Traditional Meals in Britain

The usual meals in Britain are: breakfast, lunch, tea and supper. Breakfast is generally a bigger meal than they have on the continent, though some English people like a continental breakfast of rolls, butter and coffee. But the usual English breakfast is porridge or cornflakes with milk or cream and sugar, bacon and eggs, marmalade made from oranges with buttered toasts and tea or coffee. For a change, you can have a boiled egg, cold ham or, perhaps, fish.

People in Britain generally have lunch about one o'clock. The businessman in London usually finds it impossible to come home for lunch, and so he goes to a cafe or restaurant; but if he is making lunch at home, he has cold meat, potatoes, salad and pickles with a pudding of fruit to follow. Sometimes people have a mutton chop or steak and chips followed by biscuits and cheese, and some people like a glass of light beer with lunch.

Afternoon tea you could hardly call a meal but it is a sociable sort of thing as friends often come in then for a chat while they have their cup of tea, cake or biscuit.

In some houses dinner is the biggest meal of the day. In many English homes people make the midday meal the chief one of the day, and in the evening they have the much simpler supper - an omelette or sausages, sometimes bacon and eggs, and sometimes just bread and cheese, a cup of coffee or cocoa and fruit.

Some people also have «high tea». They say there is no use for these afternoon teas where you try to hold a cup of tea in one hand and a piece of bread and butter about as thin as a sheet of paper in the other. They have it between five and six o'clock, and have ham or tongue and tomatoes and salad or sausages with good strong tea, plenty of bread and butter, then stewed fruit, with cream or custard and pastries or a good cake. And that's what an Englishman calls a good tea.

Task 1. Match a word in A with the definition in B.

A B

1. Christmas Pudding 2. Marmalade 3. Scones 4. Custard 5. Ketchup 6. Gravy

a) Sweet mixture of eggs and milk, sweetened and flavored, and baked or boiled. It is often eaten with fruit. b) Cake made from eggs, flour, sugar, mixed dried fruit, chopped peel, grated carrot and shredded suet. c) A sauce made chiefly from the juice that comes out of meat while it is being cooked. d) Sauces are the extracted juices of vegetables or fruit preserved with spices, salt and vinegar. e) Small soft tea cakes of barley meal or wheat-flour usually of quadrant or triangular shape d) It can be made from any of the citrus fruits, sweet oranges, grapefruit and lemons

American meals

What does a typical American or Canadian usually eat? Most people think that typical American diet consists mostly of fast food-hamburgers and French fries. It also includes convenience foods, usually frozen or canned, "junk food" without much food value - candy, potato chips, and cereal with lots of sugar but no vitamins and so on. This diet is high in sugar, salt, fat and high in cholesterol, and the choice of food does not provide good nutrition.

However, eating habits are changing. North Americans are becoming more interested in good health, and nutrition is an important part of health. People are eating less red meat and fewer eggs, and they are eating more chicken and fish. They know that chicken and fish are better for their health than meat or eggs because these foods do not contain much fat or cholesterol.

Some food might cause health problems, and people want to stay away from it.

For health reasons, many people are also buying more fresh vegetables. They may eat them without cooking them first, or they might cook them quickly in very little water because they want to keep the vitamins. The "typical" North American diet now includes food from many different countries. More ethnic restaurants are opening in big cities in the United States and Canada. Foods from Japan, Thailand, Mexico, West Africa, China, and India are very popular. At lunchtime many people go to ethnic fast-food places for a Mexican taco, Middle Eastern falafel, or Philippine lumpia.

How are we going to eat in the future? We will probably continue to eat more fish and vegetables and less meat. We will still buy convenience food, but frozen food will be better for our health, and canned food will have less salt and sugar. Our "junk food" in the future is not really going to be "junk" at all, because instead of candy bars we are going to eat "nutrition bars" with a lot of vitamins and protein. In the future our diet will probably be even more interesting and healthful than it is now.

Fast food

Everyone is always in a hurry these days. No one has time to sit and enjoy a meal with a friend. People want to eat now and they want to eat fast. The fast food industry tries to give them what they want, when they want it. It's an industry that's getting bigger all the time. The big names in American fast food are now well known all over the world, McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut sell pizzas, chips, hot dogs, hamburgers and fried chicken from Los Angeles to London and Tokyo to Turin.

These multi-million dollar companies work hard, to get more customers. Big lights and TV advertisements are not enough. The waiters wear special uniforms. There are lots of big mirrors and bright colours. Many of the fast food restaurants have special offers for families and do their best to attract children. Some even organise children's birthday parties. For busy parents with no ideas and plenty of money, a birthday party at McDonald's can save a lot of time and trouble. But you can't eat fast food all the time. Doctors say chips make you fat, and dentists say coca cola spoils your teeth. It's the old, old story everything that's nice is bad for you!