Five Meals A Day? Ok, Germany, I'll Bite.
- Globepouncing
- Jan 7, 2024
- 12 min read
Updated: Apr 25
We moved to Germany in August 2022. In our most recent job search, our priorities experienced a seismic shift: now The Bubs comes first, and then there's everything else. Therefore, we were quite pleased that a labor overlord in Germany was one of our finalists and ended up making us the best offer.
That said, Germany is not perfect. It is good, but it is not perfect. Also - and this might sound odd to you if you watch too much news in the United States - it is not necessarily an easier place to live than, say, the UAE or Vietnam.
I'll explain.
Clean Living
Food
The 'five meals a day' idea was the original stimulus for this article - and we're getting there - but let's talk quality first.
To put this as tastefully as I can: our collective digestive experience alone paints us a clear enough picture - largely in a spattering of sepia tones - of food quality in the United States vs. the rest of the world, but the fuller picture of this (literally) painful truth adds so much more precision and scientific flair to the discussion, so Yallah:
As Jennifer Shore (2019) writes in "The American Food Supply: Not Fit for European Consumption" on the Focus for Health Foundation website, the EU does not permit "known or suspected carcinogens...in their food," citing the common use of Potassium Bromate and Azodicarbonamide (ADA) as ingredients in US foods as well as the strong presence of Glyphostate in genetically modified US foods. US-based food companies even produce different products for overseas distribution than for US distribution. As Shore explains, versions of the same or similar products in the US and the EU produced by companies such as Heinz and PepsiCo contain different ingredients - Quaker Oats is one example offered. The difference is typically that the EU products contain fewer chemical additives, which 1) might not comply with EU law, and 2) might simply be rejected by more discerning EU consumers.
This is a win for the EU in our book, so good on Germany for being part of it.
Charlotte Markey, PhD, simplifies the EU vs. US food divide further in a 2018 article in US News & World Report: she brings up the "so-called 'French paradox'" to point out that in France - and, by extension, other EU states - the food is more likely to be, quite simply, real. Fats and sweets are not the enemy. An unhealthy culture of eating is, and this logically connects to the US tendency to pack additives and chemicals into foods: additives and chemicals help food products last longer and spoil less. They aid convenience that helps perpetuate an on-the-go 'American' lifestyle. European eating habits, in contrast, tend to be slower, more frequently and habitually social, and less focused on quantity. In Europe, Markey argues, it is more likely that more time will be taken to prepare and enjoy fresher foods - and often smaller portions thereof. Based on our experience, we agree.
Water
Let's be clear upfront: in comparison to much of the rest of the world, both the EU and US typically boast very safe tap water for drinking and food preparation in most places under their jurisdictions. I mean, you know, fracking areas aside...
After reading about water quality law in the EU vs. the US in the EuropeNow academic journal, we tend to agree with Robin Kundis Craig (2018) when she points out in her article that the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) is "More Comprehensive," i.e., less fragmented and more holistic, than the US Clean Water Act (CWA).
The CWA focuses on and "has (author's italics) dramatically reduced point source pollution" from discharge of specific pollutants, but it leaves a fair amount of responsibility to the states themselves and also provides "a number of exemptions...that limit its applicability." This "leaves many areas of water management untouched" in the US, which results in continuing challenges that the states must police themselves.
April 2025 update: As we review this article in the early going of the second Trump debacle, we also doubt that public health measures will be protected or taken seriously either by the Federal government, because of the current everything-smash that is taking place, or by the states, who now must scramble to fix so much that the Federal government is in the process of destroying.
The EU WFD is a touch more ambitious as it "seeks to improve the overall status of water bodies." This makes the WFD more comprehensive, yes, but also more difficult to achieve and to enforce than the CWA, which provides a variety of avenues for litigation and very specific reasons that one might litigate.
Neither law is perfect, but the WFD "seeks to achieve 'good water status' in all European river basins." The CWA does "address...quality standards," but pretty much kicks it back to the states, calls it a day, and lets people sue each other if they want. A very American mindset, we contend. We're not huge fans of states' rights politics, so we lean favorably toward the scope of the WFD, especially since we currently live on the largest lake in continental Europe. The WFD's ultimate success or lack thereof has not yet been determined; nevertheless, we feel somewhat more comfortable placing faith in European governance than US governance.
April 2025 update: We now have precious little faith in the governance of most of the post-industrial West.
