Food

Eating out in L.A. is easy.  There is a plethora of eateries, from the hundreds of franchises and fast-food joints to local restaurants, cafes and bars.  And then there's also eateries in other places people like to visit; like cinemas, museums, car dealerships, furniture stores (well, okay, maybe just IKEA).  There appears to be no shortage of food.  In many cases, like the coffee, it is a matter of quantity over quality.  Yes, the servings are huge.  An appetite can be lost merely contemplating the mountain of food on one's plate.  And then there are the sides, they always come with salad or home fries or potato crisps.  And there is usually dipping sauce involved: creamy ranch, tangy blue cheese, ketchup, barbeque, mayonnaise, sweet chili, hot sauce, cheddar, you name it.  They dip fries, corn chips, chicken wings, burritos, tacos, sandwiches (yes, you heard me).  Dippity dip dip dip.  Everything is improved by dipping sauce apparently.  These are the calories people forget to count.

A disturbing thing to note about food in L.A. (and, presumably, in most other parts of the country) is the use of corn syrup as a staple ingredient of, well, pretty much everything.  It's insidious and highly calorific.  Americans have a shocking sweet tooth, even the bread is sweetened (with, you guessed it, high fructose corn syrup).  HFCS replaces cane sugar in most instances, which is probably one of the reasons why familiar brands of chocolate bars taste different here than in Australia.  Hersheys is possibly the most horrible, bland, mouth tacky chocolate I've ever tasted.  Well, it's compound chocolate to begin with, which means there's more sweetener than cocoa in it.  And that sweetener of course is corn syrup.  Bleurgh!  When I buy chocolate from the supermarket, I stick to imported brands such as Lindt.  As for bread, I don't buy that much of it, and when I do I seek out English Muffins from Trader Joe's (a great little grocery store chain that stocks more organic, less chemically-enhanced, and generally delicious food items) or lavash, which is a flatbread (something like Mountain Bread).