Sure, here in these United States we’ve got a White Castle that will serve you noodles and a Burger King that makes a Whopper bigger than your head, but the grass is always greener — and the food always more interesting — on the other side of the fence, right? Over at Buzzfeed, they’ve rounded up 14 delectable dishes only available at fast food restaurants in other countries. (Well, it’s actually 13 because you can get the McLobster Roll in some parts of the U.S.)
Anyone who’s hung ‘round these parts for any length of time is well aware of my generalized disdain for fast food, which to my way of thinking is really “food” in name only. Nonetheless, I never cease to be fascinated by the various and assorted iterations arrived at by our corporate gastronomic overlords. The things that Big Business can convince us to put in our mouths is truly the stuff of legend. Then again, we are a highly suggestible lot, so it would stand to reason that a clever marketing campaign would have us sprinkling Aunt Edna’s ashes and concrete dust on our morning cereal.
I’M LOVIN’ IT!!
Somewhere along the line we stopped viewing food as fuel and began seeing it as entertainment/emotional salve. How else do you explain ANYTHING from Coldstone Creamery, which I’m convinced is a plot by cardiologists to further their career prospects? It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to figure why obesity and heart disease are increasingly becoming our cultural legacy, or why the term “emergency pants” is no longer as humorous as it once was. In fact, this problem has so saturated American culture that we’ve exported it to new and riper foreign markets. Hey, if obesity and occluded arteries are good for the bottom lines of American food conglomerates (if not American bottoms), it would stand to reason that the same should hold true for foreign waist lines and arteries, no?
And so we continue to dig our graves with our teeth….
