Walk into the United Kingdom’s Pavilion at the Milan Expo and you’ll find the foods that typify the expectation of Britain — scones, sandwiches, tea and fish and chips. But every day, I walk the streets of London and am overcome by the Americanization of restaurants and the onslaught of fast-food options.

The American cuisine offered at the Expo was fitting, serving barbeque, burgers and hot dogs. To me, that seems to be the cuisine of London as well. When I walk to the tube in the morning, I pass three McDonald’s, two Pret A Mangers, a Subway and a Starbucks. All options I saw in New York City this summer.

I spent my weekend in Italy — Milan and Venice — and experienced genuine cuisine. Most students go abroad and immerse themselves in that local cuisine, but all I can say I’ve eaten are a whole lot of sandwiches. Maybe that is British, but I’m constantly struck by the mass of fast-food imports from the United States. Most shocking, perhaps, is the prevalence of Ben and Jerry’s storefronts throughout Central London.

The Expo celebrates the different foods of the world while also trying to educate people on world hunger. Its slogan is “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life,” and the first pavilion I went into chronicled human interaction with food from hunting and gathering to the factory farms of today. Pavilion Zero also explored the food humans waste, reporting that we waste more than a third of the food we produce, which is enough to feed everyone in developing countries that go hungry every day.

So I found it interesting to walk the rest of the expo and see trash cans filled with wasted food, but it really got me thinking about the food consumption habits in the UK, especially fast food.

It’s important to note that fast-food outlets in England are far nicer than those in the U.S. McDonald’s offer ample seating and clean, two-story restaurants at many locations, while Starbucks serves pastries warmed up on plates if the patron chooses to eat in the store. On the other hand, Pret A Manger, which originated in London, looks much the same as it does in America.

Pret is the ultimate British fast-food, serving primarily sandwiches, coffee, tea and pastries. The density of the chain in London is remarkable. Last week, walking back to class after a break, I passed two Prets before choosing to go in a third and bring my food back to campus. With a bag in my hand, I passed two more stores on the way back. In 2012, The Guardian reported 176 of their stores in London, compared to 205 McDonald’s, according to the company itself in 2013. From my perspective in 2015, a Pret logo is far more common than the golden arches.

In the midst of all this cheap food, it is contradictory that the Daily Mail reported on hunger as a “public health emergency” in Britain less than two years ago, and it doesn’t seem to have gotten much better. This is where the lessons of Pavilion Zero are needed – this country, like America and many others in the so-called first world, can provide more than enough food to feed their entire population and more, but don’t.

In May of this year, the World Health Organization reported on a growing obesity crisis in the UK, saying that nearly three quarters of English men and more than 60 percent of women will be obese by 2030. These are staggering numbers that do not make sense when taken in the context of the country’s concurrent hunger epidemic. America faces many of the same problems, such as a wealth gap. The British middle class is shrinking just like America’s.

These issues are hard to see when fast-food gauntlets line the streets with prices that seem entirely affordable. Educational opportunities such as the Milan Expo are vital to showing the world that these problems exist, even when they aren’t immediately obvious.

Jack Rose is a junior broadcast and digital journalism major. You can email him at jlrose@syr.edu or follow him @jrose94 on Twitter.

Published on October 7, 2015 at 8:59 pm