Why are US meal portions so big??

What they also don't understand is that even though we are "unified states" a lot of them are like foreign countries. New England, the South... hell, we even have our own version of the Azores. (HI)

I moved from New York state to rural (sort of) Georgia.

Culture.Shock.

I was writing an article about the local women's group that formed in the 1950s giving its building to the city for a visitors' center. One of the women ran her hand up my bare leg (I was in a skirt) and then told me I was a nice girl and the only thing wrong with me was I was a "dam Yankee."

I can only imagine. She sounded a little frisky... bet she's fun at the local bar mixers.

I moved from SF to Boston. Talk about shock. I grew up very redneck, and boston out SF'ed SF when it came to illogical fears and dirty politicians.

I could only imagine that at least the south has good food... Boston did not.

My ex went to the New England School of Law while we were dating and my aunt lives in Winchester, so I've spent a lot of time there. You CAN find some good food, but for some reason, as big a city as it is, the food isn't great. You're definitely right about that. Probably all the Irish settlers.

I love that city, though.

And, yes, the South has its share of yummies. But around here the pickings are kind of lousy. My favorite places to eat out are the local Indian restaurants. SO GOOD.

I would quite literally trade my glock for a pile of chicken tikka. We have NONE of that worth eating in Eastern WA.

Funny enough, most illegals I knew were Irish, and they all felt salt was an exotic spice. hah. Which I think explains the food... You can have amazing shellfish there though. Oh, and a good burger at this one place in Davis Square...

I never liked seafood, but I know Boston is known for it. Which makes sense, especially lobster.

I don't think I can ever again live without good Indian. I never tried it before I lived here. We have three local places (actually owned and run by Indian immigrants) and they are amazing. We have The Curry Pot, but I have no desire to go to a chain when the local places are so fabulous.

If you ever go to SF, try a local chain run by some indian guys called Naan and Curry... it's delicious even though it's a chain of three. (They're starting small before calling a Kroc.) Indian food is just amazing stuff, my mom lives in a punjabi heavily area in CA... so when I visit, it's naan for days.

If you feel froggy, try Neptune's for a hot lobster roll in Boston's North End if you're ever up there. A better lobster intro, I have not found for anyone.

I'm good with local, small chains. The Curry Pot is national, I think. Or regional. But from what I've heard, it's VERY hit or miss. And it's all the way across town. The local places are all within 2 miles.

If I'm ever there, I'll check it out! I don't do seafood, though.

PS and even IF the ship had coped with 300 million Americans for aguments sake.... only 30% actually have passports....

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/02/04/americans.travel.domestically/index.html

You do understand this is mostly because we can travel freely from state to state without a passport, correct? You do understand that the square mileage of Europe is approx. the same as the US. So a person who drives across Europe needs a passport as they can easily drive across many countries. A person could leave one coast of the US driving to the other and arrive approx. the same time as someone who would drive across Europe. The difference would be, you'll need your passport a handful of times in Europe to travel the same distance.

Surely if distance was the only issue at play here, then you would expect Canada to have a similar population percentage with passports, yet their population proportion of people with a passport is double at 60%!

While Canada is huge, doesn't most of the population live closer to the US border?

Naturally, any further north and they'll be eaten by Moose.

You jest, but moose are extremely aggressive!

PS and even IF the ship had coped with 300 million Americans for aguments sake.... only 30% actually have passports....

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/02/04/americans.travel.domestically/index.html

You do understand this is mostly because we can travel freely from state to state without a passport, correct? You do understand that the square mileage of Europe is approx. the same as the US. So a person who drives across Europe needs a passport as they can easily drive across many countries. A person could leave one coast of the US driving to the other and arrive approx. the same time as someone who would drive across Europe. The difference would be, you'll need your passport a handful of times in Europe to travel the same distance.

Surely if distance was the only issue at play here, then you would expect Canada to have a similar population percentage with passports, yet their population proportion of people with a passport is double at 60%!

While Canada is huge, doesn't most of the population live closer to the US border?

Naturally, any further north and they'll be eaten by Moose.

If they are lucky enough to get past the moose, the polar bears will get 'em.

Well for what it's worth the OP of the original thread never "bashed" anyone, merely pondered about her impression of enormous portion sizes when she travelled the US, and the subsequent food waste that this results in. A view which was echoed by plenty of others on the thread.

She was subsequently called a xenophobe and racist by people who were seemingly taking this observation terribly personal and seeing it as an onslaught of all things American.

