food and desserts, Italy vs Canada, part 2

To continue on this theme. I notice on the menus of many restaurants in North America or Canada that usually french fries is obligatory and if any greens are offered it will be a salad, usually with wilted lettuce and tasteless tomatoes or if there is another vegetable it will come with a dressing of some kind, like green beans with slivers of almonds or peas with gravy. At home people will be tempted to dress up their vegetables with melted cheese sauce or a creamy sauce. Any meat also comes with lots of sauces even if grilled its bar-b-q sauce with mesquite. Bread is served by the basketful with melted garlic butter or melted butter and garlicky cheese. Portions tend to be over sized, giving you the too much approach to food. Simplicity is not the name of the game. Holidays like Canadian Thanksgiving in early October or Xmas dinners tend to exaggerate the food element so that people get sick with indigestion or feel bloated, how often you hear people say that they ate too much and gained so much weight at the holiday season. Not to mention the desserts and this fascination with chocolate and fudge and excess, a few years ago books came out on how to make those super rich dessert as if this was the only way to enjoy food. We have never had a famine in Canada and even poor people can eat sufficiently, so where does the culture of heavy meals come from. Is it from an association with wealth? In his book on Italian food through the ages titled Delizia! John Dickie explains that poor Italians who immigrated to North America changed their eating habits. Inventing a new Italian cuisine for their new home in the New World in which meat appeared in almost every dish, as an example Spaghetti and meat balls, totally unknown in Italy. Or beef lasagna with heavy cheese sauce also unknown, obviously for these people meat equalled wealth. In French Canada, the hunt was from the early days of the colony in 1608 the best way to survive, so meat in various forms and in great quantity was prepared for the table. Also people use to work hard in the fields all day so a hearty meal was necessary. Though nowadays the hardest physical labour might be to go down to your local coffee shop and lift that mug.

Though in North America the old habits die hard, a big breakfast is still seen as the best meal of the day and a big evening meal is also often the mainstay of our society. Lunch is skipped or people will eat a sandwich or a salad thinking they are dieting, the salad will be covered in heavy creamy dressing and topped with bacon bits and then afterwards a heavy dessert as a reward for being so abstemious. Coffee breaks is another no no, while in Italy an espresso and a cornetto will be your coffee break if not your breakfast, in Canada a huge muffin or a piece of cake with a large American coffee is the rigueur Though many people will tell you that they cannot drink a small espresso because they can't sleep at night, medical studies and studies by dietitians have shown that American drip coffee we drink everywhere has a far higher concentration of caffeine than your average espresso. Again it is all psychological and based on culture or learn behaviour.

Meaning that obesity is stalking a lot of Canadians because of the way they eat while Italians women and men tend to be slim.
Elegance in Italy for men and women is in low body weight and a slim figure.