thoughts on american's eating

If you’ve ever hung out with Thai people in Thailand, you’ll notice 2 things about them: they’re rail thin and they eat — as in SNACK — constantly, all day every day. My theory is that Americans view food as a chore — waiters ask “are you still working on that?” as though food consumption were yet another task to be project managed in an overly compulsive network of obligations that Americans call their existence. It’s also something that causes cancer, makes you fat, etc. But I don’t see a lot of commentors pointing out the obvious, something that is shared by thin cultures as disparate as Thai, Japanese, and French: these people love their food and relish eating it with good friends. The empty, corn-syrup calories of the average American diet closely mirror the empty calories of too many American lives spent grueling away to pay off McMansion mortgages and SUV car loans instead of relaxing and enjoying life.

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=25