Obesity: what kebabs and hotdogs can tell you about a nation

I have just returned home to Australia, following several weeks abroad. Being the food-oriented individual that I am, I take particular interest in all things culinary. I noticed that Australian food portions are very large.

My first port of call was Germany; land of the wurst. I would often have a light breakfast and then snack on a wurst for lunch. But then I would be hungry again by dinnertime. The German wursts that I bought from street vendors were not lost in a sea of bread, but instead enfolded lovlingly between a modest roll. Upon my return, I visited my favourite hot dog stand in the Queen Victoria market and got a bratwurst, which cost significantly more (seven dollars compared to two euro), and was lost amid bread and toppings. It was delicious, but I didn’t need to eat for the rest of the day.

In Turkey, I partook of the donor kebab. Let’s be honest, I partook of many donor kebabs. Again, they were relatively small, but delicious. The eve of my return, on the return drive from the airport I had a craving for a kebab, so I requested that we pull into a roadside donor kebab van. Again, I found that there was a significant price discrepancy (nine dollars against four Turkish lire), as well as a significant size difference. My Australian kebab, while delicious, would constitute a major meal. My Turkish kebabs were a large, but not overly so, snack,

These differences indicate to me, a symptom (and a perpetuating factor) of the obesity epidemic in which Australia is mired. The food portions are an enormous size. If I go to a restaurant, I have often taken to ordering an entrée sized meal, and being surprised when it is what I would consider to be the size of a main meal. A meal consisting of an entree, main meal, and dessert, should not have gargantuan portions for all three courses, yet I see more and more in restaurants that this is exactly the case.
The fact that hot dogs and donor kebabs are in effect a snack, or one meal out of three, is deeply concerning, considering their size. Eating three solid meals a day is all well and good, but eating three enormous meals a day unless one has a significant muscle mass, or leads a highly actively lifestyle, begs for pounds to be accumulated on the regular person.

London was the only city where I went into a restaurant, ordered a meal, and found that finishing it left me feeling over-stuffed. This large portion size makes sense in light of this excellent image that was a part of this economist article (which I highly recommend):

Both Australia and Britain are shown as having 60-70% of their populations as obese. This is a disconcertingly large figure, and one that to me, indicates a problem with the nations’ approach to food.

Perhaps we should start thinking about what Australians consider to be a normal meal size. Reducing the amount of food we as a nation ingest is a good start to stopping what is rapidly approaching, if not already is, an obesity crisis.