man from the future

People may have foreseen the Internet and it's instant face-to-face communications; they could have predicted a smoke-free world of smart-phones and micro-computers. But no one really called it-- that the cold gleaming future of 21st century America would be populated with a host of  human beings suffering from obesity and all it's attendant ailments. 

It's sad.

Of course the societal pressures and lifestyle quirks that make Americans fat exist in Europe, too, and we Europeans are assured that the epidemic is real here, as well. But there's no doubt that, when it comes to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, hemorrhoids, chronic indigestion, heart failure and kidney failure, constipation, kidney stones and back pain and all the other related ailments of the modern, fatter age, America is advanced.

 From the moment I set foot in New York City my thoughts were turned to food as they seldom are in Europe. In the filthy, but energetic and alive,  Sugar Hill neighborhood we stayed in in Harlem, there were pizza joints and an Ethiopian restaurant and a good old-fashioned 90s-style coffee shop complete with young pretty waitresses with beads in their hair and rings in their noses, charmingly tattooed throwbacks to some Lollapalooza orgy my 24-year self might have...observed with curiosity,  if not exactly taken part in. 

Above: a typical nineties alterna-chick

All over New York the choices of food abounded. Hallal stands, burnt chicken breast on a stick, donut shops, a palatial McDonald's on Times Square, enormo-slices of genuine New York Pizza for two bucks a slice, down-town lunch bistros where you could get a sandwich, soup or salad for lunch...

Above:  a typical American meal.

Even the small grocery store across the street from the grimy apartment me stayed in was filled with a plethora of delights -- whatever was missing from my weekly supermarket sojourns in Central Europe  (cheap, quality pate, say, or delicious Central European apples and pears--American apples and pears tasted relatively woody and flavorless -- or greater variety in fresh-baked goods) was replaced by armies of breakfast cereals marching down the aisle and a plethora of crackers, chips, dips and other assorted snack foods, the variety of which can simply not be found in Czech-land and probably not in the whole of Europe. 

With such a enormity of selection to choose from and so much of it yummy junk food, is it any wonder the Americans have come out on top in the race towards the fatter end of the scale?

My vacation wasn't limited to New York and in some ways the stark difference there was magnified(as so many things are) in the toothy, bright, scrubbed clean interior of the North American continent. 

Somewhere buried in a Springsteen song is a lyric extolling the fast food restaurant on the lonely open road. Or maybe not.

Above: a typical American rock star.

 Driving down the American road is a hungry undertaking. And try though you might to prepare against it's myriad temptations with turkey-and-tomato sandwiches on wheat, fresh fruit and snack food for the kids(and you, inevitably), at every exit the allure of greasy, fried fast food beckons, as public signs announce the onset of a battallions of drive-thru business ready to take your order: Qdobas, Starbucks, McDonald's, Burger Kings, Subways, Quiznos, Taco Huts and Taco Bells, Pizza Inns and Pizza Huts, Arby's and Five Guys and Chipotles, Shoneys and IHOPs and Village Inns and Waffle Houses...

It takes a will of iron to resist. Being "on the road" no longer has the societal implications it did in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath or even Kerouac's On the Road. It's been a long time since Americans were forced off our land of our ancestors due to bank foreclosures and looming starvation; since we hurtled West into a brighter future of orange trees, silicon and Hollywood; and, other than a brief glorious gasp of youth, perhaps, we are are no longer drunk on the moon, pissing off the side of pick-ups  in the wild Nebraska night on a quest for youthful adventure, alcohol and sex...When we travel now, what we are doing is going on vacation, an exercise that's supposed to be enjoyable, fun for the whole family. On vacation implies a splurge of money so why not spend more? These roadside temptation of burger and burrito and pizza by the slice inevitably find their way to make you do your bidding.

And when you realize that maybe you're spending too much time at the fast food restaurant on the road there is that other symbol of the American far-flung freedom of the road: the ubiquitous gas station. Which in today's modern America, is a fast food restaurant that sells gasoline.

Above: a typical gas station on the American road.

 These places are so weird. Each one seems more sterile and devoid of character than the next, but not in the harsh, communist functional type of way the architecture of Communist Europe suggests. Rather, in a way that they seem as if they've been designed by a committee whose express purpose was to locate any trace of uniqueness, soul or humanity and scrub it off leaving something clean yet so hollow, so plastic--but in the most pleasant, air-conditioned way imaginable. 

