Dining in St Andrews, and What That Has to Do with What’s Wrong with America Today

This was originally only a short piece of another blog post I was working on, but I had so much to say on the matter that it really grew into its own thing. The original post will probably appear tomorrow or Wednesday, but today I just want to focus on this one small aspect differentiating American and British culture.

I’ve been making this list of “British Things” and this was Number Three:

3. Having to ask for one’s check at a restaurant

After a few nights out with other friends, we JSA’s have discovered that it is common practice by waiters and waitresses to serve you your food, and thereafter avoid you until you finally almost have to run across the room and wrestle them to the ground to catch them and request your check.

I also noticed something similarly strange the other day in Starbucks, where I went between morning classes for a little caffeine. When I asked for my café mocha, the girl replied (in her swift Scottish accent), “Sit in or take out?” I told her take-out, although I really couldn’t imagine what this had to do with anything. After a little observation of the other Starbucks patrons, though, the distinction dawned on me. If you order to “sit-in”, then your drink is served in a real, legit, ceramic mug, whereas only take-out is given to you in the usual cardboard packaging. It’s like they’re encouraging you to hang out and enjoy your coffee, rather than doing the American thing and stressfully dashing off to work like an animal on steroids.

Here’s the thing: Europeans just have a completely different attitude toward dining. To them it’s not about what you’re eating; it’s about the conversation and the socialization. What I’ve come to understand is this: I think so many Americans are overweight because from childhood we’ve been taught a different attitude and focus in our table manners. We spend so much time doing other things that the image of the American family reclining and enjoying each other’s company at the dinner table is completely absurd today. Our schedules are so busy that we’re either devouring our take-out, fast-food meal on-the-go to sports practice, scarfing down Mom’s casserole at home to run off to finish homework, or giving up trying to eat an actual meal at all and settling instead to grab a couple of packages of highly-processed snacks to eat between breaths. The result is that we tend to eat too many unhealthy things, and usually in larger quantities than our bodies need because we are dumping food in to our tummies faster than our stomachs can process.

Europeans, on the other hand, see eating as a social experience, which they purposely set time aside for. Waiters and waitresses don’t drop the check on the table five minutes into your meal, so you are permitted and even encouraged to sit and enjoy your meal and your company. The result is that you eat slower, giving your stomach more time to digest properly and decide that you are full, so you avoid over-eating. At the same time, this patient approach to meals allows for more time to cook in the home, choosing fresh and homemade foods over the quick grab-and-go things that we Americans gravitate to in the grocery store.

In short, I believe our American culture needs to slow down and stop to eat—not just so that our obesity rate will drop, but also just so that we actually spend time with our family and friends in conversation.