Junk Food World Cup

Topic

Looking for a quick unhealthy snack, what do you grab?

Replies

I’m not working today, so… Burger.

If I was working today, I would’ve chosen… Burger.

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lorcan_nagle

I find your lack of curry disturbing.

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DavidM, lorcan_nagle

Dave wrote:

I find your lack of curry disturbing.

Stop trying to curry favor with Gar.

The way the poll is worded… tea’s on Gar?

Curry isn’t junk food.

Inspired by this thread, I just made a burger. Not the junk food variety, but the blue cheese variety. MMmmm….

Given this is in The Pub I’m tempted to go with burger and chips as that’s my go to when ordering food in the pub (remember thoses?). That said a pizza is my go to when we are order delivery take out. And, to further muddy the waters, I like a fish supper too.

Safe to say I’m not voting hot dog though – they are disappointing in almost every context.

Bruce wrote:

Safe to say I’m not voting hot dog though – they are disappointing in almost every context.

I’d agree really. When I went to New York (and met up with the lovely Jerry and Al) I knew the reputation for the pizza there and the hot dogs.

The pizza definitely lived up to the hype, we had two beautiful ones in two separate places in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The hot dogs? Nearly as good as you’d get at the funfair in Porthcawl but they do the onions better.

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garjones wrote:

Curry isn’t junk food.

I thought you might say that.

But it’s no less junk food than tacos or kebabs, surely?

It’s why I selected ‘tacos’ and not Mexican/Tex Mex. Thinking more of Taco Bell style joints, even though they don’t exist here it’s an international forum and that’s popular in the US. Kebabs over general Mediterranean food.

Despite sometimes being a refuge for drunks from rather dodgy outlets at 2am it’s hard to define all Indian or Chinese cuisine as ‘junk food’.

Subway is actually the biggest fast food vendor in the world but also hard to define the same way as some of the options are pretty healthy (not the meatball one).

Ok, but I’m still having my curry.

garjones wrote:

Despite sometimes being a refuge for drunks from rather dodgy outlets at 2am it’s hard to define all Indian or Chinese cuisine as ‘junk food’.

Yeah and just to be serious I wasn’t doing this. I am lucky to have grown up in and now live in cities with a very broad cultural mix, and food is a big part of that, so I know that there is a wide range of different foods across these easily-labelled categories.

It just happens that the curries I really like are particularly bad for you.

Dave wrote:

It just happens that the curries I really like are particularly bad for you.

I like those ones too.

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Dave

Anonymous wrote:

Inspired by this thread, I just made a burger. Not the junk food variety, but the blue cheese variety. MMmmm….

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garjones

garjones wrote:

The hot dogs? Nearly as good as you’d get at the funfair in Porthcawl but they do the onions better.

As much as I love NYC, I have to admit Chicago is the best place to go for hot dogs.

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Andy, garjones

The best hot dogs I’ve ever had were technically not hot dogs, but bratwurst from the Schnelli near where I lived in Germany very briefly in the 90s. When a “German” Christmas market started appearing in Cheltenham with a bratwurst stand, I was thrilled, until I tried one and discovered it was just a normal sausage (Cumberland, I think) being passed off as bratwurst. Decent, but a let down.

Few fast food burgers can top a greasy burger from one of the dozens of food vans that appear at the Mop Fair every year* in Tewkesbury. Probably as much due to the atmosphere as anything, but wonderful. Mind you, an egg burger from the food van down the factories near my old school is pretty great too. Oh man, I’ve not had one of those in so long.

 

*not this year, I suspect.

Martin Smith wrote:

Few fast food burgers can top a greasy burger from one of the dozens of food vans that appear at the Mop Fair every year* in Tewkesbury.

I have a huge soft spot for the slightly burnt onions you get from burger vans and stalls.

I am amazed at how much in-depth analysis of food this poll has prompted.

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garjones

Let me tell you this David. I went to a fish and chip shop in New Zealand and they charged to add vinegar. 10 cents.

Shocking.

