Simple foods like breads and fruit juices should not contain 101 ingredients, most of which I’ve never heard of. When I see something in the ingredients list I’ve never heard of, that product goes back on the shelf so I can look it up on the internets when I get home. Nine times out of 10, it’s a wacky preservative cooked up in a lab somewhere. I will not buy that product. In the US (save havens like Whole Foods and Trader Joes) it is increasingly difficult to find products that are simple and not choc-full of preservatives and other crazy things.

And don’t even get me started on the difficulty of being vegetarian, especially since the FDA doesn’t require dairy manufacturers to list whether or not rennet is used (all they require is “enzymes,” which could of course be vegetable, microbial, or animal). Combine that with the desire to eat foods without a million unnecessary ingredients (I mean, come on, who puts gelatin in yoghurt?! That’s just lazy manufacturing) and suddenly my dinner plate gets more empty and/or my grocery bill sky rockets (groceries are actually far cheaper in the UK, believe it or not).

Needless to say, I am feeling happy to be back home. I’m happy to be back in a society where “I’m hungry” translates to heading back home to get dinner started, rather than an immediate need to feed on the closest available snackfood. I generalise heavily I know, but there’s something to be said for it. How can a person have a healthy relationship with food and their body when it’s all based on instant gratification and no knowledge (nor care) of what’s being put into their body?

To be healthy and happy with your body is to have respect for it, and that respect entails an understanding of the foods you eat and a healthy relationship with that food. I think people forget this, and hence comes the inevitable self-loathing in relation to the body, leading then to the roller coaster of fad-diets which again are another example of instant gratification.

I don’t care what the British say about the French; a healthy relationship with food is the one thing they have down pat, and I wish Americans (and also, increasingly, Britains) could somehow follow their lead.

“Little wha??” you say? Soldiers, marmite men, same thing. I call them marmite men just to be difficult (and by that I mean to annoy my husband, an effect with seems to have worn off over time. Damn…)

You see, overcoming marmite was one of my greatest and most proud achievements in the journey to integration into British life. Now it’s one of the things I miss most when I’m away (I often travel with a mini-container because it’s one of the greatest comfort foods to me when I’m back in the states).

Since moving to this country, so many doors have opened to me in terms of food. Typical English fayre may not be the most exciting of things, but there’s a great selection of fresh fruit and veg here (at prices much cheaper than in the US), and the influences from the rest of of the world seem to create an exciting rush of culinary delight. I think the main thing is that in supermarkets here, there are mainly food aisles with a couple of junk food aisles in between; in the US there are mainly junk food aisles with a couple of frozen vegetables in between.

*Ahem* and yes, I am the queen of generalisations…

Other discoveries? Crusty bread, fresh spinach (or fresh veg generally… I always only had frozen!), wine, a paradise of vegetarian food selections, roast potatoes, etc…

Now if only I could get past the instant gag effect brought on by breakfast tea…