Subway Sandwiches Reveal American Food Value

Yuan Zhou

WRIT-1133-21

Dr. Eric Leake

April 18, 2012

Subway Sandwiches Reveal American Food Value

         I went to Subway on Saturday morning around 8:30 am, and stay for observing until 9:15am. During this one hour, I have found that American food culture is completely different from Chinese food culture, in the aspects of food nutrition, food collocation and dinning area.

         Around the University of Denver, there are lots of fast food restaurants rather than the restaurants have waiters or waitresses. Every Chinese restaurant must have waiters or waitresses, because Chinese like to get together to have meal and talk with friends. However, American more focus on quick and convenient, so restaurants, such as Subway, Jimmy Johns and Deli Zone, are more popular around the University of Denver.

         During my observation, I mentioned that the customers were more likely to take out the food out of restaurant than stay at restaurant to finish the food. In addition, they were come to Subway on their own instead of coming with their friends.

         Because the people usually stay at Chinese restaurant to finish their food, Chinese restaurant have more dinning chair and dinning table. Subway is much smaller than other restaurant, such as Jason’s Thai and Star Kitchen, which are Chinese restaurants. Subway has normal standard of fast food restaurant, such as McDonald and KFC, where have 2-people-desk more than 4-people-desk and the decorations are simple and contemporary.

         Moreover, I found that people usually come to Subway alone or with his or her friend. People seldom come to fast food restaurant with two or more friends. That’s why Subway has 2-people-desk more than 4-people-desk. The desk configuration in Subway is very suitable for people who come to fast food restaurant and save money, because 4-people-desk is more expensive than 2-people-desk.

         In the aspect of food collocation, I observed that most costumer of Subway are likely to order a foot-long sandwich and then take out. There was few costumer stayed in Subway and finished the sandwich they ordered. In addition, the costumers who prefer to take the sandwich out of Subway usually order the Lay’s potato chips, which are already be packaged. By contrast, the costumers who would like to stay in Subway did not like to order the Lay’s potato chips, maybe because the Lay’s potato chips are not fresh fried and are having higher price than other stores have.

         Maybe because Subway used “Five dollars a foot” for advertising, American usually order a-foot-long sandwich in Subway instead of ordering 6-inch-long sandwich as I usually do. When I went to Subway with my friends, my friends also were tend to have a 6-inch-long sandwich, because we thought 6-inch-long sandwich is enough to fulfill our stomach. However, Americans are usually can consume a whole a-foot-long sandwich. Chinese likely to eat vegetable oil, while American usually made food with animal oil with high cholesterol, because animal oil tastes better than vegetable oil. Maybe it is the reason why American restaurant would offer such large size food.

         In the aspect of food nutrition, the Menu of Subway is very representative of American food culture. Even though Subway is using “healthy” for advertising, it is not that healthy than Subway’s advertisement said. There is few option of green vegetable in the menu, and most of food has very high protein. Furthermore, there are many choices of cheese, such as American cheese (white cheese), provolone, pepper jack, swiss, mozzarella and cheddar. All of them are not good for health! Because of lacking cellulose, it is very common to see a person having the digestive system diseases.

         Additionally, most of the customers in Subway do not heat their sandwiches and just have them with cold temperature. It is very different from what Chinese would do when have meal. The food in China is more focus on “Guoqi”, which means the food should be cooked in big fire. If the food cooked in big fire, the food would be more delicious and make people have appetite. Therefore, usually Chinese food is hotter than American food.

The last detail I have observed is that a number of customers came in Subway with coffee. Maybe Starbucks is right next to Subway. It reflects the American culture--- Productive, because coffee may increase blood lipids and stimulate the heart so that people can be awake during all day. It is efficient to work drinking a cup of coffee.

After I went to Subway for my research paper, I knew the differences between American food culture and Chinese food culture.