Fighting The Temptation to Eat Fast Food Abroad

It’s 4PM and we’re getting on an overnight train in an hour. We’ve been out sightseeing all day and have only managed a few pastries for breakfast and a quick lunch in between museums. My stomach is growling, legs bogged down by the weight of my 25 pound backpack. I turn to Dave, but he’s fallen behind, almost completely masked by a crowd of stampeding Chinese. I motion for him to catch up.

“I’m starving” I say.

“Same, where should we eat? It has to be somewhere quick.” He replies

We hurriedly scan the area. There’s one restaurant with no people in it. Another one is too expensive. This one doesn’t have an English menu or even pictures. It’s like Goldilocks and the Three Bears but none of the porridge are just right.

Then we see the Golden Arches and all our “problems” instantly evaporate…

Back home in DC I never ate fast food. To be honest I basically never went out to eat in general – always economizing and cooking at home –  that and of course I was always looking for new recipes to post on my food blog.

Now that we are traveling though, we eat out every single day and almost every single meal. You would think at first this would be fun, but quickly it has become daunting and borderline exhausting.

After having to decide about two dozen logistical questions every morning – where should we go today? How will we get there? What order will we visit places in? should we take the bus or the subway with a line transfer? Are the museums open today? How late does everything close?

When all of those have been tackled we need to decide how to feed ourselves. Since we have mostly been couchsurfing this last month cooking for ourselves has not been an option so it’s always eating out.

According to Dave, I’m and foodie and the picky one, therefore, the dining decisions are always left up to me.

If I thought I was neurotic back home I have only gotten way worse abroad. Aside from just finding a place to eat, in my mind I try to calculate the probability of getting sick from the food – one of my major worries nowadays.

Will the place be clean?

Will there be an english menu or at least a picture menu?

Will the waitress be able to communicate to us if the menu isn’t straightforward?

Will the food be delicious?

These questions can easily drive someone (me) mad. Oh and my most important cardinal dining rule — always eat at places full of people or at least where one other person is dining. If the food is good and safe to eat people must know about it and flock to the joint right? That’s what I keep telling myself…

Sometimes after a full day of sightseeing these questions are beyond draining and when a see that big yellow gated halo, better known as McDonalds, my body unknowingly inches closer and closer towards it. Same goes for Subway, Pizzahut, and Burger King. These places are familiar and you always know you’ll be able to order something that you’ve personally selected.

Even though the food is junk and terribly unhealthy I’m more drawn to these places now than ever before. Getting food at McDonalds is so simple and easy – point to the photo of a big mac and fries, and you know exactly what you’re getting. The exchange is so quick and simple.

Another thing, when it comes to taking food “to go” Subway sandwiches seem to be the perfect and only alternative here in Asia. What will we eat in the middle of our Great Wall hike in Beijing? The subway sandwiches we bought at the bottom of the hill. What to bring with us on our overnight train to Shanghai – why Subway sandwiches. Easily transporatble and filling, these have become a great option, though I know they’re no good for you.

All I know is that when we’re both hungry and starting to get grumpy and snarky it’s so easy to just pop into a fast food establishment and solve the problem, instead of walking around getting hungrier and waiting for my foodie instincts to point us to the right place.

I guess overall our count isn’t too bad. In the last 36 days we’ve eat at:

• Pizza Hut – 1 time
• McDonalds – 2 times
• Burger King – 1 time
• Subway – 2 times
• Quiznos – 1 time

But if you look at it by country, it looks like this:

• Japan (14 days) – 1 time
• Korea (10 days) – 2 times
• China (10 days) – 4 times

So as you can see, it’s getting more frequent (exponentially) as our travel exhaustion grows.

We need to stop.

This would be a great time to end with my solution for avoiding fast food, but right now I haven’t come up with anything – so I’ll leave it up to the readers.

Please share your thoughts on eating fast food abroad and how you curb your desire for it?