These places boast free wi-fi and sell more than just microwaveable junk food. I saw pots of steaming soup, full baked pizzas, sausages sizzling under the heat lamps, constantly in rotation. And of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the pleasures on offer: a smorgasbord of travel necessities for the unprepared and disorganized vacationer: canned foods, chips, sweets. DVDs for the howling, dissatisfied children. Headphones, USB cords, USB sticks, mini-MP3 players; trousers, shorts, sunglasses, hats, t-shirts. Car parts, jumper cables,  spare tyres, auto batteries. And, secreted in the men's toilets discreet vending machines for condoms or sex toys to tittilate HER, that never-changing hard-to-please American anima, that hot nagging mama that every red-blooded animus, every American papa strives to placate. 

But it's all so gloriously delicious. 

Here is the dirty little secret, the secret the USA keeps from the world, the secret that, when told, makes the Italians and the French and the other Old World snobs howl in frustration and pent-up, impotent rage. 

It's all pretty GOOD. 

America does not have a monopoly on fast food or junk food. You can find cheap food that's basically crap — yet delicious— in any good-sized small town in Europe. But America does it better than anybody else! The USA has got the junk food/fast food thing on LOCKDOWN. It dominates the universe of the fast food meal like America's navy dominates the waters of the world, like Hollywood dominates  cinema, like American music dominates the airwaves.   Nowhere in Europe can any place hope to compete with the Land of the Free Refill--although, really no one bothers trying. In a big city in America, whether it's burgers-and-fries, gyros sandwiches, halal food, Mexican delights, Asian fusion….you can get it. Whenever you want. Thousand calorie bagels compete with thousand calorie Big Macs compete with thousand calorie Filafel Wraps compete with thousand calorie Chicken-fried Meat-stuffed, Cheese-oozy Burrito Dip Supreme Sauce Commando Meals--with a whole apple submerged in chocolate sugar glaze as an extra healthy treat for the kids.

Meanwhile, in my hometown in Europe, population about 30 000,  I can get  

• chicken schnitzel and French fries.
  
  Above: a typical Czech fast food meal.
• Not bad but certainly without the grease splattering richness of whatever the American counterpart would have.
• A large gyros wrap with gyros meat, cucumbers, tomatoes, and spicy sauce and cheese. Delicious, actually. Especially at three o'clock in the morning after having downed a liter of vodka sodas, when it's literally all you can get.
• and a weird thing called a "hamburger" which resembles a strange fried slab of inch-thick ham drenched in mayonnaise and thrown onto a soggy bun. Actually tastier than it sounds. But not much.

So, you know, it's not bad at all. But there's not the infinite and ever-changing range of choices that even a smallish city in America can offer...which translates to less temptation overall. Those gyros wraps may be good, but you don't feel like eating them every week.

The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small.--Woody Allen

I am not the first to notice that portions are smaller in Europe than they are in the US. In fact, it's one of the most obvious and most-highlighted differences in the food culture of the two continents. 

Now, let me be crystal clear.  US-style portions are fantastic. Two meals -- three meals even -- for the price of one!  The American dinner plate, piled high with steaming delights is a national treasure, up there with the Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone Park, country music, Broadway musicals and the Kardashians.

 You see, I feel absolutely no moral superiority about not getting value for money on my plate here in Europe relative to the American.  I can't relate to that at all. I'm always mystified at Europeans online who seem to think that they have achieved some frugal form of  austere perfection due to the fact that the restaurants they dine in offer them less food for their Euro than an American one would. I guess it's connected to some vague idea of decadance and waste. Europeans, living in one of the most decadant places on earth, where life is cushy and easy relative to the rest of the world can force down their guilt at not being one of the less fortunate and eagerly point to the USA, managing to get their post-War self-righteous sense of nationalism on. God Bless America the scapegoat.Perhaps it's just a question of upbringing and how I've been unwittingly shaped by my culture.

Because I have to admit that the more you put on your plate, the more likely you are to eat more--too much, in fact. I went to a diner in Denver Colorado on my last trip to the USA: I ordered a beef and cheese burrito smothered in green chile, cheese and sour cream, shredded lettuce and diced tomatoes with a side of brown rice and refried beans. $12.95. (or in Czech terms, over 300 kc.  A high-calorie indulgence no matter how you slice it…but the size is what staggered me. It was the length of my forearm and twice as wide! I ate two thirds of the burrito and gave up, stuffed, saving the rest for breakfast. The two thirds that I ate was still more than an entire portion of food that I would get in a typical restaurant in the Czech Republic.

Above: A typical American burrito

By contrast, yesterday I went out for lunch and got a shopska salad for lunch. Good-sized, but honestly cucumbers, tomatoes and onions, even with a generous sprinkling of Balkan cheese are no match for the calorific euphoria of an American burrito cooked in the West in a real live diner by real live Mexicans migrants on their sixteenth hour of work!  

