According to foodservice consultancy Technomic, consumers are also being driven to excess by cultural moralizing over nutrition. That is, as expanding waistlines make more headlines (in Canada, 62 per cent of people are considered overweight, with a quarter qualifying as obese), proselytizing over healthy eating has led many folks to do the opposite.
"Most consumers, when polled, say they follow their 'own diet.' That could mean that they're good Monday through Friday, and then on Saturday and Sunday say, 'To hell with it!'" says Ron Paul, president of Technomic. "They're rejecting the food police, in effect."Some of the more punk-rock offerings this summer include the aforementioned doughnut burger; pancake breakfast ice cream, featuring maple syrup, chunks of buttermilk pancake and bacon; deep-fried Pop Tarts; mac-and-cheese pizza; and a Monster Burger -- one kilogram of beef, half a pound (0.2 kilogram) of bacon, spiced cheddar cheese and all the fixings -- big enough to feed a family of eight.
From the Winnipeg Free Press, HT: Mom.
Sorting out causality on this one would be tough; I don't know how you'd instrument around that places with more nanny messages are likely the places with worse eating habits ex ante. But fun nevertheless.
And the deep-fried butter discussed in the article does sound tempting....
I once had a competition with myself to see how many McDonalds fish burgers I could eat in a day, on Wednesday [ half price day ].
ReplyDeleteOver a few weeks I got to six, two in the morning, two at 3pm and another two at 7pm, and I was building up for eight burgres a day when my friend’s wife took me through the calorie count involved.
It ruined all the fun I was having. I never went back to McDonald again.
I am presently on a trip in Laos called the Banana pancake trail, and this is the trip from North thailand into Laos to Vientiane, and Vang Vieng and various other towns.
It is called the Banana pancake trail after the Laos tourist towns largely gave themselves over to providing for the Western diet, and provided soft Western breakfasts.
The banana pancake itself is a sugared banana wrapped up as pancake, but you see here also in the restaurants ,
Pizzas, Steaks and chips, Burgers and so on, and then of course ice cream to finish with.
It is all the fault of Australians of course wandering round in hordes without many clothes on, bare feet on the 35 degree asphalt, and watching repeat episodes of American sitcom in the bars .
Deep fried butter? Urgh. I'm a confirmed lard-butt, but that sounds pretty nasty even to me.
ReplyDelete@Paul: Deep fried butter sounds good. But I won't touch a McD's fish burger. Ugh. I can eat arbitrarily large numbers of their cheeseburgers though.
ReplyDelete