The Culture of Food in the United States and in Europe
According to the Fast Food Industry Profile: Europe published in 2012 : « The European fast food market has experienced moderate, consistent growth in recent years. This moderate growth is predicted to continue to the end of the forecast period.” This statement obviously implies that European countries have somehow taken more and more examples on the American ways of living, where fast foods and eating habits would be included in these examples. Over the years, different American brands of fast foods have appeared across Europe, such as Mc Donald’s in France in 1972, and more recently with the reopening of the first French Burger King restaurant in 2012. In fact, Burger King had opened …show more content…
Indeed, Europeans have their own “cuisine”, they always had the habit to spend time in the kitchen, while Americans are always moving around, and don’t really get the time to sit down and cook every single day. In European cultures, women who have children will most likely stay home to take care of children, and that would give them more time to make meals and educate their children with healthy choices on a daily basis, as in America, women and men usually both work and try their best to do everything in a day: they will order pizza, take out food from a fast food, and the entire family will be pleased to eat fast, for a cheap price, and nothing has to be done. Also, school lunches take a great part of this cultural difference: In Europe, schools have cafeterias, with legitimate meals, while Americans have cafeterias that sell chips, sandwiches, hot dogs, and sweet beverages. Lunch bags are also very often composed of sandwiches, ready meals, or candy. This is proof that the “fast food” phenomenon starts very early in American and European cultures. Socialization and Education play an essential role on how Americans will behave as adults towards fast foods, and their choice of the way they approach it will depend on how they were educated towards the problem. For a European teenager, going to a fast food three times in the same week isn’t right, as for the same American teenager, it feels completely right to at least going to a fast food every day, no matter what meal it is for. In a way, Americans exercise a lot more: indeed, high schools with
According to the Fast Food Industry Profile: Europe published in 2012 : « The European fast food market has experienced moderate, consistent growth in recent years. This moderate growth is predicted to continue to the end of the forecast period.” This statement obviously implies that European countries have somehow taken more and more examples on the American ways of living, where fast foods and eating habits would be included in these examples. Over the years, different American brands of fast foods have appeared across Europe, such as Mc Donald’s in France in 1972, and more recently with the reopening of the first French Burger King restaurant in 2012. In fact, Burger King had opened …show more content…
Indeed, Europeans have their own “cuisine”, they always had the habit to spend time in the kitchen, while Americans are always moving around, and don’t really get the time to sit down and cook every single day. In European cultures, women who have children will most likely stay home to take care of children, and that would give them more time to make meals and educate their children with healthy choices on a daily basis, as in America, women and men usually both work and try their best to do everything in a day: they will order pizza, take out food from a fast food, and the entire family will be pleased to eat fast, for a cheap price, and nothing has to be done. Also, school lunches take a great part of this cultural difference: In Europe, schools have cafeterias, with legitimate meals, while Americans have cafeterias that sell chips, sandwiches, hot dogs, and sweet beverages. Lunch bags are also very often composed of sandwiches, ready meals, or candy. This is proof that the “fast food” phenomenon starts very early in American and European cultures. Socialization and Education play an essential role on how Americans will behave as adults towards fast foods, and their choice of the way they approach it will depend on how they were educated towards the problem. For a European teenager, going to a fast food three times in the same week isn’t right, as for the same American teenager, it feels completely right to at least going to a fast food every day, no matter what meal it is for. In a way, Americans exercise a lot more: indeed, high schools with