Married in America: Peculiarities of the National Diet
'17.03.2021'
Source: baikal-info.ru
Irkutsk journalist Marina Lykova, who married an American several years ago, continues to tell interesting things about life in the United States and about her marriage.
I will soon go home to Irkutsk, go on leave, and one thing is on my mind: “My parents will not let me so thick on the threshold!”, Writes Marina in a blog baikal-info.ru.
For America, I am quite a pompous even to myself, but by Russian standards it is a uniform. And we need to do something urgently with this, because I don’t want to read in the views of former classmates and neighbors on the porch a dumb reproach: “Well, Lykova, and smashed you!”. In general, only a month is left to go home.
Tickets bought, suitcases long ago and to the eyeballs are filled with gifts (a sure sign that I want to go very, very nice!), And suddenly a pecking cock in one place began to chase all my 90 kg for walking-jogging-classes with dumbbells and swimming a little Do not daily. But playing sports is not all, it turns out. Also, there is a need to start a smaller one, because the portion size, it turns out, is one of the main steps to success in weight loss.
I almost knew from kindergarten that 20 minutes of laughter replace one eaten egg (during my childhood and adolescence, food was tight and people were offered instead of full meals uninterruptedly, apparently, to laugh). But I also remembered that the harsh Spartans ate a handful of simple, without anything boiled rice and somehow managed to jump-run for a whole day. But America is not Sparta, and I decided that it would not hurt to start measuring what I supposedly want to cram at the dinner table.
On the subject: A look at America from the inside: 6 things that are silent
It has long been observed in local grocery stores this picture: over the years, the packaging (box) of the same rice, for example, does not change in appearance. And the price is a miracle! - even despite the economic crisis, remains the same. And this is in capitalist America! But upon closer inspection, it turns out that there’s still less and less rice in this very box, at a price that was ten years ago, just few people here pay attention to it. So it is with portions, just the opposite.
According to the spouse, over the past 20 years, he, a man who has been closely watching for food and for his own slimness (Robert is still at that weight in his 65 years, as in 18-20), observes monstrous changes in portions and in the size of waistline of ordinary Americans . Both those and others globally increased in size. According to statistics, a third of all adult Americans and 17% of children in the United States are obese, and this epidemic has long been out of control. It is not surprising: the portions in restaurants (in order to attract customers with abundant and cheap food) are increasing by leaps and bounds, and with them grow the length and breadth of eaters. A joke I'm on see food diet, which translates as "I eat everything I see."
Abundant food (more precisely, uniform obzhiralovka) became in the States part of the culture. On plates and at home and in the canteens today, there is much more food than 20 years ago - to take the same McDonald's chips.
Today's portion of French Fries - 610 calories versus 210 calories a couple of decades ago. A cookie with chocolate pieces, so beloved by all Americans, also mutated in size (almost three times as large!) And in calories - 275 versus 55. (Modern American cookies look more like thick pancakes the size of a tea saucer.)
Cheeseburgers - a separate song. Today in America, restaurants called Heart Attack are popular, where these same cheeseburgers are about the diameter of a basin and about two meters in height. And the hero who dared to devour all this fatty and super-calorie yummy dies right at the dinner table. From the heart, as you can guess, attack.
And this is kind of like the best advertisement for an institution. In general, a normal, normal cheeseburger is now twice as high in calories as its ancestor and at least twice as large in size, despite the fact that restaurants are struggling for the right to feed visitors with low-calorie and healthy food. A modern sandwich with a low-calorie turkey is also three times larger in size and about as high in calories as its predecessor. Like the notorious American muffin.
A portion of spaghetti with meat "koloboks" with tomato sauce increased exactly twice, and a cup of coffee, becoming only twice as large in volume, adds to the diet of the modern coffee lover instead of 45 calories (20 years ago) 350 calories today.
And this is not the limit. With a variety of flavors, cream additives, today's coffee can easily fulfill the daily calorie intake with just a single cup of initially calorie-free black coffee. A bottle of soda, without which even very old and very young Americans cannot imagine themselves and from the consumption of which not only the stomach grows, but also cellulite (tested on itself!), Has grown more than three times in size in recent years (from 6,5 ounces to 20) and calories from 85 to 250. And this is just the beginning.
Perhaps, precisely because of the idea of reducing portions of food consumed, today the idea of measuring food ... with hands is so popular here in America. Just like the Spartans used to do this: a handful of rice for a day.
Well, or by another method (if it is unpleasant for someone to get their hands dirty) - the idea of visualization of food intake. In other words, we must remember that a tennis or baseball is the most suitable size for a serving of vegetables or fruits, which is about half the cup, which Americans measure everything about the kitchen. (We have their cup habitually replaces a faceted glass.) A deck of cards (imagine the size!) - a portion of meat that we need in order not to overeat. Powder box (compact) - the size of cookies. And no more!
On the subject: Russians abroad: why they can always be recognized in a crowd of foreigners
American nutritionists in their voices ask walkers to a restaurant (and in restaurants, most people eat almost daily!) To ask the waiter for a box for a doggie even before they begin to eat food. To separate the half, do not eat too much. Or before you pounce on edibles, divide your portion in half with a friend or spouse (with whom you came to this very restaurant). Also, nutritionists say that those who want to get it together should just ... cook less food. The solution to the problem, they say, is that there is nothing wrong with snacks from which mother aunt weaned us as a child: it is better to eat fruit nuts between meals than to eat like Robin Bobin Barabek later than lunch . Who, like a real American, ate everything that caught his eye:
“Robin Bobin Barabek
I ate forty people
And a cow, and a bull, And a crooked butcher,
And the cart, and the arc, And the broom, and the poker,
I ate the church, I ate the house,
And the forge with the blacksmith ... "
And still it is necessary to stop following the old Russian habit of eating up after everyone in the house, like a homemade pig: did the food remain on the platter, but already fed up and overfilled? You throw out this food!
Do not clean the refrigerator and plates for children, husband, dog. The late Belarusian Jewish woman Nelly, the first Russian-speaking woman who met me on the way here in my America, and who taught me wits in my new American life, fiercely hated other Americans just because they put on the plate more than what they were in able to eat: “Let it be better if they came once more and not even one after the supplements than piled a pile on the dish, and then threw everything into the garbage!”.
So, according to those who teach us, American fatties, how to reduce waist size, it’s better, it turns out, in the garbage. Sorry, Nellie.
