Thursday, January 18, 2018
Surprisingly drab
Quora.com continues to send me daily digests, which I find useful in two ways. The programming questions are often good info or good puzzles, and the other subjects are often surprising images of the typical feelings and lifestyles of other countries. Positive contribution to international understanding.
Today's new question was simple: What do people eat daily in your country?
Most of the answers are unsurprising and yummy. Lebanon and Pakistan are the yummiest.
Some are unexpected. Argentina is mostly Italian, but Uruguay is just beef, beef, and more beef, washed down with maté instead of coffee or tea.
For some reason the answer from Holland stunned me. Breakfast is a cheese sandwich (or a CHOCOLATE SANDWICH!) and a glass of milk. Lunch is tomato soup. Dinner is meat, potato, and green beans.
Except for the CHOCOLATE SANDWICH, that's standard drab midwestern American eating in the 1950s, before Mexican influence moved in. That's how my mother cooked, and that's why I didn't like to eat until I discovered (through Mexican influence) that food could be edible.
I hadn't specifically thought about Dutch food, but I would have guessed more sharply Germanic, with ham and cucumbers and bratwurst and lots of fish.
More importantly, the abovedescribed Dutch menu violates all the 'Mediterranean diet' rules... and yet modern Dutch folks are the tallest and probably the healthiest in Europe. Was the Quora answer simply wrong? Or is the 'Mediterranean diet' wrong?
Sidenote: Or you could have a truly exciting daily menu!
¶ 4:05 PM 
