AIBU to think this is a daft way to eat "healthily"?

[workwoes123]

I live in France. Like many French workplaces, mine has a cantine offering a freshly-cooked, 3/4 course, lunch which is absolutely standard here. Examples of the menu on offer:

Small plate of salad starter: carrot / beetroot / green beans in vinaigrette, mixed bean salad, boiled eggs, rice salad, green salad, tomato salad etc.

Main course of protein plus veg and carbs: beef casserole, grains and courgette gratin: roast chicken leg, potatoes, green beans; fish in lemon sauce, rice, spinach etc.

Dairy: small portion of cheese, or a yoghurt

Dessert: fruit puree, fromage blanc with rasberry coulis; small piece of cake; fruit salad.

The food quality is not quite restaurant standard, but it's healthy, cheap (€4,50 for 4 courses) and mostly cooked on site from actual ingredients. All courses are optional, no one's forced to eat anything.

At a social event with some US colleagues one of them said he's really struggling with the food at the cantine as 'he doesn't know what's in it'. Instead he goes out at lunchtime and buys a processed meal / salad / packaged sandwiches because they have a barcode on them: he can apparently scan this using his phone and it tells him the fat /sugar / calorie content of what he's eating. He claims that this is 'healthier' than eating actual food at the cantine.

It seems mad to me to actively increase the amount of processed food at the expense of fresh ingredients, and claim this is 'healthier'? I can just about see the point of this when comparing one processed food with another - but dismissing freshly-cooked food because it doesn't come with a barcode? Seems crazy to me!

Oh wonderful. Another faux concerned “aren’t American diets so unhealthy” thread.

Is he using my fitness pal? My OH stays away from meals he can’t quantify easily with the app.

Sounds a bit like an eating disorder to me. The obsession with macros is a kind of orthopaedics, common in guys who go to the gym a lot/body build.

Orthorexia not orthopaedics sorry

Is he calorie counting? Seems daft to me too, but I can see if he’s calorie counting then there is some odd sense of logic there, guesstimating calories vs actual numbers. Your canteen sounds amazing btw!

Your cantine sounds wonderful. I would perhaps have left the nationality out of your thread as some people are professionally offended though.

If he's counting calories I can well understand why he'd do that.

As an aside, if I ate all that at lunchtime I'd be asleep all afternoon.

Your canteen food sounds great, but it would be impossible to accurately count calories (for example), so if your colleague needs to lose weight to be healthy then buying 'known' foods would be better. (Obviously that doesn't have to be food with a barcode, they could make from scratch and know what's in it).

Personally I think it's a shame your canteen doesn't openly publish the information about what's in the food so people can make informed choices, I think food labeling (like we do on food in shops) should be mandatory for restaurants/canteens.

Well obviously if you're counting calories it's easier to scan food with a barcode then random meals.

Just because something is fresh, it doesn’t mean that it can’t be really calorie dense if that’s what you’re counting. They may also be trying to hit a specific macro goal too which would be much harder to estimate with canteen food.

Sadly, there’s no cure for stupid.

I have diabetes, canteen food is a nightmare as I can calculate my insulin need. Being able to eat what you want is a luxury many of us don’t have.

It sounds a bit ridiculous but if it helps him then so be it.

As an aside, if I ate all that at lunchtime I'd be asleep all afternoon.

And this is why some countries have siestas after lunch

Wow, your cantine sounds amazing.

Yep, I think your colleague is mad. I have a theory that technology is stopping people thinking or using common sense. Instead of thinking to himself that the food is healthy and so much better for him he can’t cope unless he can zap the code and his app can metaphorically tap him on the head and say“well done”

Sadly this is happening more and more.

@RicherThanYew Possibly - but I'm Scottish and don't get offended when our national diet is criticised for the deep fried pizzas and Irn-Bru.

@NadiaVulvokov - possibly - but there were quite a few others nodding along with him like this was a sensible thing to do (I'm not going to mention their nationality).

He's being lazy, he really should be able to work out roughly what is in each meal and plug the ingredients into the App.

I don't think it's bashing the Americans at all. We were surprised in Belgium to learn that many of the U.S. military personnel there would drive to the PX rather than buy food from a Belgian supermarket. It might have been cost or wanting particular cuts of meat that the Belgians didn't do.

@devildeepbluesea

I eat there 3 days a week when I'm working, and tbh I love it. I try to avoid carbs and it makes it so easy to have a "proper" meal at mid day that's not a sandwich etc. In fact they don't even sell anything snacky - no sandwiches, no crisps, no chocolate bars, no biscuits. It keeps me going till dinner at 7pm without snacking. And then a smallish dinner.

You sound a bit over invested in your colleagues choices. If I was on a diet I’d probably rather just have a sandwich for lunch than a three course meal!

In my next life, I'm coming back to live in France, OP.

As you were.

I use myfitnesspal to track calorie intake and I find that if I go somewhere for lunch where I can’t reasonably accurately estimate the calories, my brain goes ‘fuck it’ for the rest of the day and that’s how I end up at midnight on the sofa with a family bag of crisps.
I save my ‘fuck it’ days for ones that are special, like birthdays, family meals etc.
Maybe it’s just about willpower and discipline for him?
Your canteen sounds amazing but I’d be scared by not knowing about the amount of oil/butter/cream etc in things. I suppose I could have the salad and the fruit salad.

Outside of the smaller group who have to count for reasons of health and need the reassurance of a label then it either points to obsessive behaviours or a complete misunderstanding of health. As a diabetic I can judge whether one salad or pot of beans or pudding is likely to affect me. As an eater a balanced diet of home made food from a broad range of ingredients is gold standard. Anyone who has been to America won’t be that surprised that some may have unusual approaches to their diet. Light touch regulation of advertising and the food industry has not produced a great attitude to eating.

I think it sounds heavenly. At work I can buy shit white wraps with spongey chicken, crisps, biscuits, pasta pots of overcooked gluey starch with over sweet sauce, tiny fruit tubs with mainly water melon or burgers on more shit bread. It costs about the same as your place.

Yeah, he's being a div.

In my past life I occasionally made visits to the Airbus office in France. It's been nearly a decade and I still remember some of the canteen meals I ate there.

There's a lot of pressure on people to calorie count, particularly using apps - on one weight-loss thread I mentioned I wasn't interested in counting calories and got some quite passive-aggressive replies. My reasons were similar - I eat mainly food from scratch and don't have time to meticulously weigh portions, ingredients etc. Once i did enter a branded pie into my app, and it was easy, so I can see the appeal (although the values in the app were different from those on the pie packet! ) especially for people that need to be in control of their app data and not use sensible guesswork.
I worked in a French canteen once, the food was amazing!