Santiago Randoms 3 - overweight Chile!

Before we get to Part 4 of Northern Chile, we thought we'd do another quick Santiago Randoms post - inspired as we are by Burger King's latest brainwave to cater to the local market (see another from a previous post here). Or maybe that's unfair on the local market, maybe what we're seeing is BK making the market.

In our Santiago Randoms 1 post we talked about some of the vast array of fast food options here in Santiago - it's certainly popular and pretty interesting, hotdogs and burgers slathered in avocado, chopped tomato and mayo. When we teach the "going out for a meal" module to our students it's not unusual for them to say their favourite restaurant is McDonalds - one of Struan's went so far as to describe Big Macs as "ricissimo", which is so tasty that it's off the scale. Indescribably tasty.

So Burger King is currently advertising its "Stacker" burger here, with the catchline "toda la carne a la parilla" - all the meat on the grill. 

This multiple pattie, bacon and cheese monstrosity has been around in the US since 2006, we don't know if it since made it to the UK.

Each to their own of course, many of our students are kids, and Struan recalls a famous birthday (famous to himself and maybe his mother) on which he put away the full contents of the 20 Chicken McNugget sharing box, then was unwell. Because he could, it was his birthday. Nevertheless, it remains a mystery as to why here in Santiago people often prefer a processed burger over a lovely Chilean style meat sandwich like a Barros Luco - it's bread, thinly sliced griddled beef, and melted cheese. Lovely. Explanations include pricing strategies, relative "exoticness"/ propaganda (alright, advertising), or maybe that mysterious addictive chemical that has forever been rumoured to be in fast food...  

some proper Chilean food - the awesome pastel de choclo!

One thing seems to be certain though, Chile is rapidly getting fat. An Economist survey (based on OECD data) has Chile as the seventh most obese nation in the OECD list. The only Latin American country that comes higher, and the only other higher placed country that could be described as a developing nation, is Mexico. The USA leads comfortably. 

We don't pretend to know exactly why Chileans are getting fatter, it's really complicated and all. For sure, Chilean food, and Chileans' eating habits, are not particularly healthy. We have a Chilean friend whose girlfriend is a nutritionist, she told us that the average Chilean adult eats 1 kilo of bread each day - children eat 700 grams. For sure also, despite all of the amazing fruit and veg available here, if there's meat and potatoes on the menu, many Chileans will go for them. It seems to us that while the country has been developing, meaning more people are working in offices, people in Santiago particularly continue to eat as if they are going out to work in the fields all day - as they're wealthier they probably eat even more now than they might have done in the past, then go, erm, sit it off.   

Ass sandwich - some proper Chilean fast food

Almost certainly, it seems, populations get fat as countries get wealthier. No surprise there. It is perhaps striking though that if you look at the Economist's list, from Chile upwards, you'll find the two Latin American countries most heavily influenced by the US, the country in Europe most influenced by the US (Britain/ UK, yes we're fat too), and three other Western "Anglo" countries.

We don't want to be controversial, we're just observers, and we're certainly not preaching. And, in the interests of balance, the USA is a good thing in other ways, but in our view US style fast food is not one of those ways. Here's a video debate from the US on this.

BK's "toda la carne a la parilla" may well be another of BK's attempts to cater to the local market - the tagline seems to attempt to conjure up the Chilean weekend and holiday event of the "Parilla": a family/ friends barbecue. We blogged about the bicentenario Fondas previously which are huge public barbecues. But BK's effort is fast food, not a day or evening of slowly cooking and savouring lovely meat with some excellent wine. We're not sure the local market was looking for four burgers in one, but if it's on the menu people will eat it defo. Chile has a proportionately young population, not particularly well educated in health and food, but wealthy enough to buy fast food. It's like a sweet spot for this kind of thing.

Chile is a meat-eating society, but maybe, rather than catering to the local market, marketing it as "all of the meat on the grill" makes eating four processed burgers in one go seem ok and normal, traditionally Chilean even - that's how advertising works isn't it? Or if not then if all those wealthy Americans eat this then it must be ok?

a proper Parilla

We're just giving some opinions here, would Chile be slimmer if the likes of BK and McDonalds weren't here? We don't know, but this stuff probably isn't going to help. It doesn't seem like a good transition to make, accepting that desk-bound Chileans will at some point have to move away from eating farmers' food every day. Having lived here for a few months now we've come to the conclusion that Chile's "system" (generally speaking) is similar to the US in some ways, just with much less money sloshing around. One of those ways is health care - public provision is poor (and poorer) and limited, and private health care requires expensive insurance. The rest of the story will perhaps tell itself.