Weird. My Brit roommate in college once asked me the same thing when I took her to the Cheesecake Factory. Now, granted, CF does have inhuman size portions. When I visited her in England I was surprised that the restaurants at the time didn't hand out 'doggie bags' for diners to take home. The concept was totally weird to them. This was years ago, however, so things might have changed over there since then.

1. We Americans are today first and foremost consumers. Once upon a time we might have been thoughtful citizens who were preoccupied with personal responsibility for ourselves and engagement with the community and country at large. Today, mostly we are individualists who define ourselves by our ego and what we consume. We tend to inherently see happiness as something that comes from buying, swallowing, guzzling, sniffing or snorting. It is no wonder that there are many more drug addicts and drug deaths per capita in the "war on drugs" USA than even in countries with legalized drugs. The extent of our national food addiction is seen by our unbelieveable obesity statistics and simply by the horror of walking down the street and being confronted by 2/3 of the population being obese and all the handicapped, waddling people dressed in XXXXL sweatshirts that resemble overstuffed pup tents. We equate happiness with (over)consumption. And we have no shame.

2. "Everything is Bigger in America": Historically, the outsized dimensions of the country have found their way into our zeitgeist in that we tend to equate "bigger"="better" and "more"="better". Quantity, size (and speed of service) are almost always valued greater than quality. We have been conditioned by decades of an escalating marketing war in the food and food service industries to consider value for money as "too much food for a cheap price." Now we don't know any better and we have completely lost common-sense knowledge of what appropriate portion sizes are. In turn we have lost perspective on what appropriate people sizes are. Finally, if a restaurant doesn't offer obscene portions they will be left behind by one that does.

3. Thanksgiving/Land of Plenty: Children grow up in America being taught that having too much is a sign of hospitality and well-being. Children are encouraged to ignore the signals given off by their body regarding satiety. Announcing "I'm stuffed." is a compliment rather than an obscenity. Children are encouraged to serve themselves seconds and thirds at the table, are allowed to snack on calorie dense foods throughout the day and to overdose on lethal amounts of refined sugar. No wonder that 1 in 10 American children have fatty liver disease that was before only found in the livers of chronic alcoholics over the age of 50.

4. We are animals. Like all animals our behavior is determined by instinct, culture, habit, social influences, environment, and a bit of rational decision making thrown in to boot. However, our Behavior as American Consumer Animals is determined not so much by tradition, or culture or thoughtfulness but rather by the pernicious influence and manipulation by advertising, marketing and availability of consumer goods in the "free" market.. Americans passively do unawares as they are told to do by millions of marketing impressions which are absorbed each year, influencing behavior sub-consciously. The US has truly become a toxic food environment where portion sizes are one key element of the equation.

5. Let them eat corn cake. Ever since Nixon was confronted by political problems from the escalating price of food, it has been the official policy of the US to keep food cheap through massive trillions and trillions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies to the corn and soybean industry. This artificially cheap, taxpayer subsidized grain is processed into HFCS and other corn and soy products for highly processed foods. This has made high calorie food artificially cheap. The cost of the food for a many businesses is negligible compared to processing, packaging, marketing, etc. Since the cost of the food is no longer a factor, portion sizes can be made huge. And since huge portions have become so cheap, consumers can overeat (or overeat and throw away more than half too) without having to worry about cost. This has contributed directly to the escalation of portion sizes.

6. We are what we eat. Americans are notorious meat eaters. Almost all meat in the US is raised in factory farming conditions in so-called confinement operations. The (poor) environment of the animals is carefully controlled, animals are kept in the dark in sub-standard, poverty conditions and fed artificial diets that their bodies did not evolve to consume and require many drugs just to survive the poor conditions. Many die early of diseases despite the overeating and the drugs.

The more we eat these animals, the more that we Americans are resembling the animals in the confinement operations. We are kept in the dark (and very few of us ever have a passport or enough money or enough time off to gain perspective and leave our confinement facility) while 99% of country becomes poorer and poorer, we are force fed at the teat of High Fructose Corn Syrup and other unnatural ingredients while whole and fresh and healthy foods remain either unavailable or so costly as to be unattainable, we eat improbable amounts of hormone-, antibiotic- and MRSA-bacteria-riddled animal flesh-- and despite all the pharmaceuticals we are swallowing, huge numbers of us die an early death from metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, etc. We have become the little, err big, piggies locked in their undersized cage doing only what they are allowed to do and told to do. Being served big, bigger or biggest portions of highly processed or intensely farmed crap gives us the illusion of choice.