The Art of Starting Over: What Eating Abroad Taught Me About American Food (Part 1)

I’m taking you on my starting over journey and hoping that if you are starting any part of your life over, you use some of what I’m learning. Please also share with me what you are learning.

I’ll tell you what I’m starting over and building in more detail, but first this week I need to give you background on what I’ve been doing to start over. The past four years has been research in how life can be lived. Since 2022, I’ve been traveling the world with a question in the back of my mind: How do other countries live, and what does that reveal about how we live in the United States?

I think I’ve mentioned to you before that I’ve traveled to many cities, but I’ve spent the most time living in these places: Portugal, Thailand, France, Mexico, Turkey, Malaysia, Monaco, and now Albania. Dubai is next.

And if you want to understand culture quickly, don’t start with the museums. Start with the food. Food tells you everything. It tells you what people value, how much time they spend enjoying life, what their economy is built on, and who really runs the country: small business or big business.

And after living in all these places, I’ve come to believe something that might challenge you. When it comes to food, I’m starting to feel like it’s the United States versus the rest of the world. In most of the countries I go to you don’t see a Walmart, Target, or Costco kind of store. There might be one or two like that in the whole country but it’s not the typical.

You also don’t see a lot of one stop shops where you can get tires, meat, and a swimsuit in the same place. This week’s (and next week’s) blog is about what I’ve learned from living outside the U.S., and how it is shaping the way I want to live and work from this point forward.

It’s been a four-year journey so there is a lot to share, so this is a two-part blog.

Why food is the fastest way to understand a country

In many countries outside the U.S., small business runs everything. It runs the economy, and it runs the food. The tourist and local food and economy.

In the U.S., food is often built around big business. That changes quality, price, and even what we think “normal” tastes like.

You don’t notice until you leave, but food in the US doesn’t taste the same. It’s lost a lot of flavor. Once you taste food in other countries, you realize something is missing. Food in the U.S. is not only missing vital nutrients, it’s also missing color and flavor. You don’t know what fruit tastes like anymore. I’m serious.

When you eat fruit and vegetables in other countries, you remember flavors you forgot existed. Carrots that taste like carrots. String beans that actually snap. Spinach so green you feel the iron in your body instantly and taste the real flavor as it lingers for a minute.

The common pattern almost everywhere

Here’s what I’ve seen across most of these places. Grocery stores are smaller. Refrigerators are smaller. People buy what they need more frequently, often daily. Food is less processed. Restaurants are affordable enough that cooking every meal is not required. People do not organize their lives around work the way we do in the U.S., so they spend more time sitting at restaurants, not rushing off to the next place.

That last one might be the biggest difference of all. Just how long people will sit in a restaurant. 

And grocery shopping is a big difference too. In most places, you are not doing one big grocery trip and filling up a refrigerator for two weeks. The rhythm is different. Food comes in fresh, and people buy what they need that day and maybe for breakfast the next day, but not all week. Then they come back to the store again and again. Usually buying only a few items that they could hold in their hands and you’ll see them walking down the street without a shopping bag. 

It’s not just the food. It’s the whole system.

Albania

I’m living in Tirana right now, and the food culture here makes you slow down without even trying. Many places don’t even offer a take-away option. You have to eat there.

Most food is sold separately in markets. Fish market. Meat market. Produce market. Sometimes even a market that sells only one item like eggs, cheese, or bread.

The grocery stores are smaller and when you do see a big one it’s still smaller than what we are used to in the US. The refrigerators are tiny and the freezer even smaller, because not much needs to be frozen. 

I haven’t figured out why they aren’t buying more but I’ll tell you later what I think it is. I’m still collecting data about it, but I have some ideas. I just noticed that it in most countries I go to, grocery shopping is done daily. It’s cultural, not like a poverty thing. It causes me a little decision fatigue to think about going to the grocery story each day, but that’s probably because I’m worried about things they aren’t

And here’s the part that really hit me.

Food can be so affordable that it sometimes makes more sense to go out to eat than to cook. Going out to eat doesn’t have to be a fancy thing or a special occasion. It’s just a way for them to get out and commune with each other, because the system and the pricing makes it easy to live this way.

In the U.S., I used to cook constantly. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I love cooking, but three meals a day takes a lot out of time. I did it because it was hard to find healthy food that tasted good and felt clean.

Here, I don’t have to live like that. The restaurants aren’t as cute as they are in the US but the food is better quality. And when you stop having to manage your food like a full-time job, something opens up. You realize how much mental energy you were spending just trying to take care of yourself.

