Road Food

Traveling and dining out for each meal brings home some interesting observations on Western society. It doesn’t take a brilliant critic of our current food culture to very quickly notice patterns in food intake while on the road. First off, the food choices available to travelers in essence involves marketing a taste driven machine; and it’s not a process we want to intellectualize about very much. Nutrition information is not just lacking, it’s suppressed. By that I mean it might be a bit depressing for the causal nutrition clerk to tally the day-in day-out calories, saturated fat and lack of fiber when jumping from one national chain restaurant to the next. Avoid the national chains you offer as an armchair quarterback? Try as I might, and knowing what I know, the local grocery stores didn’t offer up what the weary traveler needs. Like the battered fighter on the ropes, at some point you give in to the chain restaurants and order up. Like a “tractor beam” from the old Star Trek series, we were drawn in by the smell, the anticipation and the ease of entry. But honestly, we tried to avoid them.

Theoretical arguments against eating at chain restaurants are workable from the safety of home. However, on the road, after numerous hours on dreary pock marked pavement with the nearly constant hum of the engine wearing senses thin, a city or town rises in the neon light like an all-you-can-eat Phoenix. Neon signs proclaim Burger King and Pizza Hut with enticing visions of reprieve from the constancy of the road. And taste experience is king in neon food chain land as each establishment announces savory meals offered up at the likes of Tony Roma’s and Applebee’s. Tony Roma’s advertises in bold letters a “Slab-Fest” going on. I paused at that trying to imagine what the patrons of the restaurant engaging in the slab gluttony might look like. Hardee’s advertises a gigantic monster burger with many too many pounds of ground beef on thick slices of cheese all covered in the usual suspect fixins and a secret sauce to boot.

Seeking out the less common establishments like the backstreet Thai restaurants or corner bistros might offer up more international flavors with gourmet dishes (and higher price tags per meal), but the nutrition clerk in me was tallying up the saturated fat and calories next to the check, trying to figure out which is the larger. I usually based the tip on some fractional multiple of the total grams of saturated fat. Needless to say the wait staff made a fortune off of me.

In the final analysis, each time I travel it makes me wonder about all those road weary truckers, travelers and communters who frequent the aforementioned neon establisments regularly. Health implications and cost aside, the taste experience alone is akin to mainlined heroin, making it nearly impossible to return to fruit and granola as a snack and the simplicity of vegetable rich meals as a norm. And the number of obese patrons I saw reinforced my conviction: We are truly a society and culture addicted to food. Not food for sustenance and nourishment, but food strictly for the taste experience.