US has all the good foods.....

living in the UK really sucks at times......especially listening to all the yummy stuff that is available across the water!  No Kashi cereal, no vitatops muffins, no trader joe's, jello products, plain popcorn is hard to find.....the list could go on and on  *sigh*  It's just not fair.

if it makes you feel any better, we also have a lot of yucky foods here too...

like fried pork rinds, potted meat, and pickled eggs

:)

come for a visit! see if you like it!

Sounds like a good excuse to move...

I'll trade with you.  seriously.  lol, i'm dying to live in the UK.  (I'm from California by the way...)

I don't live in the UK but I live in Europe so I can relate. I used to live in the US but since i've lived here (university) i'm always craving random foods and restaurants only found it the US. I'm going back for the summer in May and I already now the first foods and restaurants I'm going to. Five Weeks! And I just had my Mom send me a package with a ton of easter candy, and kashi go lean cereal and zone bars. Miss those so much.

I was thinking the same thing today. Here in Norway we don't have any good and healthy cereals, no granola bars, no 100 cal portion packages, and very few low fat/low cal versions of things (such as dairy products, tortillas etc). I was grocery shopping today and decided to find myself a good low cal ice cream, seeing as spring is here. But there were none. In the best stocked grocery store in my town. I can't replace foods with healthier options, so I just have to eat less...

i'm canadian but will be moving to the us within the next month or two - what i notice is their portions sizes are HUGE - to the point of being extreme - most entrees are 3 times the size of portions here - wondering what portion sizes are like in the uk, norway, etc.

p.s. you think you have it bad - try eating beaver tail - lol - seriously, beaver tail is a calorie laden fried canadian donut - i like my beaver tails smothered in honey (once a year thing)

Same with living in Australia
EVen your Lean Cuisine Meals beat the pants of ours.

Its a bit harder having an indulgent treat or low cal filling meal if you dont have -

PB2, Cool Whip - Fat Free, Super Jello - diet jelly, pudding cups (60 cal), sundae toppers, Jello Sugar/Fat Free isntant pudding, Butter buds, ICBINB Spray, No pudge - brownies and icecream, Skinny cow - Icecreams at 90cal!?! Danon light n' fit non fat, best range of 'Veggie' foods - bacon, patties, boca, quorn, All whites/Egg beaters
Breyer's Cal Smart Double Churned, Amy's anything substantial (we have her soups, but not low sodium), Fibre One, Kashi, Almond BReeze, Trader Joes... and the list goes on.

But I get around it I guess :D And we have plenty of vegemite@!

At least you ave low cal frozen dinners. I can't find a frozen dinner here for less than 900 calories...

During a particularly bad Kashi Go Lean craving, I emailed Kelloggs about whether they had any plans to start stocking it in the UK. They fobbed me off about British people having different tastebuds... grrrr! But said they would take my comments into consideration as they are always considering new products etc.  Fancy a British calorie-counters lobby group?! hehehehe. This forum hasn't been very good for my bank balance... things always sound so yummy I end up buying them on ebay(.com not .co.uk). PB2 is in the post... I won't even mention how much I had to waste on shipping!

It's nice to know that I am not alone in my frustration :o)

The portion sizes at some restaurants here are getting pretty big, in my opinion.  But 'standard' British fare isn't exactly slimming....Fish n Chips, Battered Sausages, Pie and Chips, Sausage and Mash, Chips, Chips, Chips, Crisps and more Chips (French fries and potato chips for those in the US) tons of cakes, and cream cakes, scones, Indian take away, deep fried mars bars (think those are more Scottish), pork pies, Cornish Pasties, Scotch Eggs.

I'm going to pretend I didn't see that about ebay and ordering food, I'd hate to think about the shipping!

Never heard of Beaver Tail Rushme and I grew up in Canada, the Vancouver end of the country.  I am moving back December this year and have got my ticket !! I can't bloody wait! lol  Now the trick will be not to gain like 20 pounds upon arrival as I will be able to get all the yummy stuff I haven't seen in 5 years!

Last night I noticed the takeaway on my road sells BATTERED BURGERS!!! Can you think of anything more rough?! ewww

Then there's all the bars - cocoavia (chocolate with less guilt) luna bars kashi go lean bars, fibre one bars. Ah well, at least i'm not stuffing myself full of fake sugars all the time. I use them, but if I had the US's supply of food, my intake of non-"natural" food would def decrease.

PASTIES!!!

*sigh* I grew up eating those despite being American (we had a lot of Cornish miners settle in the area during the copper boom.)  So yummy and filling . . . and then I saw the calorie count on the one I ate last week.  *groan*

It's funny -- Americans seem to have this mindset that European food is much tastier and healthier than their standard fare (read: fast food, junk food.)  I never really stopped to think that the U.S. might actually be setting a trend with HEALTH food. 

(I must admit to an occasional craving for gianduia [hazelnut chocolate from Italy] and a real Cadbury bar.)

 not really. america is the land of high fructose corn syrup and partially hydronated oils. they sneak these awful ingredients, including Msg and aspartame into almost everything. without us knowing. the HFCS 9 corn syrup) is part of the reason i feel america is having diabetes more often.

but i guess foods are just as bad over the pond? basically local grown and created food is usually healthier and better for you, regardless if its deep fried, even that is better than processed.

unfortunately I wouldn't call most of what is in the supermarkets here as locally grown or created.  that used to be the case here but unless you shop for at a farmers market then most is pre-packed made by some large company.  It's more and more 'Americanized' here all the time but they are a bit slow on the health food front, slowly getting better and there are more health food stores open now and more light and low fat items becoming available in the major store chains.  Up until fairly recently it was harder to find things like canned fruit packed in juice, tuna in springwater (generally it's brine here), and canned veg generally has salt and sugar.

Diabetes is definitely on the rise here as well as is obesity, but then the two are linked.