About Me
Hello my name is Paul, and this is my suicidegirls profile.
age: 33 (Jul 19, 1978)
MEMBER SINCE: April 2007
occupation: Quality Inspector
i lost my virginity: Pretty late. 21.
body mods: None
makes me sad: Boybands, weak willed people, betrayal
gets me hot: When the lady smiles.
fantasy: With my imagination? That's a long list....
Edited due to dead links:
Cultural differences are alwasy fun to explore. Having been on a diet for the past few months* a breif discussion about pizza in the silleness chat got me to thinking about obesity and differing cultural attitudes towards food.
I think we all know this picture:

Well, that picture is a load of crap. We eat pretty much the same foods here in Europe that Americans get. We all go to McDonals, we all eat pizza and pastas, in terms of what we eat there are no major differences.
Still:
Obesity in Europe: 15.5% of the adult population (double what it was 20 years ago).
Obesity in America: 33.8% of the adult population (up around 40% from 20 years ago).
The reason for the increase is simple:

This is a trend that (like many others) started in America and has since migrated towards Europe. As a result American food portions are now siginifcantly larger than ours.
As an example lets take the sizes of pizza (based only on two retail chains, so not very scientific but it is just to illustrate the point):
In America Seious Pizza's MEDIUM (smallest size they have):
18" (45 CM) at $11.95 (9.40 euros).
In The Netherlands New York Pizza's LARGE (doesn't get any bigger):
35 CM (14") at Euro 12.49 ($15.89)
So the smallest American pizza is 28.6% larger than the biggest one here in The Netherlands and costs 25% less.
And it isn't just pizza:


Volume and availability. In America there is one McDonalds restaurant for every 20,000 people. Here in The Netherlands there is one for every 75,000 people. Combine this with larger portions and lower prices (BigMac index) you can see where the higher level of obesity in the US has come from.
Now we KNOW this trend is migrating towards Europe as our food culture becomes more and more influenced by Ameican attitudes and hollywood movies. Personally I feel we need to stop this. Quickly. But how?
Several countries have started implimenting "fat taxes" on high fat and sometimes...
Cultural differences are alwasy fun to explore. Having been on a diet for the past few months* a breif discussion about pizza in the silleness chat got me to thinking about obesity and differing cultural attitudes towards food.
I think we all know this picture:

Well, that picture is a load of crap. We eat pretty much the same foods here in Europe that Americans get. We all go to McDonals, we all eat pizza and pastas, in terms of what we eat there are no major differences.
Still:
Obesity in Europe: 15.5% of the adult population (double what it was 20 years ago).
Obesity in America: 33.8% of the adult population (up around 40% from 20 years ago).
The reason for the increase is simple:
This is a trend that (like many others) started in America and has since migrated towards Europe. As a result American food portions are now siginifcantly larger than ours.
As an example lets take the sizes of pizza (based only on two retail chains, so not very scientific but it is just to illustrate the point):
In America Seious Pizza's MEDIUM (smallest size they have):
18" (45 CM) at $11.95 (9.40 euros).
In The Netherlands New York Pizza's LARGE (doesn't get any bigger):
35 CM (14") at Euro 12.49 ($15.89)
So the smallest American pizza is 28.6% larger than the biggest one here in The Netherlands and costs 25% less.
And it isn't just pizza:

Volume and availability. In America there is one McDonalds restaurant for every 20,000 people. Here in The Netherlands there is one for every 75,000 people. Combine this with larger portions and lower prices (BigMac index) you can see where the higher level of obesity in the US has come from.
Now we KNOW this trend is migrating towards Europe as our food culture becomes more and more influenced by Ameican attitudes and hollywood movies. Personally I feel we need to stop this. Quickly. But how?
Several countries have started implimenting "fat taxes" on high fat and sometimes...




















Lauretta