France

I’ve been back to France each year since we started on this traveling journey. France is still my favorite overall place and it’s my favorite place to eat. Food is an experience in France. The restaurants and the grocery stores both feel like they respect the human body.

One of the smartest things I’ve seen in France is that many products have a rating system, from A to E. It gives you a quick way to see quality. A is higher quality. Lower sugar. Fewer preservatives. Better ingredients. By the time you get down to D and E, you’re usually looking at heavy sugar or more processed food.

They also treat bread differently. Bread is not meant to last two weeks. Bread is made daily. People eat it daily. Croissants. Baguettes. Brioche and a bunch of others you just have to try when you get there. All fresh bread, made daily, and you finish it quickly.

Cheese is also purchased in smaller amounts and is meant to be eaten fresh, not stored forever. You get two to three days tops to enjoy it and then you need to restock.

This is part of the reason refrigerators are small. Because you can’t store food for long, so you don’t need much space. My herbalist in France taught me that you eat in the moment, not based on what will expire soon. It’s about eating with passion, what does your body need to eat right now.

And the lifestyle matches it. People do what needs to be down now. They don’t plan for disasters or what the future might be. They think about what’s important to them now.

France is not built around hard work as an identity. It’s built around living and family and it never has to be stated. In the US you hear people say family is important to them. In France you never hear anyone say that, but you can tell by how they act and what they value. 

It can be “impossible” to get certain things done quickly, which can be frustrating. But I’ve found that if you keep pushing, you find it’s not impossible. It’s just not urgent to them the way it is to us.

Letting go of that urgency mentality can change your nervous system and allow you to relax. I believe France has made me a kinder, more patient person. Someone who takes two hour lunches only to leave there and have a 4 hour dinner with a different friend. 

Portugal and Thailand

Portugal was beautiful in a historical kind of way. The apartment buildings, churches, and other buildings still standing strong although they are 500 years old. I’ve never seen anything so old in America. That was fascinating, but the food did not excite me the way other places did. It was fine. It was healthy. It wasn’t worth going back for though.

But Portugal has really nice and welcoming people who do like to share their culture with you and are open to hearing about yours. Like most of the countries we visited, the older people don’t speak much English, but the young generation does. They love to practice their English with American tourists. The kind people made up for the boring food.

Thailand, on the other hand, has very exciting food.

I don’t eat much street food, but if you are a street food kind of person, Thailand is big in street food culture. If you struggle with street food, Bangkok will get on your nerves because it’s everywhere. Chiang Mai has a lot too, but they are more subtle. We spent most of our time in Northern Thailand, but we enjoy southern Thai food too. 

A lot of the street food options in Bangkok weren’t familiar, but in Chiang Mai, at least things were recognizable. Pad Thai is a made up dish that the country created to pull all the different areas together but it doesn’t belong to one group. The Thai food you eat in the US, and I’m not saying Chinese food, I mean Thai, is much different than when you are actually in Thailand.

Pork is very common, and since Jason and I do not eat pork, we had to navigate that carefully. Most of the street food is pork. However, we found a night market that had a lot of options and one restaurant right outside the night market that we loved so much that at one point we went there every day. We’ve had almost everything on their menu that’s not pork or scavenger.

Thailand taught me something important about daily life. People build their days around the flow of the neighborhood. When the food is gone, it’s gone. They aren’t making any more until tomorrow. So the early bird gets the worm in Chiang Mai. So you better have a second favorite, because your first choice might not be available.

I’d go as far as to say that the majority of the small business owners are restaurants. I don’t think anyone cooks if they don’t have a restaurant. It seems like everyone eats out.

And the food is so inexpensive. Jason and I could eat for like $2 to $3 dollars for the both of us together.

Before I move on, I must tell you that there is no better place for a coffee drinker than Thailand. Their coffee is on another level. Once you’ve had it, you will never go to Starbucks or Dunkin again.

It is precisely measured out and they get it right every time. The same exact flavor, over and over. I can’t explain it. You have to go, specifically to Chiang Mai, if you are a coffee connoisseur.

Where we pause

I think I better stop here for now, but there is so much more to tell you. In Part 2, I’m going to tell you about Mexico, Turkey, Monaco, and Malaysia.

I’ll continue to share what I’m seeing when it comes to grocery shopping, restaurants, small businesses, and why food feels so different outside the U.S. You’ve been told that the best food is in the US, but what if I told you I haven’t even told you about the country with the best food yet. 

I’ll tell you next week. 

And, if you're still curious or just want more information, this podcast explains in more detail.

To be continued.