As a Canadian living in the USA I have to say, we don't eat that differently in Canada, the big difference is we eat less.
Canada is just as full of greasy, nutrtionless, processed-to-hell food as America is, but we simply do not consume as much of it, from my observations.
When I moved to the USA I immediately (over 4 months) gained a buttload of weight (both figuratively and literally...). This is due to my bad habit of finishing everything on my plate. I've since fixed this and my weight is rapidly decreasing. Yay. Serving sizes in the USA are simply ludicrous and completely out of step with reality.
Before talking about high-fiber, low-fat diets, Americans need to do one simple (but difficult) thing: eat less. Eat way less.
A friend and I (both Canadian) paid a visit to the Cheesecake Factory this last weekend - when our plates landed on our table our eyes bugged out. There was enough food to feed 4 people in a standard Canadian restaurant. I'm not even exaggerating :S The table next to ours polished their food single-handedly and then ordered dessert. We were shocked. How any single person can consume that much food in one sitting is unimaginable, and somewhat disgusting.
Well, the Cheesecake Factory is a bit of an outlying case -- those portions are ridiculous even by American standards. But as an Australian living in the US I agree with you -- I find it hard just to get a normally-sized meal for breakfast or lunch.
In Australia, if you order a ham and cheese sandwich, you get ham and cheese. In America if you order a ham and cheese sandwich you get a huge stack of ham, a bit of cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles (!?), maybe some sprouts, mayo and a bright yellow mustard-like substance. If I tell them I just want ham and cheese they look at me like I'm crazy (and I am, cuz I'll be paying about six bucks for this sandwich anyway).
On the other hand, last I heard Australian rates of obesity have overtaken US rates. On the other other hand, Australia probably has more of the slightly-fat people (ordinary folks with big beer guts) and fewer of the ridiculously-fat people (acres of waddling flesh or too-fat-to-walk electric wheelchair folks).
"Well, the Cheesecake Factory is a bit of an outlying case ..."
I'm not sure about that. Cheesecake Factory, Claim Jumper, you name it.
Even the fast casual restaurants like Chipotle. They tout the "freshness" of their ingredients–despite the fact their burritos weight as much as my laptop.
Of course, every restaurant now is on the "hamburger slider" craze ... even though the slider is probably the size a normal hamburger should be.
Don't even get me started on the Midwest. When I first started visiting Oklahoma regularly, I was a little shocked. You'd almost think there was a state law that every restaurant had to be a buffet.
I've also found that Americans like to lather sauce over everything, which begs the question of if they'd realize if we replaced all their meat with soy protein. This may be part of the diet problem.
In Canada we have ranch sauce, we have mayo, but it wasn't until I got to the US that I started seeing these things going on everything under the sun, in gigantic quantities.
Why have the ham sandwich if all you'll be tasting is the mayo?
Among reasonably thin people in the U.S, it's common knowledge that if you go out to eat, you will bring food home. Most of the time when I go to restaurants with family or friends, we at least end up with lunch for the next day, and sometimes another full dinner. Occasionally, if it's a really good restaurant and my dad orders way too many dishes, we end up with leftovers for the next week.
This reminds me of the story a Japanese girl once told me of her visit to Disneyland. At one of the restaurants she ordered the steak and salad. The salad came first and by the end of it she was so full she couldn't even think about eating the steak.
I agree completely. I am shocked by the amount of food they serve here in the US. I went out with a customer recently to one of those Mexican chain restaurants. Basically I was "done" at the appetizer stage. They proceeded to have the main course, and ordered dessert!
There are many times when my (petite) wife and I go out, and we share ONE meal and sometimes even have some left-over!
Funny thing is that I remember complaining about exactly this 20 years ago!!
I wanted smaller meals at lower prices. My friend pointed out to me that the reason restaurants were raising portion sizes was to price at what the market will bear. Most people feel they get their money's worth with the huge amounts of food, so there is really no incentive for the restaurant to offer a lower-priced option. So for those of us who don't feel the need to stuff ourselves, the option is to take the rest home if possible.
My wife and I pretty much always split an entree in restaurants in the US, with maybe a side dish to go with it. Every time we get two, it ends up being way too much food.
WOW. That's just astonishing - thanks for the link! I think it's definitely worth studying how two very similar societies can have such radically different obesity indicators.
http://eaves.ca/2008/07/08/fatness-index-canada-vs-united-st...