 But I have to admit that the typical portion that I would get in a Czech restaurant -- including the lovely Shopska salad I had yesterday -- is still generally pretty satisfying. I never go away feeling ripped off -- unless I've just come from America, of course.

But...I wonder how Americans would deal with a restaurant that served them half- or third-sized portions -- portions that in the Europe would seem completely par-for-the-course. Would they....riot? Demand to see a manager? Or would the restaurant bill itself as fine dining and charge twice as much for half as much? Or would prices go down, making waiting tables a job even less desirable than it already is and significantly impacting the economy? 

Because Americans eat out a LOT.

I'm gonna try me a cheeseburger here. I've eaten here before, but I've never tried a burger from here. --Salem Rana

ON visits home, I'm staggered by the amount of eating out a lot of people do. (Especially single people.) And I remember how much I used to eat out as a single man back in the day. Pizza delivery, Asian/Thai/Chinese takeaway, fast food drive-thru on the way home for work, dinner and a movie on Friday night, breakfast brunch! Steak and egg specials! Diners and ommelettes and hash-browned potatoes after too many drinks on a Saturday night! 

And there is something about the whole experience of eating out which is so nice in America. The way the music plays in the background, not too loud nor too soft, atmospheric but not intrusive. The way the colors of the walls and the colors on the plate and the plush carpet cushioning your steps and the creamy skin and bright teeth of the waitress serving you combine to make the experience pleasant...amazing...orgasmic. Restaurants strive to give you an experience that you remember, that you hang up and frame in the gallery of your memory.

Above: a typical Mexican restaurant.

 Maybe that's why we eagerly place our social meetings in the context of food and eating. On my visit to New York, I met with several old, dear friends of mine from my youth in a small midwestern college. When talking to them I remember that so many of my memories of these friends involved eating together, laughing, playing with our food in the school's cafeteria. 

It's no wonder that we all sprang at the opportunity to eat together once more in a reunion that was all too short, but perhaps all the sweeter for it. 

In a lot of ways, American life revolves around food in a way that Czech or Northern European life doesn't. The kitchen is just as likely to be a family's social heart in the US as the living room. And there is something really heart-warming about that fact. I like it. But the cultural prominence of food probably does encourage weight gain and the higher rates of obesity found in the USA.

In Central Europe, food seems to play a much more functional role. A delicious one, to be sure, but a smaller one. Oh, I'm not saying that Europeans don't have their feasts: the bane of my existence is the heaping plates of grilled chicken, pork steaks and sausage at any of the numerous birthday barbecues my Czech family holds over the summer; and I am still full from the 4-hour-long 7 course meal my girlfriend's father put on for his 70th birthday celebration at a local restaurant last November. And then there is the Zabijačka,  a legendary celebration the name of which comes from the verb zabit 'to kill'--a day-long beer-drenched mega-party centered around the slaughter, dismemberment and cooking up of the various parts of a full-grown pig.

Above: a typical Czech pass-time

But generally, we eat out less, our meals are smaller, they are faster and they are more efficient. I can go to a restaurant for lunch on a working day and the whole experience will cost less than ten dollars and  ast less than a half-hour--and this is at a sit-down restaurant with a beautiful young waitress attending on my needs. (Though not so attentively as the American waitress, I must add.) And if it all falls somehow short of the euphoric experience that the American eater craves when he eats out, so be it. After all, life is about the valleys and the plains as much as the mountain peaks, ne cést pas?

Now what this means is that there is more home cooking in Europe.

More meals are cooked at home: and the ready-made frozen or canned food that is so ubiquitous in Yankee-land is pretty rare here: with good reason. Nothing beats a frozen green chile burrito in the USA, properly prepared and microwaved to perfection. If I'm ever, God forbid,  put on death row, my last meal is going to be three frozen Little Juan green chile burritos smothered with slabs of swiss and cheddar cheese, sour cream with a dessert of red Twizzlers and Doctor Pepper. I mean, I figure if you are going to die, you might as well attempt to clog your arteries and die from a massive coronary before they strap you down.  One last effort of controlling your own destiny before you're thrown all unwillingly into the void.

But Here, the ready-made food kind of…blows. On a death row here, if one existed, I'd probably just ask for a pear or something. European junk food has just not got that amazing nasty tastiness that American food has. So naturally, it's not very popular. 

I can put it no plainer than this: American crap food is GOOD. European junk food is BAD. People cook from scratch a lot more here. And here is the dirty little secret: cooking meals from scratch is actually not that hard!And it's delicious!

Less Snacking:

Speaking of food, another thing I noted in America. No matter where I was there: New York, Denver, Yellowstone, the Midwest, the Northeast, the South, in the country, in the city…people walking down the road were SNACKING. Chips. Pretzels. A hastily purchased chili dog. Candy bars. I mean everywhere. Ev. Ry. Where. Everybody. Fat people. Thin people. Young people. Old people. In their cars. Walking down the road. Munch. Crunch. Slurp. Gurgle. Burp.

