Hey everyone! Dana here and in today's episode of Ask An American, I'm going to be tackling
the question of obesity in the United States. Why does America top the charts when it comes
to obesity? Now actually, this question is one that nobody has ever asked me. No, instead
they ask me, "Hey Dana, why are all Americans so fat and ugly?" Yep, that's the question
that I actually get. And not just in the Youtube comments to answer as an Ask An American video,
but that's the question that people ask me in person. At parties. Like, I go out to a
party, "Hi, I'm Dana. Nice to meet you." "Oh, nice to meet you, Dana. So Dana, why are all
Americans fat and ugly?" That's their small-talk ice-breaker conversation that they think somehow
it would be appropriate to ask me that. I don't know. Even after 7 years of living abroad,
I still don't know how to respond to this question. You know, I don't want to completely
ruin the mood of the party and be like, uh f*ck you. Um, so if you have an idea, what
can I say as a response? Kind of a, a zinger, you know. That gets the point across that
that question is rude on many different levels. But, you know, still kind of keeps me walking
the high road there. Yeah, please let me know if you have a suggestion.
Okay, so starting off the video with a little bit of personal experience, personal history
from me, when I moved from the U.S. to Europe, I did have a few extra pounds on me than what
I have now. I weighed a little bit more. And I can say from personal experience, in the
U.S., I wouldn't say that I struggled with my weight, but my weight was constantly fluctuating,
going up and down. I would gain weight and then lose weight, gain weight and then lose
weight. And a while ago, towards the beginning of the Youtube channel, I made, um, a satirical
video about the infomercials, those diet infomercials that you often see, and I'll link to that
video that I made down below. But the things that I mentioned in that video do actually
have merit. I mean, it's a joke video, but there is definitely some truth behind the jokes.
And so today I'm going to be looking in a little bit more detail at some of those things
that I mentioned in that video.
Starting with free refills. So as I mentioned in that video, in the U.S., if you order a
fountain soda at a restaurant, a Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, it's got free refills. You can drink
as much of it as you want.
You paid, I don't know, maybe three dollars for it, and you can just slurp away the entire
meal. And it's kind of like it gets in your head. You know, it's like, well to more I
actually drink of this, the more, kind of, value I get for my money. So you just slurp
and slurp and slurp the entire meal. And in the U.S. servers are really quick to refill
that soda. In general it's a sign of a good server if you don't even finish your first
soda before there's just another one sitting there on the table. So you basically just
finish the one, and there's already another soda. You don't have to go a second during
your meal without having a soda right there to slurp down.
And then also at restaurants, you've got that free bread on the table. In the U.S. it is
super common, you come into a restaurant and on the table you've got a basket of bread.
And you know what happens when you finish that basket of bread? Poof! It gets refilled.
As many times as you want usually. At a lot of Mexican restaurants instead of bread you
have tortilla chips. Bottomless tortilla chips. In the U.S. you've got a lot more all you
can eat options. So the all you can eat buffet is beloved in the U.S. Um, Chinese all you
can eat buffets, American food all you can eat buffets, breakfast all you can eat buffets.
So, yeah, Americans have quite a lot of all you can eat buffets. I very rarely see all
you can eat buffets here in Germany. It just doesn't seem to be as popular. So in the U.S.
you've just, and again, it's like the refillable soda -- the more you eat at that buffet, the
more you've gotten your "money's worth" for what you paid for it.
And of course, how did you get to that restaurant in the U.S.? Did you walk there? Did you ride
your bike there? Nah, I'm guessing you drove there. American cities are just made for cars.
They were built for cars and so it's really hard to get around any other way. As far as
walking goes, sometimes there aren't even sidewalks, or if there are sidewalks, they're
right up against a really busy street. Or there could be a sidewalk, and you're walking
for a while, and then the sidewalk just ends. Or you have to walk really far to get anywhere.
The cities are so spread out, you really just have to, I mean, it could be an hour walk
to the restaurant. As far as biking goes, cars don't really watch out for the bikers.
They just don't think about it. Drivers don't really think about it. And so it's not very
safe to bike in the U.S. You often won't have a bike lane, sometimes you do, but a lot of
times you don't, you have to ride in traffic. And if you have a bike lane, that's the big
if you have a bike lane, there's a good chance that that bike lane isn't necessarily kept
up all throughout the year. So if you live somewhere where it snows, there's a good chance
that in the winter, that bike lane is gonna be where the snowplows push all the snow. They
push it out of the way for the cars and it goes into the bike lane, and sits there until
May. So really, driving is pretty much the only option for really getting around in most
places in the U.S. And where else do we drive besides restaurants? Well, everywhere. But
one place else is grocery stores. In America you drive to the grocery store. You get in
your car and you drive there and then you can pretty much buy however much you want.
