One thing I never fail to notice every time I visit France, is that we really eat like pigs in North America.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of these woman who count calo­ries and feast on let­tuce — quite the oppo­site. But I had always prided myself on being healthy, with curves and yes, a butt. I believe we are all shaped dif­fer­ently and the num­bers of the scale don’t tell half of the story. For me, food has always been a plea­sure and I eat with­out guilt. But I came to real­ize that it just wasn’t that easy in Canada. In France, I didn’t have to think about what I ate. Here, I do.

First of all, food is every­where here. Obnox­ious com­mer­cials on TV invite you to eat at the local restau­rant, to taste the lat­est burger, to buy pre-prepared meals “that taste home­made”. Turn the TV off and there are McDon­alds, Harvey’s, Burger King, Wendy, Tim Hor­tons, Pizza Pizza on every street cor­ner, and they soon become the easy lunch choice. Or, if you’re health con­scious, you will just find your­self queu­ing at the hot-dog stall in the sum­mer, because at least, “it is pre­pared in front of you” (on the side­walk, but nev­er­mind). Peo­ple feel the need to eat in places they shouldn’t even think of: at con­certs, sports games, out­door activ­i­ties, movie the­aters; on the bus, the train, in their cars. I clearly remem­ber a time where I would go to the movie and would at most had a bot­tle of water in my bag. Why do peo­ple in Canada pay $10 for their movie ticket and $12 for pop­corn and a drink remains a mys­tery to me. And it’s not only the pop­corn… I can often spot (and smell!) peo­ple eat­ing burg­ers, sand­wiches, nachos, or even fried chicken!

Then food isn’t always just food… to be pre­cise, it’s often more fat than food. As I said before, I have never counted calo­ries but I do know that we need a bit over 2000 calories/ day. Now, take a sam­ple KFC menu (pos­si­bly the gross­est fast food chain, granted): a chicken sand­wich (500 calo­ries), a medium fries (450 calo­ries), some ketchup (15 calo­ries) and a Pepsi (300 calo­ries) and here are 1200 calo­ries. Ooops. I’m not even gonna men­tion how much fat is that… And the menu I always see adver­tised, the bucket with two wings and three legs, is 800 calo­ries — that is just the meat. Mean­while, in super­mar­kets, while it is of course pos­si­ble to find fruits, meat and veg­gies eas­ily, the num­ber of aisles ded­i­cated to processed food always amazes me. I don’t cook every meal and love to go to restau­rants every once in a while, but I draw the line at eat­ing pogos (appar­ently known as “corn dog” out­side Canada) or other pre-preapared food for lunch or din­ner on a reg­u­lar basis.

To me, por­tions are the biggest prob­lem. Here, if you want to keep an healthy weight, you can not just eat what is given to you — it’s way too much in most cases. It reminds me of one of my first expe­ri­ence with North Amer­i­can menu sizes… We were on the road to Mex­ico a few years ago, cross­ing the USA by Grey­hound bus. In the mid­dle of the third night, the dri­ver stopped at a McDon­alds, in Dal­las (TX). We got off the bus and went to get some food. I ordered first and Feng was after me. I just wanted a sim­ple combo, burger/ fries/ drink. A cou­ple of min­utes later, Feng and I stared in dis­be­lief: there were enough fries for a fam­ily of four, the burger was so big it could barely fit in its paper box and the Coke… I had at least a liter of Coke in front of me. I had never seen such a big drink size. Feng decided to not order and even the two of us couldn’t fin­ish the meal.

Now, imag­ine being fed that every­day… You would prob­a­bly get used to it even though his is way too much food for one per­son. While in France you may pay a lot for a tiny por­tion of food, here you pay almost noth­ing for a huge plate. Buffet-style restau­rants for exam­ple. In North Amer­ica, they are mostly pop­u­lar because peo­ple think they are get­ting a good deal: eat a lot of food (basi­cally as much as you can) and pay a small price (from $10.00 to $25.00). As a French, when I first came, I just couldn’t under­stand that. First of all, I felt like I was eat­ing at a school refec­tory: gotta grab your own plate, line up for a slice of roast beef, add fried potatoes/ fried chicken/ friend shrimp and hope for a good dessert. I would be full right away and won­dered why peo­ple would pill up food in their plate instead of tak­ing just a bit at the time and go get some more when needed. I was told the point was to eat. But my point is to eat good food, not stuff myself with cheap fried stuffs.

To strike a happy medium is some­times dif­fi­cult. A lot of peo­ple eat junk food and then just head to the gym, as if run­ning for two hours was gonna to cure the sin of eat­ing. Between us, I’m way to busy lazy to go to the gym. I like the way I lived my life in France: I ate nor­mally (i.e mod­er­ately) and walked every­where as a form of exer­cise. But walk­ing here isn’t that easy. Harsh win­ters, urban plan­ning that favors dri­ving and long dis­tances makes it much harder than in France, and in Europe in general.

Now, I’m not say­ing that Amer­i­cans are all unhealthy and all foods here are bad, while French or Euro­peans are per­fect and have the best culi­nary taste. There are plenty of del­i­ca­cies here and I just love sam­pling the dishes. But I do think a lot of North Amer­i­cans have a very unhealthy rela­tion­ship with food. From eat­ing the wrong foods too often to ban­ning some food groups alto­gether as a way to diet, from binge eat­ing and exer­cis­ing to exor­cise heavy meals to eat­ing too much too often — this can’t pos­si­bly be healthy, phys­i­cally and men­tally… isn’t it?

Related arti­cles:

1. Food In Numbers
2. The Sweets, The Fat And The Scale
3. How I Gained (and Lost) Weight in Canada
4. 5 Things to Do When You Land in Canada (That No One Told You About)
5. A Foodie’s Day in S’pore