In places like India and other developing or less developed countries, people with low-ish incomes (students, recent grads, working people) can live on street food. There is a huge variety available just outside any residence or workplace. Unlike American convenience or fast foods, it’s not all high fat stuff either. And it is dead cheap. Why is this kind of convenience absent in the United States?
It’s common as pigeon shit in New York City. Within blocks of my office I’ve got street carts with soup, chicken and lamb gyros or rice platters, burgers, souvlaki, sandwiches, and of course the ubiquitous pretzels and hot dogs.
I wouldn’t call much of that “healthful”, though, friedo. Likewise, here in Chicago, we have a lot of Mexican corn (with mayo, cheeze product, salt, pepper, and hot sauce), tamales, churros, hot dogs, etc. - yummy, indeed, but not healthful.
I think there are two reasons - one is that people here, ultimately, don’t *want *healthful. At least, not enough to buy enough of it to support the guy with the hummus and bell pepper cart. They’ll pass him right by to go to the chili cheese dog guy.
The second is our Food Police. The emphasis on food safety is… more significant in our country than in the others you mention. Running a cart, it’s harder than running a brick and mortar building to keep your hot things hot enough and your cold things cold enough and bins closed enough to keep the health inspectors happy.
I think there are two questions here:
(1) Why no street-vendors of food in the US (apart from the NYC example mentioned by friedo)?
(2) Why is fast food in the US not as nutritious as in places like India?
I think the answer to the first question is in part because there are fewer people walking in the street in the US than there are in India, and in part because American cities don’t want street-vendors of food (perhaps because they are thought of as unhygienic, perhaps because they compete with fast-food places)
For the second, I think it’s because American consumers really do prefer high-fat high-salt meals like a cheeseburger with fries, even though they know they really aren’t all that healthy.
Adding to that, we don’t walk anywhere except for people in very large cities with well-defined downtowns and dense residential areas. In the rest of the country, instead of street carts, we do McDonald’s, because that’s just easier in a car.
There is also a population density issue. Street vendors need a high number of folks on foot. That might work in New York or downtown Chicago, but never in Los Angeles or Houston or Sacramento, probably not in San Francisco or Honolulu either.
ETA: Too late! Damn it!
Just as an example, my wife says that when she was living in Calcutta, she could get a filling dinner of lentils, vegetable curry, and two whole-wheat flatbreads for what amounted to pennies.
I’m thinking that the legal restrictions on food service are key here, because it seems that in the few instances I’ve heard of people setting up renegade food services in the United States (particularly for working class immigrant populations), they have been wildly successful until they were shut down by the authorities.
We have taco wagons all over the barrios in LA. A taco wagon is either a hot lunch truck that parks in one place or a trailer that is towed to a spot and parked for several hours.
That may be true based on the currency exchange rate, but I doubt it’s true if you calculate price relative to the average worker’s salary. I’d further guess that a lot of the customers there would buy hamburgers if it were available at the same price as lentil/vegetable curry, but it isn’t.
What I’m trying to say is, Americans buy high-fat fast food because they can afford to, and there’s not much of a market for $2 vegetarian meals.
I don’t recall such examples, which ones do you have in mind?
I’m kind of doubting that hamburgers would be a viable retail concept in Calcutta…
I recall hearing something on public radio about an impromptu overnight restaurant set up in the parking lot of a taxi garage … in the San Francisco area, I think. It was very successful.
Hon, you just sent me to the burrito wagon. We also have hot dog venders and a downtown farmer’s market during the summer. There are at least two year-round markets, but they’re not downtown, where I work, so I’m not as familiar.
See you after the burrito.
In Honolulu, it’s not unheard of for people to buy lunches from lunch wagons. Granted, they don’t line the sidewalks in downtown, but there are a few that used to set up near libraries, beaches, hospitals, and industrial areas-- places where there are a lot of people but lunchtime options are slim. They operate for maybe 4 hours a day, say between 10am and 2pm. The food is good and priced about the same/slightly cheaper than fast food, and there are usually lines.
Or at least there used to be. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them are gone.
Sure they would, as long as they’re made out of something other than beef or pork. McDonalds in India uses makes their burgers out of chicken.
I have encountered dozens of people who, operating out of thier homes, would zoom around to various businesses tossing out flyers and such taking orders for food to be delivered to us at lunch time. They would basically put out a flyer with what they were offering over the next few days and offered a small discount of we had 3 or more orders at the same place ($4.50 instead of $5). It would be things like a variety of sandwich options w/chips, spaghetti w/ garlic bread, soup/salads, meatloaf, sliced turkey/gravy, mashed potatoes, etc. It didn’t look mass produced at all so it was probably stuff they made themselves at home in large batches. it was always good and I would be amazed if they were an inspected food service establishment of any kind.
:smack:
I never even thought of that…
Eww…
Nope. The “McBurger” is goat.
The chicken ones have “chicken” in the name.
In the interests of complete disclosure, I must report that the chicken burrito was quite tasty. I had to use both hands.
Downtown Portland has a flourishing population of street vendors selling everything from vegan burritos to Indian food to hot dogs to Chinese and Thai food to Pho to the typical junky “street food” like churros and pretzels. Add to that the mobile vendors, like the bazillion taco trucks, sandwich trucks, pizza vendors and other miscellaneous gypsy food vendors that cycle around to various locations (like Freightliner on Swan Island, which usually has 20-30 trucks parked out front during the lunch periods) during the day, with the taco trucks especially doing land office business after the bars close and I’d say we have no lack of street food here.
One of these days I’m going to buy a roach coach and run around feeding people–that’s my dream business!
To get a better understanding of why the fast food business is the way it is, I urge one and all to read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser.
The cliff’s notes of why fast food is so unhealthful in the US is that fat, salt and sugar are cheaper to produce, easier to handle, and sell more at the register. There’s a good reason McDonald’s fries taste about the same no matter which McDonald’s you walk into (in the US-- the secret formula varies by country)