“Eating Healthy” in Spain by Morgan Zueger

Before I arrived in Spain, I had high expectations for their gastronomy. I thought I would get these four months to eat super healthy every day, with home cooked meals made by my host family. On the first night, I was so overwhelmed. Our host mom made croquettes, Spanish tortilla, fried potatoes, chicken legs and mussels. The only source of vegetable came from the “salad” – aka, iceberg lettuce and a few carrots, drenched in olive oil. I told myself that she made this assortment only because it was the first meal, and that we would be eating healthier the next day. Unfortunately, I was wrong! My daily diet consists of bread, fried eggs soaked with olive oil, a fatty meat and that same salad, most days.

Now, what I find interesting is that my host mom thinks that she’s serving us healthy foods and balanced meals. I believe that Spaniards have different ideas about health, and what it means to eat healthily. Therefore, when I don’t eat all of the oily, fried potatoes on my plate, my host mom gets upset and tells me to “eat my vegetables”. I believe that Spaniards genuinely think that they are healthy eaters, which stems from their long gastronomic history. But trust me, eating two loaves of bread per day, 10 servings of olive oil and and unappetizing amount of pork is not quite satisfying the food pyramid. I don’t wait to stereotype the entire country based off my single experience with my host family, these are just merely my observations. As a matter of fact, I’m sure that the health practices of each Spanish generation and family is different, because health ideals are constantly changing and are not consistent throughout one country.

Every restaurant that I have visited serves the classic tapas: tortilla, croquetas, patatas bravas, paella, jamón ibérico y queso etc. It is hard to come across some healthy options, in my opinion, but if I told that to a Spaniard I am sure that they would disagree completely. Even in my cooking class, we cook classic Spanish recipes that are so unhealthy. We even dedicated an entire class to cooking traditional and popular fried food (see photo).

On the topic of health, I recently returned from a trip to Morocco, and have been experiencing intense stomach problems. I told my host mom that I wanted to go to a doctor, and she laughed at me! She said that stomach issues were completely normal after a trip to Morocco, and she offered me a huge 600 mg paracetamol pill (which is an extremely high dosage to take in the first place, not to mention that it couldn’t possibly help intestinal issues). In my case, antibiotics were required to treat my illness. Paracetamol is their wonder drug, their “fix all” magic pill, when in reality it should only be used to treat specific symptoms.

My experience of health has been very different while in Spain, food wise and medication wise. Obviously there are many aspects of culture that affect the food choices and eating habits of people, and I am not trying to criticize the entire gastronomy of Spain. There are just many differences between our ideals and practices of health. To say the least, I am excited to get back to the US and splurge on a huge salad (and drink free water)!