Food

Food
 
I don’t eat to live, but I live for eating… This sentence is often heard by gourmets. But it also brings two views about food. Food is necessary to survive, but what is more, the food is important sense element of our live. We must either adapt eating habits to our lifestyle or we adapt our life to the food.

People mostly eat three times a day. They have breakfast, lunch and dinner. However, dietologists say that it is healthier to eat more often and have smaller portions. We ought to add light snack between breakfast and lunch and snack between lunch and dinner. We can also afford light supper. One meal from the all ones should be the base of the day. Nutritional experts have referred to breakfast as the most important meal of the day, citing studies that find that people who skip breakfast are likely to have problems with concentration, metabolism, and weight. Breakfast literally meaning "breaking the fast" of the night. Breakfast foods vary widely from place to place, but often include a carbohydrate and protein food and beverage. A light variant can consists of tea, juice, breakfast cereals or fresh fruit. Unhealthier variant includes coffee, pancakes, muffins, sausages, bacon, sweet breads or eggs.

Lunch – a middle-day meal – in some countries consists of soup, main course and dessert, but in the other countries lunch means only soap with some light meal. Since lunch typically falls in the middle of the working day, it can either be eaten on a break from work, or as part of the workday. The difference between those who work through lunch and those who take it off could be a matter of cultural, social class, bargaining power, or the nature of the work.
Dinner is usually the name of the main meal of the day. Depending upon culture, dinner may be the second, third or fourth meal of the day. "Dinner" sometimes denotes a formal meal where people who dine together are formally dressed and consume food with an array of utensils. Dinners are often divided into 3 courses. And one curiosity in the end: In Medieval Europe people had only two meals during the day -- a heavy dinner at noon and a light supper. It largely due to the influence of the Church.
 
Schoolchildren and some people employed in companies or different institutions often have lunch in canteens. Only few people can avoid preparing the main meal of the day at home. Businessmen often have lunch or dinner with their business partners in restaurants. Restaurants offer a daily menu at reduced prices which are very advantageous and in Slovakia also very popular. Today the Slovak restaurants are high – level. On the other side, school canteens are generally very unpopular among the children. Cooking tasty, health and cheep meals for many children is very hard. The reality is often absolutely inverse. Specialists about health nutrition get warning about too fat and too sweet meals in school canteens. Patents complain about high price and scholars don’t like these foods.

In the past, the present territory of Slovakia came under the many principalities and monarchies and there were a lot of different nations. This has had a very big influence on our eating habits. “Bryndzové halušky” (gnocchi with sheep cheese) is considered to be a Slovak tradition meal. But our national foods are also patties stuffed with sheep cheese, pancakes made ​​of potato dough-baked directly on the stove and stuffed with filling of duck liver or steamed jam-filled dumplings topped with poppy seeds or nuts. Hungarian cuisine, typical for spicy meals, is quite popular in the southern parts of Slovakia. In general, Slovaks like to eat meat, usually pork, beef or poultry with potatoes or rice. We have ourselves national meals, but international foods still have very big influence. Italian cuisine, mostly pizza and pasta, has become very popular in our country and in many restaurants it is gradually replacing traditional Slovak meals. Some Slovaks prefer to go to Chinese or Mexican restaurants or American fast foods. Many Slovaks still grow their own vegetables and like to eat them as a side dish. In our country, the lunch is considered the main food of the day. During the weekend, especially Sundays, every members of family meet to have a lunch. It is a nice unwritten Slovak tradition.
 
During the centuries, every country made their own table manners and eating habits. What is acceptable in one country may be considered extremely rude in another country. E. g. French cuisine has very strict rules. During the French dinner you should tear your bread into a bite-sized piece before eating it. In the USA, the salt and pepper are “married”, meaning they should always stay together on the table. So if somebody asks you for salt, you must put out also paper. Serving the food might be different, too. Very popular are Chinese meat mallets which are used instead classical cutlery. Thais serve the meal to the banana leaf, in India people can use palm leafs. To addition the Indian eating habits, the cow is respected as a sacred animal in this country and people don’t eat them. This tradition comes from Hinduism.
One Slovak adage says: 100 people = 100 appetites. This applies also internationally. English cuisine is often considered as one of the most unusual. The English people usually begin the day with a cup of tea or coffee. Tea with milk is English specialty. Englishmen have got a custom – having a tea with a friends or family at 5 pm. Furthermore, roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, cheese Cheddar, Cotton meat pie, apple pie or classical breakfast with sausage, bacon and eggs are typically English foods.

