Food in Popular Culture

I had never really thought about how food fit into our popular culture class until today, or rather last night when I did the reading.  After I finished the reading however, I realized just how much food is integrated into our lives and culture, even more so after our lecture and discussion in class today so I thought I would expound some more on what I touched on in my comment in class today about not having fast food places back home in Vietnam.  Like the guy a few seats over from me mentioned that they do in Italy, in Vietnam people go to the market every day to get their food for the day.  I always wondered why people in the states needed such large refrigerators, the one we had in my house was a small 2 shelf fridge with a freezer on top, nothing fancy, and that was all we really needed.

Also, there are weren't any fast food restaurants in my city, the only one that was there when I left was KFC, and that was not added until I think my Junior year of Highschool (about four years ago now).  I mentioned briefly in class that I ate more back home, and I did, but I also maintained a much more healthy weight.  Here in the states I eat less, but still gain weight, which is kind of counter intuitive, however most of the food I eat is much more greasy and fatty.  Here my family also doesn't sit down and eat as a family as much, when I am back from school maybe once a day, some days not at all.  While admittedly there are some differences lifestyle wise such as dad not working from home and my brothers and sister going to school instead of all four of us home-schooled, even when it is possible, we don't usually.  What most often happens is we find leftovers from yesterday or the day before and just re-heat those.

While the flexibility of fast food is great I do sometimes miss sitting down as a family and eating a meal together like we did while I was growing up, but that is less and less common in the instant gratification obsessed culture we live in today in America.

Also if anyone is actually interested the city I grew up in is Hue, Vietnam.  Check it out is is an amazing place.