Because you can just take it out of the grocery store and pack it all into your car and drive
it home. You don't have to worry about carrying it home on your bike or in your hands if you're
walking, on public transportation. You can buy as much as you want. And the cars in the
U.S. are huge too. So you can really fit a lot of food in there. The refrigerators are
huge in the U.S., so you can just buy so much food. And you know what else is big in the
U.S.? The grocery stores. There are so many options. Here in Germany, you've got like,
a good size amount. Let's talk about the ice cream. A good size freezer section. You've
got a good few ice creams in there. Yeah, in the U.S. I don't think I'm exaggerating
at all to say that there are 100s of different ice creams in the grocery store. I don't think
that's an exaggeration. You've got this huge aisle of ice cream. A huge aisle of pizza,
frozen pizza with so many options. I mean, in Germany, I kind of go, I look at the ice
cream. I'm like, well, okay, I kind of like this one. In the U.S. there is something for
everyone to love. There's so many options, there's gotta be something there that you
love. And because of all the options, I kind of want to try them all, you know? Oh, I need
the mint chocolate chip, and I need the, the coffee, and I need the cookie dough. And, you know,
I want, I want to try all the different options. It just gets really exciting. It's just, there's
too many different things that I wanna try.
Okay, while we're on ice cream, I mentioned this in the magical European diet video: amount
of ice cream that you get if you go out to buy ice cream in a cone. So in the U.S. if
you get an ice cream in a cone, you ask for one scoop, you're actually gonna get a lot
more ice cream than you do here in Germany. So in America, they take the cone and they
take a bunch of ice cream and they press it down into the cone first. Until there's like
a little bump sort of on the top of the cone. And then they take the ice cream scooper and
really dig it through the ice cream a few times to make a big ball. And then they put
that big ball on the top of the already filled ice cream cone. And that, my friends, is one
scoop of ice cream.
In Germany, you go out to get ice cream, you ask for a one scoop cone, they're going to
take the cone, they're gonna take the ice cream scooper, and they're gonna run it one
time through the ice cream, and plop that on top. You're gonna get a scoop, I don't
know, maybe that big. And that is in Germany your one scoop of ice cream. They take it
very literally. It is literally one scoop of ice cream.
So in general, you have bigger portions in the U.S. Yes, I can think right off the top
of my head of some things that come in large sizes in Germany. You've got those one liter
Mass beers that they serve here in Bavaria. And those pretzels bigger than your head.
But those are just a couple examples. Whereas in the U.S., having the large portion sizes
is kind of the norm, not the exception.
And the kicker here with portion sizes is the up-sell in America. So for example, um,
you, you go to McDonald's. And I don't know if they still do this. They might not do this
anymore, but I at least remember from my childhood, you would order whatever it was you wanted,
and they would always ask you, "Would you like to supersize that?" You know, for like
a dollar more you can get triple the amount of food. Okay, that's an exaggeration, it
wasn't triple, but I think you know what I mean. Same at the movie theaters. It's a lot
cheaper, um, by portion, by value to get the bigger size than to get the smaller size.
And my last point that I would like to make is about commercials and advertising in general.
In the U.S., things are really sold to you. Here in Germany, um, yes there are ads, there
are commercials. But I just don't find it quite the same. Um, in the U.S. the, the restaurants
often have commercials advertising this glistening, beautiful food. A basket of wings, advertising
Friday nights at whatever restaurant: all you can eat wings for $9.99. Dessert for free
if you order at least two baskets, at least two portions of all you can eat wings, or
there's always going on some sort of buy one, get one free! Buy one portion of all you can
eat wings and get the second portion free. And you know, um, they're really shimmering
those delicious, glistening buffalo wings right in your face on the TV screen. And I
feel like often in Germany, restaurants kind of let you come to them. Yeah, it just doesn't
seem to be the same. And I think a lot of that has to do with that there are
chain restaurants in the U.S. and so they have these big, multi-state advertising campaigns
going on, whereas in Germany a lot of the restaurants, there's just one of them! And
that one restaurant is probably not going to invest in some sort of a glistening food
campaign. So when you see those commercials, it's really hard to resist going out and buying
those amazing looking buffalo wings. So there's a lot more, seems like a lot more temptation,
a lot more, in the U.S., stuff is being dangled right in front of your face, and you just
aaaah! You just gotta have it.
So my question for you is: first of all, what tips do you have for me, what suggestions,
what should I do when I'm at a party and someone comes to me with, "So Dana, why are all Americans
so fat and ugly?" What should I say to that? I don't want to make a scene and I don't want
to be rude myself. But yeah, what little zinger could I throw out there to get out of the
situation gracefully? And also, what other things would you bring to this conversation?
Please let me know in the comments below.
Thanks so much for watching. Please don't forget to subscribe for more videos and hit
that like button if you enjoyed this video. Thank you! And also, to connect with me, see
more photos, more video clips, behind the scenes stuff, you can check me out over here
on my Twitter and my Facebook page. Until next time, auf Wiedersehen!
Hey everyone! Dana here and on today's episode of Ask An American, I'm going to be talking
about a topic that, yeah...mh
There's a good chance that that bike lane is gonna be the place in the winter that accumulates
all the snow, the snowplows...that was my phone. Haha, it's okay.
What am I even saying?