American cuisine is considered as the most unhealthily. The United States is a country where many different ethnic groups live and eating habits are very different, too.  Many dishes which are now popular in the USA and are considered typically American are of foreign origin. They were brought to this country by Italian, Mexican, Greek, Turkish or Chinese. America is well-known as country of hamburgers, chips, hot dogs, grilled chicken, peanut butter and other fat meals. Americans love fast food. Popular fast food industry “Mc Donald” comes from this country. The American specialty is also muffins or pancakes with maple syrup for breakfasts, which wash down with juice or milk. If we compared the English and American breakfast, we would find out, that they are very similar and often very fat. But Englishmen don’t have got the problems with obesity instead of Americans. They have different lifestyle.
Italians are well-known for their temperament and love to eat. Meals like pizza, spaghetti, mozzarella, mascarpone or tiramisu are referred among typical Italian foods. In the past there has been doubt about if the pizza can be considered as invention of Italians. Chinese would like to credit this primacy. However this meal will be forever Italian. Regarding the origin of pizza there is legend. In Italian town Neapol was competition for the best national dish. Pizza won this competition as delicious meal representing Italian flag. Green was represented by condiment oregano, white colour was represented by cheese and red was represented by tomatoes. Italia is also “Mecca” of pasta. Very popular are spaghetti, gnocchi, penne or lasagne.
Nowadays, Chinese cuisine is known almost all about the world.  In advanced countries you can find some Chinese restaurant on every hand. These restaurants are mainly at the position of fast food. Menu consists mostly from specialties like Chinese soup, noodle or  curry chicken, but people can choice also some hamburger, chips of fries cheese. In traditional Chinese cuisine are used ingredients such a rise, noodles, wheat, vegetables or herbs. Popular is cheese Tofu made by soybeans. During preparing a Chinese meal is important to cut the ingredients in small pieces. Perhaps this is a difficult preparing, but the food cooks faster.
 
EJCN (European Journal of Clinical Nutrition) made an analysis about the association between nutritional and familial factors and obesity in boys and girls. Results: The intakes of total energy and especially fat were high, while consumption of carbohydrate and fibre was low. The high fat, low carbohydrate pattern of the nutritional status seemed to be more pronounced in families where the father had a low level of education, and where both parents were obese, suggesting involvement of socioeconomic and familial factors. Proper nutrition in childhood can reinforce lifelong eating habits that help them to grow up to a healthy life. As much as everyone likes to discuss who is to blame for the childhood obesity epidemic, everyone knows that the main causes are rooted in eating too much and not getting enough exercise. Big problem of this time is that parents don’t have got a time for cooking. Most dinners during the week are simple, often precooked food with frozen vegetables which can be quickly heated. Many supermarkets sell frozen “TV dinners” which can be quickly prepared in the oven or a microwave. Those people who want to eat at home without preparing the meal, call restaurants to order take-away food. Take-away pizza is becoming a popular in Slovakia, too.

Lifestyle and obesity are closely related to diet. Dieting is the practice of eating food in a regulated fashion to achieve a controlled weight but it can also be used to maintain a stable body weight. The base of each diet is calorie counting but there are a lot of versions of diet in the world. Some of them are effective and some not. In general, especially women want to lose weight. The first popular diet was "Banting", named after William Banting and made in 19th century. It was low-carbohydrate and low-calorie diet. With changing times, the diet trends have also changed. Some of them are verbatim crazy. E.g., The Caveman diet is based on food available to cavemen during the Palaeolithic Era, around 10,000 years ago. The Hallelujah diet requires eating foods specifically mentioned in the book Genesis in Bible. Or people dieting The Cotton Ball Diet eat only cotton balls. These extreme forms of diet and also hunger strikes are certainly unhealthy and dangerous.
Vegetarianism cause contradictory views of public and it can be also considered as some form of diet. A vegetarian diet is derived from plants, with or without eggs or dairy. Vegetarianism can be adopted for different reasons: In addition to ethical reasons, motivations for vegetarianism include health, religious or aesthetic. Some vegetarians simply don’t like meat or they don’t eat meat because of love animals. There is also vegan diet which excludes all animal products, including eggs, dairy, and honey. Dietetic association have stated that a properly planned vegetarian diet is healthful and absolutely save. Necessary nutrients, proteins, and amino acids for the body's sustenance can be found in vegetables, grains, nuts, soymilk, eggs and dairy.
 
To sum up, every country, every family and every person has their own eating habits. Some people prefer taste of meal and the others prefer nutritional value and health. The most important is to learn good eating habits already in childhood. And the food is not only an importance, but it can be also a passion.