My Fulmination Page
A. Complaints about FOOD
Here is my problem, I find that it applies particularly - but not at all exclusively - to the USA:
Whenever I want to buy anything to eat, be it a hamburger, a sandwich, a donut, a meal in a restaurant, or to drink: a cup of coffee, ...
it is TOO MUCH and TOO HEAVY !
It would have been so great if you could order a tiny hamburger, a tiny sandwich, a small meal, or a tiny cup of coffee, but no: whatever you order, you can't eat or drink all of it. My hamburger cotains twenty stories of meat, my sandwich is a whole loaf of bread, my pizza is a meter in circumference, my coffee is not a cup of coffee but a bucket of (undrinkable) coffee, and so on.
Partly this seems to me to be a sales trick: if the portions are big they can make you pay more. But there is also a social pressure: don't be a spoilsport, eat your (too large) pizza. The consequences can be seen everywhere in the streets: obesity. People become too fat and too heavy. The only remedy: eat only one half or one third of it and leave the rest on your table or throw it away. Order for one dish that you share among two (and just pay the "sharing fee"). Learn to bear the feeling of humiliation that this might bring to you, which is misplaced. There is famine and poverty in this world, but that is not cured when you try to swollow all that surplus food on your plate.
Can a lamentation like this one persuade food industry to come with smaller portions, so that, occasionally, someone might feel hungry enough to eat two (small) hamburgers? I doubt it, but pass on the word, please.
August 2014: O my God, the "doggy bag" is coming our way. This horrible habit that arose in the US to put the surplus of food that you couldn't get through your throat anymore in a bag, so that you'll be confronted with it again back home, is the Green party's answer to the food waste problem. No! Make the portions smaller! If you really want to keep your slightly less obese clients, then please add to your menus half-sized portions, so as to avoid wastes!
April 2015: I just returned from Japan, enjoying Japanese food. Most of Japanese food is decicious, and what’s more: the above complaint does not apply! You always get tiny portions, and the simple idea is that if you want more, you order some more. We don’t see as much obesity in Japan as we see in the USA and now also in Europe.