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DavidM, Martin Smith

Speaking of weird Antipodean chip shop matters, there’s a company importing Australian “chicken salt” to the UK currently. It’s some yellow grit Australians put on their chips regularly but, get this, it’s nothing to do with chicken.

Why did the chicken salt cross the globe?

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njerry, Rocket

Dave wrote:

Why did the chicken salt cross the globe?

For revenge. Obviously.

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Over here the most common fast food is fries and some kind of deep fried snack, like croquettes or a “frikandel”, which is a type of sausage. Dutch croquettes are pretty tasty.

 

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Todd

You can count that in ‘fish and chips’ I think.

In chip shops in the UK the truth is a lot of the time people aren’t buying fish, it could be a pie or a sausage or an onion bhaji, all sorts of deep fried  stuff, they just all get served with chips/fries.

 

 

njerry wrote:

Dave wrote:

Why did the chicken salt cross the globe?

For revenge. Obviously.

I was going to go with “to get to the other sides”.

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njerry

Martin Smith wrote:

Speaking of weird Antipodean chip shop matters, there’s a company importing Australian “chicken salt” to the UK currently. It’s some yellow grit Australians put on their chips regularly but, get this, it’s nothing to do with chicken.

We’re very proud of chicken salt – you can find reaction videos (people tasting it for the first time) on YouTube. No serious charcoal chicken shop or fish and chip shop or kebab shop would offer hot chips without the option of chicken salt (you can still get plain salt if you want).

I voted pizza – had two of them yesterday as the wife was staying with her folks.

I’ll concede that pizza is not as convenient as the other options; sure there are kebab shops that sell slices, but when it comes to chains you will have to wait much longer than for a burger from a drive-through. Where pizza wins though is in neatness – burgers, especially the modern trend of overpacked, stacked-high burgers, are a nightmare to try to eat, ending up with all kinds of stuff all over your face and hands. I’ve been disappointed by so many burgers – pizzas much less so, even the $5 offerings I grabbed from Domino’s yesterday.

I’d say hot dogs are underrated – they’re not as easy to come by here, but I’ll usually give one a go at a community fair or food truck. Not a far cry from the “Democracy Sausage” on offer on voting days.

A kebab, I’ve never had (excluding felafel wraps). I hope to have one this year as one of my “mundane firsts” – I had a chicken burger (chicken sandwich for the US folks) early in the year, and a Big Mac a few months ago – not really impressed with either.

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Martin Smith

Andrew wrote:

ending up with all kinds of stuff all over your face and hands

A small price to pay for the glory of the hamberder.

I don’t think pizza is junk food. Bread, cheese, vegetables, possibly some meat or seafood – these are all staples. And on a pizza they aren’t overly processed (as meat is processed before it goes into a hotdog sausage, for example). And they are cooked in a fairly healthy way (baked, which is better than for example frying a burger patty). A pizza is simply a wholesome meal that’s served in a convenient form.

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Martin Smith, njerry

DavidM wrote:

I don’t think pizza is junk food. Bread, cheese, vegetables, possibly some meat or seafood – these are all staples. And on a pizza they aren’t overly processed (as meat is processed before it goes into a hotdog sausage, for example). And they are cooked in a fairly healthy way (baked, which is better than for example frying a burger patty). A pizza is simply a wholesome meal that’s served in a convenient form.

You’re junk food.

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Todd

Your face is junk food!

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Todd

I don’t think you can really draw a clear line between “normal” food and junk food. Everything that is in junk food is good food. Fat is good, sugar is good, you just shouldn’t have too much.

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Dave, DavidM

Anonymous wrote:

I don’t think you can really draw a clear line between “normal” food and junk food. Everything that is in junk food is good food. Fat is good, sugar is good, you just shouldn’t have too much.

That’s not true. Fat is not universally good for you, and junk food tend to contain the not-good (don’t have the english for this) types of fat.

How are they “not good” exactly? I think you basically have a number of types of fat, they are all slightly different but they all have their place in a balanced diet as long as you don’t have too much. Trans fats could be an exception, it can quickly do damage.

