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 #2 (permalink) Fri Aug 31, 2007 11:16 am How is it in your country? |
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I'm surprised it wasn't Ireland. I think no country in Europe is closer to American lifestyle (in some respect) than Ireland. I may be wrong, but as far as I know the microwave is an American invention, so I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers were even higher across the sea.
Americanos?
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 Ralf
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| #3 (permalink) Fri Aug 31, 2007 12:43 pm How is it in your country? |
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Foreigners tend to think that Americans eat nothing but fast food, but I don't know many people who don't cook normal meals. Most Americans that I know think of frozen meals or meals at fast food restaurants as something you eat when you don't have any time, and they limit their consumption of them. Besides, boxed microwave meals don't taste as good as real food, so who would want to eat them every day?
And are the meals in boxes really more unhealthy than the traditional foods in some countries? I once ordered lentils at a cafeteria in Eastern Europe. The lady spread the lentils on the plate, then she covered it with two ladles of hot pork grease, and to go with the meal she gave me a chunk of white pork fat that Americans would throw away. It wasn't even bacon; it was FAT! Almost any prepared meal from the supermarket freezer is healthier than THAT!
Ralf, the microwave oven may have been invented in the US, but it was mainly invented to cook real food more quickly, not to cook junk. Mine is mainly used for cooking regular meals.
Doesn't the UK have a reputation for really terrible cuisine anyway? Maybe that's part of the problem.
I read a press report a couple of years ago that said that obesity problems are growing in the UK, and that many of the British blamed it on us Americans. As far as I know, though, there are no legions of Americans in Britain who are tying UK residents to their chairs and forcing bad food down their throats. I think the British are eating this food voluntarily. They may be primarily to blame for their own obesity problems. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #4 (permalink) Fri Aug 31, 2007 13:34 pm How is it in your country? |
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Mom cooks normal meals for me.  |
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Edison_Chen_e_c
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| #5 (permalink) Fri Aug 31, 2007 14:36 pm How is it in your country? |
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Hi,
No matter what the topic, you can't resist making a derogatory comment about the UK.
| Quote: |
| Doesn't the UK have a reputation for really terrible cuisine anyway? Maybe that's part of the problem. |
Why?
Alan
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Alan
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| #6 (permalink) Fri Aug 31, 2007 14:57 pm How is it in your country? |
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| Alan wrote: |
No matter what the topic, you can't resist making a derogatory comment about the UK.
| Quote: |
| Doesn't the UK have a reputation for really terrible cuisine anyway? Maybe that's part of the problem. |
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Probably for the same reason that you love to make sarcastic but ignorant comments about the US from time to time.
Oddly enough, I don't have any personal beliefs, positive or negative, about British food. I didn't have any bad food in the UK, but on the other hand, I was never served any traditional British meals, so I don't really know what they're like.
I learned about the British reputation for bad cuisine directly from the British. In Europe, my high school kids had to learn basic information about the English-speaking countries for their graduation exams. The locally produced materials they had been studying from talked extensively, descriptively and non-judgmentally about British cuisine. Silly as I am, however, I decided it would be better for the kids to learn about the UK directly from materials published in the UK, so I ordered a bunch of books at their level. All of these books, it turned out, had sections on British cuisine, but NONE of them actually described it. All they basically said was that British cuisine has a reputation for being terrible, but that there are now increasing numbers of Indian, Pakistani, Chinese and other ethnic restaurants there, and so one can eat quite well in the UK. I'm not making this up or exaggerating! These ESL books produced in the UK by publishers such as Oxford and Cambridge simply said that there's no reason to know about British cuisine because it's so terrible. I was quite amazed by this, because no country has absolutely NO good cuisine, and people tend to be proud of at least some typical dish of their own country.
As for the comment about obesity increasing in the UK, put yourself in the place of an American. You're watching the news on TV, and you see a report that people in another country are getting fat from eating too much of the wrong food. Suddenly, the people who are shoveling all that food into their own mouths are on TV blaming your nation for making them fat, even though nobody from your country is forcing that food down them. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #7 (permalink) Fri Aug 31, 2007 15:02 pm How is it in your country? |
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Hi,
Another of your generalizations, I fear, without substance.
Alan
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| #8 (permalink) Fri Aug 31, 2007 15:09 pm How is it in your country? |
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Hi Alan
Maybe you should just look at "negative" comments about the UK and your reaction to them a different way. It may help you to understand why Americans don't like the barrage of negative and insulting comments that we have to deal with on an extremely regular basis.
As to Britain's reputation for culinary excellence (or lack thereof), I have heard the same thing said that Jamie mentioned -- but I've usually heard the comment from someone other than an American.
Microwave ovens... Yes, they're a wonderful invention. They're great for thawing things quickly, heating up water in a hurry, great for heating up frozen vegetables, heating up certain leftovers, etc. And some of the "microwave meals" aren't half bad. My microwave usually plays a supporting role in my kitchen.
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Yankee
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| #9 (permalink) Fri Aug 31, 2007 15:09 pm How is it in your country? |
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| Alan wrote: |
| Another of your generalizations, I fear, without substance. |
It's not actually a generalization, and it's not mine. Literally ALL the British books I got for the kids had this kind of statement about British cuisine. I didn't say that there are no such books that cover British cuisine. I simply didn't see them, and the several I read purveyed that bad image of the food in the UK, so you need to have it out with your compatriots, not with me.
Note that there was another unfounded generalization in the thread:
| Quote: |
| I'm surprised it wasn't Ireland. I think no country in Europe is closer to American lifestyle (in some respect) than Ireland. I may be wrong, but as far as I know the microwave is an American invention, so I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers were even higher across the sea. |
However, since it is about Americans, you let that one go. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #10 (permalink) Fri Aug 31, 2007 15:14 pm How is it in your country? |
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For the record my reference to 'generalization' was this comment:
| Quote: |
| Probably for the same reason that you love to make sarcastic but ignorant comments about the US from time to time. |
Alan
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| #11 (permalink) Fri Aug 31, 2007 15:16 pm How is it in your country? |
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Here in china it depends.
Old people still like to have a table of traditional food every night and share them with children or grandchildren. But many young people prefer to have meals outside or just buy something. To many young people cooking is a kind of tourch to them. Some of them don't know how to cook at all.
And fast food is very popular among young people despite Micdonald's and KFC are rather expensive. Many kids are addicted to it. It is terrible. There are more and more overweight kids in China. Oneday china might become a FATTY country.  (
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| #12 (permalink) Fri Aug 31, 2007 15:50 pm How is it in your country? |
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| Ralf wrote: |
I may be wrong, but as far as I know the microwave is an American invention, so I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers were even higher across the sea.
Americanos? |
I didn't actually see any numbers or percentages posted in this thread, so I don't think we can possibly comment on whether any numbers are higher or not.  But the microwave certainly is a common appliance in kitchens nowadays.
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