In Europe I see some people walking down the road and snacking. But not many. And they are all overweight.  The one exception, the one indulgence they allow themselves is an ice-cream cone on a hot summer's day. So, my theory is, in America if these snackers which you see everywhere are not overweight, they are all either on the way to the gym, on the way from the gym, or on the way to obesity. 

Strangely it's made me self-conscious about snacking here in Europe. I now no longer snack in public. Instead, if I need to eat something, I huddle in my car, head down, knees up, furtively nibbling on a granola bar,  safe out of sight from the fit hordes.

But it's not all food culture that accounts for the fat vs fit stereotypes. Lifestyle plays a huge part in it, too.

Public Transport 

European towns are naturally more compact and it becomes a lot more convenient to either take public transport or just walk to where you want to go, provided of course you don't have a lot to carry or don't need to speed from place to place. And you don't mind body odor on a hot summer's day. A lot…and I mean a LOT more people walk to work, school, or the nearest transport stop.

By contrast in America…I mean, let's face it, outside of the biggest cities(and sometimes even there)  Americans practically live in their cars. It's unbelievable how much time we spend there…driving to the library…driving to work…driving from shop to shop…driving to pick up kids from wherever kids go…Even in a smallish cities like my hometown in Springfield Missouri, I have no doubt that the average person spends minimally two hours per day in the car. We laugh and love, grow up, weep, argue, and reflect in cars. We devise new philosophies and innovate old ways in the secluded comfort of our cars with the air conditining blowing cold, drying out our sinuses and making us crave a delicious ice-filled cup of cola.  I lost my virginity in a car! Babies are conceived and born alike in cars! Nothing symbolizes America more than the car.

above:  a typical American car

Living out your life behind the wheel  of course has two effects on the human organism:  the first is naturally less calories get burned and of course the second is that also encourages consumption of fast food in a landscape which has evolved to cater to the American driver. Because when it's 6.30 on a Wednesday night sometimes you are just too tired to go home and whip up a three course meal for the clamoring horde. And some genius figured that out long ago. It was probably Ronald MacDonald himself.

Sport:

 I know that Sports are popular in America. My god, my Facebook feed explodes with a collective orgasm every Super Bowl Sunday.

(above: a typical Superbowl Sunday)

But in Europe more people actually do sport. A lot more, in fact. We walk, we cycle, we play soccer and floorball. We jog, we swim, we rollerblade. Maybe it's just my country and my region, but sometimes it seems like the number one hobby for just about every body is some sort of sport. Frankly, its boring. But they get into it. They get all the gear,  the spandex, the specific sneakers scientifically designed specifically for squash or soccer or basketball. My girlfriend buys me jackets to be worn when and only when I'm hiking to the top of a mountain. She has a whole closetful of clothes devoted to running. The knees and heads of Europeans gleam with plastic knee-guards and space-age helmets, their wrists sport gadgets measuring their speed, distance and the calories burned in their excursions. 

(above: a typical European on a typical Saturday)

While the awful hot, humid weather that prevails in most of the Midwest discourages outdoor sport, there's still plenty of opportunity for indoor sport in air-conditioned comfort. But fewer Americans take that opportunity. (Probably due to lack of time because we are ALWAYS IN OUR CARS.)

But there is a lesson to be learned here. When everybody is doing some sort of exercise it seems natural to sort of join in. The more people do it, the more it becomes the thing to do. This kind of thing has a snowball effect on a culture. If everybody in your vicinity talks about the awesome stuffed crust pizza they had last night, you are more likely to have a stuffed crust pizza! Likewise, if everyone around you runs a marathon every Saturday and goes on and on about it…well, you just might try it yourself. Or if not, you might try something less ambitious but equally sporty. We're herd animals. In a sporty herd, you get sporty. In a tired out, over fed herd, you don't.

The bitter, bitter irony

And now comes my sheepish confession to you, reader. If indeed you exist and have made it this far and I'm not just typing this for the eyes of oblivion. 

In a cruel but hilarious twist of fate, I, after moving to Europe from America, got fat. 

But I'm the exception that proves the rule. I am unusually less active here than I was living in the Big City in my twenties without a car. My job is sedentary and I spend a lot of time in a car. I do go on my walks four to five times a week(7.5 kms around town, up and down hills) and I haven't  really gained any rate for several years; I eat plenty of fruit and vegetables and regulate my fat and carb intake. But the fact remains. I am fat. A fat American living in Europe. A living sculpture erected to national stereotypes everywhere.