You can also make food in a variety of ways. You can have grilled organic beef in the burger with plenty of veg. Kebabs can be the processed meat found at 2am joint in the UK or fresh lamb in the middle east.

The average takeaway/delivery pizza joint stuff is pretty bad. It rates very high in calories, salt and fat. You don’t have to make a pizza that way, you can make them very healthily but I doubt the meat/cheese etc in a Domino’s style pizza joint is any less processed than the one in the hot dog.

As I said earlier Subway is an example because you can decide the contents so you can have a vegetarian wrap but also the meatball sandwich which it has been pointed out is no better for you than a Big Mac. So I left it out because more than any of the others it can be very healthy or not at all.

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DavidM

garjones wrote:

The average takeaway/delivery pizza joint stuff is pretty bad. It rates very high in calories, salt and fat. You don’t have to make a pizza that way, you can make them very healthily

So back to curries…

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DavidM

(I love that this has replaced the old recurring MW discussion about genre.)

Christel and I started watching Taco Chronicles on Netflix last night and we both wanted tacos SOOO bad. I think we may have some tonight.

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garjones

Anonymous wrote:

Over here the most common fast food is fries and some kind of deep fried snack

we have that in the US too

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Todd, Andy

DavidM wrote:

A pizza is simply a wholesome meal that’s served in a convenient form.

We’re having homemade pizza tonight with some of the in-laws. Homemade pizza dough, homemade sauce, and fresh-cooked toppings including onions, peppers, arugula, etc., along with the obligatory cheese, pepperoni, and sausage. Everyone picks their own toppings and then the individual pies are cooked on the barbecue grill. Oops, excuse me, I just drooled on my keyboard.  

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Rocket, DavidM, Todd, Dave

Todd wrote:

we both wanted tacos SOOO bad

If you know how I am about messy food, you can imagine where I stand with tacos. I like the components and flavour profile, but prefer enchiladas where you eat with cutlery, or partially deconstructed nachos.

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Martin Smith

Andrew wrote:

partially deconstructed nachos

That sounds like a white person solution to something that isn’t even a problem.

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Andrew

Whenever I eat fajitas they’re partially deconstructed, but not intentionally.

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Martin Smith, garjones

Deconstructed nachos? So… a bag of crisps?

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Dave, Todd

Bruce wrote:

Deconstructed nachos? So… a bag of crisps?

No, that’s just regular nachos.

I think Andrew means this:

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garjones, Todd

Todd wrote:

Andrew wrote:

partially deconstructed nachos

That sounds like a white person solution to something that isn’t even a problem.

There’s probably another name for them – it’s basically pile all of the non-chip components (beans, meat,”meat”, cheese, sour cream, guacamole, Cholula hot sauce, salsa, Sriracha hot sauce, and tomato sauce) in a bowl, and use the chips to scoop up the food.

Andrew wrote:

Todd wrote:

Andrew wrote:

partially deconstructed nachos

That sounds like a white person solution to something that isn’t even a problem.

There’s probably another name for them – it’s basically pile all of the non-chip components (beans, meat,”meat”, cheese, sour cream, guacamole, Cholula hot sauce, salsa, Sriracha hot sauce, and tomato sauce) in a bowl, and use the chips to scoop up the food.

It’s called “chips and dip”.

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Rocket

I tend to think of dip as a bit more consistent. I mean, it’s like this google images result (but smoother guac rather than avo cubes), but with the chips taken out.

This way the chips aren’t soggy by the time you get to the ones at the bottom, and your hands stay relatively clean (or at least dry). This isn’t an Australian thing, mind. It’s a me thing – I don’t like getting my hands dirty when eating.

I picked Burger and Fries. Honestly don’t eat a lot of red meat anymore, so it’s a treat for me.

But I have noticed for the last few years that I’m sleepy after a good burger.
Once or twice can be excused, but it’s enough that I’m hesitant and depends on the evenings plans.

However, staying at home means who cares what happens!

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Rocket, Todd