Sunday, April 07, 2013

Fast Food for Travel

Many people tend to avoid fast food for reasons of health or just plain snobbery. I am usually among them for health reasons, but not always when I travel. Sometimes there is little or no choice, for example at rest stops along the 401 in Ontario or the New York Thruway.
However, fast food can also be a good choice abroad. The very things that make it unhealthy as a steady diet (high fat and sugar content of many items, for instance) are, I believe, okay when you are travelling and need a lot of quick energy for sight-seeing and getting around. The fact that fast food places abroad often have the only clean restrooms around are another big point in their favour.
I find fast food especially comforting where my grasp of the local language is minimal. When I arrived in Buenos Aires or a Sunday afternoon after a long flight, I headed to a food court near my hotel where by the use of [ointing and sign language I was able to get a filling meal. At that time I was too tired to attempt dealing with a restaurant menu in Spanish. And in Russia and Ukraine I found myself in fast food places quite often.
It is true that fast food restaurants are among the factors that have increased homogenization of the world, one of the reasons that it is sometimes hard to tell one city from another. Trying some of the local food is one of the joys of travel. But fast food can be comforting sometimes when you are in a very foreign environment.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home