US versus Europe: Super versus moderate

"Americans who have traveled to Europe will have noticed that there's a significant difference in portion sizes between our country and European countries. A college friend who moved to Germany as an exchange student back in the late Eighties wrote to say he was hungry for the first couple of weeks, because he was being served less than he was accustomed to -- but after that period of "initiation," he found that he was satisfied with the smaller proportions. There is something about the American psychology that craves bigness, and feels cheated in some way by smaller portions. I wonder if it has always been this way, or if this is something that we've gotten acculturated to by marketing over the past 30 or 40 years. I suspect it's mostly (but not entirely) the latter. As I've said before during discussions about liberal drug laws in the Netherlands, insofar as they work for the Dutch, it has a lot to do with the inner self-discipline the Dutch have as a characteristic of their residual Calvinist culture (they may not have the religion anymore, but they are much more self-controlled compared to us). You don't see all-you-can-eat buffets in Holland, which explains why that culture is better able to handle liberalized drug laws than we would be in America.

Note EU-Digest: Unfortunately Europe is also quickly joining the gluttons of this world, mainly as a result of advertising. Burger King in Europe noted they saw a considerable upswing in their sales when they started selling the heavily advertised "super burger".

Let's hope Europe won't reach the state the US is in. Maybe its time to include in advertisements for fast food, similar to what they do for tobacco and alcohol, that fast food can cause obesity, which can kill you?

Will it fly, probably not, because the food industry lobby will probably kill any action in that direction.

For more: Against supersized cocktails - Rod Dreher