Ok, yeah, some gourmet burgers are too big, but I’m not talking about size. I’m talking about flavor, spices, juiciness, freshness – a completely different experience from the reconstituted fried cardboard that that McCrap chicken burger I recently had was made of.
Interesting. I’m still perplexed, though. I’m not sure that I can step outside of my own value system, actually. 
Ok, to each her own, I guess.
Empathy - you just think what other people might be thinking and why that might be.
‘Ok, yeah, some gourmet burgers are too big, but I’m not talking about size. I’m talking about flavor, spices, juiciness, freshness – a completely different experience from the reconstituted fried cardboard that that McCrap chicken burger I recently had was made of.’
But in my view, they really do taste like shit. It’s still mystery meat on cheap bread. An unbalanced, high fat, high calorie, unpleasant, unhealthy, heavily marked up snob-junk meal. But I can understand why that might activate someone’s tastebuds, appetite, and also the less tangible things that food inspires: the feeling that we are ‘treating ourselves’ to something that although nutritionally a bad idea, pleasure, fat, salt, memories of the emotions these meals throw up from childhood, etc, etc.
Your diet, amply delineated on these boards, would make me ill, even fatter, and dreading every meal. Yet it clearly suits you from a health and a pleasure standpoint, as well as giving you that intangible feeling that you are giving yourself something ‘good’. Most people do the same, but what they enjoy is different.
Are we talking Taiwan or the world?
Personal preference. Palate range. Wallet capabilities. Intelligence. Previous experiences. All human markers which exist beyond a ‘society’ and which explain the desire/ need for ‘cheap crap.’
(I had a gourmet burger in the UK once, 5 times the price and I still got the shits from it.)
Just to have a little fun with you here but you do realise that lack of understanding about why people like things you don’t, and wanting things to be more how you want them is a sign of growing old!?!
Anyhoo…
One mans trash is another mans treasure. I think you’ll need to keep hold of that motto, or start that commune!
Well, isn’t that how it goes? But I’m with you here, as since I left home some 11 years ago, I’ve learnt how to make a lot of things due to the fact that it’s not commonly available or over priced where I live and much of what I make on my own tastes better than the supermarket equivalent back home. Most of it comes down to pure laziness, as it’s easier to pick something more or less ready made up than making your own.
I’ve really gone of “junk food” although I am partial to Taco Bell when in the US. I eat at subways, but imho that’s at least a slightly better choice, but only just. I don’t mind the stuff off the little stalls here in the 'wan though, but I eat that maybe once or twice a month so…
But that doesn’t mean I eat healthy, it just means I like a properly cooked meal most of the time made out of real ingredients, not some random stuff that I can’t identify.
Your reality has shaped your morality. That is true for the other 6 billion people on this earth, and as we all have a unique reality… do the math.
I agree. I eat really well because I cook every day. Problem is, most folk don’t have the time, inclination or ability to cook for themselves. They just want something quick to ease the hunger pangs.
Allow me to add: I’m no more “healthy” for home-cooking. I still drink most of a bottle of Scotch and smoke 3 packs a day. I just prefer the zen of cooking for myself (and the taste).
Well Mr TomHill, you’re free to eat whatever you want, I won’t judge you for it, all I’m saying is that McD isn’t for me.
McD isn’t for me either. I think phrases like ‘properly cooked meal, real ingredients and junk food (as opposed to fast food)’ do have judgements attached to them though…
The Hamburger prepared properly, (not all gourmet burgers are proper), is a wonderful thing.
Big Mac’s are not burgers. They are Big Mac’s.
Big Mac’s in Taiwan generally have too much salt and insufficient special sauce.
You say that as if judgements were a bad thing. 
I mean, who ‘cooks’ food, in this day and age? Don’t these people realise that it destroys some of the vitamins in many veggies?
I just had a blender drink made with apple and parsley from my garden, avocado, broccoli sprouts I grew myself, and other greens from the farm down the road. And Chilean blueberries. I feel a bit guilty about the waste of that, but I don’t eat meat, so that makes up for it. I put flax seeds, pumpkin seeds and a bit of spirulina and raw cocoa nibs in it, and a splash of homemade oat milk… I can’t conceive of why anyone would eat a bagel for breakfast ! (you get the idea, eh?) 
Urrgh…some eat to live. Some live to eat. I know what camp I sit in.
Groo, try eating raw veg for a while. You’ll love it. Or not, because you don’t really like them, and believe that cooking doesn’t make much difference. 
Let me get this straight, you’re drinking liquified puke and questioning why anyone would eat something with a pleasant texture, comes in a variety of tastes, fills you up for the morning, and goes extremely well with smoked fish, cream cheese, red onions maybe, a slice of aged cheddar?
On a side note: What is Judo?
It’s what bagels are made from.
There’s nothing wrong with raw vegetables, as long as I get it as a side dish with my meat… 
TwoTongues 
It’s rocket fuel! Keeps me going till lunch, which will be a salad of rocket, tomatoes, quinoa and avocado, and a handful of walnuts. Orange blender drink for dinner, with tofu in it. It keeps me happy and well. I do, of course, eat other stuff. I have a weakness for eggs and toast. But my point was not ‘Look what I eat!’, it was we all have different ideas of pleasure, nourishment, food ethics, etc, which inform our choices. Bagels are not ‘bad’, they’re just quite high calorie and low nutritional value, and don’t suit my tastes. Lost Swede, you missed the point, by a mile. Sneering at people’s food choices is a passtime of certain groups, in the communication age.
We all live in the modern world, and we make compromises either for convenience, of because we just bloody want to, sometimes. Nothing to look down on.
And can this guy get entered into ‘Worst joke of 2010’, please? I think we have a winner in March, already!
I thought it sounded quite interesting. I would try that.
Sometimes I put some of those same rocket fuel ingredients in my bagels, English muffins and other breads, like flax seeds, pumpkin seeds and walnuts. Flax seeds are awesome in bread. 
Sounds good. Sorry, I really wasn’t trying to say ‘my breakfast good - your breakfast bad’, just that sometimes we eat things for different reasons.
Google ‘green smoothie’, if you’re interested. There’s a lot of hippie crap out there, but they really do improve your health a lot. Flax and seed and nut oils are best raw, and in their original shape (not pressed), if poss.
And this is, I know, sacrilege to you, but I hate bread.
Joke? I wasn’t joking, I really like vegetables and I don’t mind them raw, but I need more than just greens to sustain me through the day.
I eat semi-decent cereal/muesli and home made yoghurt for breakfast which I’m sure most people would call an abomination.
But as for mixing all the vegetables up to a sludge and drinking it, no thanks, that’s not for me. 
Give me a fruit and yoghurt based smoothie and I’m happy, but that’s as far as I’ll go.
It’s also fairly obvious that no-one is allowed to have a different opinion or even make the least bit of fun out of you, despite what you’re saying…