Energy
In response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011, the German Bundestag resolved to phase out all nuclear power in the country. You can read more about this on the Bundestag website, and I defy you to find a major news outlet that didn't also cover it.
The phase-out was realized with the closing of Germany's last three nuclear plants on April 15, 2023. We love this decision; nuclear waste is a terrible problem with which we have yet to fully reckon as a species - the less waste there is, the better. Moreover, there is, of course, the risk associated with operating a nuclear power plant. Is the risk of a meltdown worth the output? We're not convinced it is with so many alternatives. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima - when's the last time you heard about the devastating consequences of a solar or wind farm failure?
As reported by Reuters, EcoWatch, and others, renewable energy in Germany achieved a 55% share on the nation's power grids in 2023. This marked the first year that Germany cracked the 50% mark. Prost! The next major target is for renewables to generate at least 80% of power in Germany by 2030.
The US Department of Energy reports that renewables accounted for approximately 20% of power generated by the US grid in 2021, and Renewable Energy World cites the US Energy Information Administration to report that renewables generated about 25% of US power in the first half of 2023. According to a World Economic Forum report on March 9, 2023, use of renewables in the US has steadily risen since 2012, when renewables accounted for only 12% of US power generation.
The US is moving in the right direction, but we're more encouraged with what Germany has done.
But Back to the Important Stuff: Food...
Southern German food is heavy and delicious, just the way I like it. Moreover, the Germans - at least the ones in the south - have a delightful meal schedule: five per day.
Breakfast
Second breakfast (it's a real thing, it's at 10:00, and it's probably reason enough to move here)
Lunch (almost universally at 1(3):30)
Vesper (be there at 4:00...ahem, 16:00...or you instantaneously vaporize)
Dinner
So the Germans eat for about six hours a day, which, I suppose, is why they have to walk and hike and ride their bikes the rest of the day. Genau. No wonder everything's always closed - everyone's too busy working off all that sausage and cake.
Second breakfast typically consists of fruit, bread, all the spreads, cold cuts, the remaining first breakfast stuff, and coffee or tea. Vesper is a coffee and cake meal at 4:00 in the afternoon. I'll repeat that: It's a coffee and cake meal. It's at 16:00 sharp, and don't you forget it. You know you want der Kaffee...und Kuchen. And, I mean, it's an official meal, so you can totally still have dessert after dinner. Why would you not?
I knew there was a place in this world for people like me - where cake is a daily meal and people eat ice cream all the time, including 9:00 in the morning. In public. At an open ice cream shop. I've seen it. It's real.
...and Coffee
Apparently, this is also the place in the world where The Boss belongs. Convenient! The Boss' relationship with coffee is well-documented. As one learns from the Coffee Break German podcast, German coffee culture is exceptionally accommodating for people like The Boss. One is well within cultural norms to enjoy (deep diaphragm breath): 1) morning at-home coffee, 2) on-the-way-to-work coffee, 3) morning at-work coffee, 4) second breakfast coffee, 5) Vesper coffee, and 6) after-dinner coffee. God bless.
Health Care -- Major April 2025 Update:
Pretty much everyone documented in Germany has health insurance coverage, but I will not move into labor and immigration statistics, which are beyond the focus of this article.
Coverage is where the good news ends - at least in the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg. To initiate any sort of care, one must enlist the usually disappointing care of a primary provider or Hausarzt. Like The Force, everything flows through the Hausarzt. Everything. Also like The Force, things don't always go well. It is a state-run HMO situation, so quality of care really depends on the individual doctors, and there's no reason to get your hopes up. No matter what you come in with, it takes a miracle to be told anything but "you're fine. Take a quarter of this mystery-pill, pour some potato soup in your left ear, and all will be cured." That scenario, in fact, is an idealized case. You're more likely to be told to call back in five days if you're not just better. As a family, we're running an even-record between Hausarzt visits and emergency room visits, and the ER visits have all followed shortly after primary 'care.'
Health care in our corner of Germany is a slow-moving train wreck. It's more than this being the 'Florida of Germany' (maybe more the rural Mississippi...). It's more than public health insurance being one big state-run HMO. It's more than any language barrier, which doesn't even actually exist; the people here are just too stubborn to use English for five minutes even though they all studied it for thousands of hours in school. What a waste. We do our best with German, but a full school-life of classroom instruction and ample practice in a society that largely does speak the language beats our home-taught-upon-arrival-year-or-so-equivalent of Duolingo German.
We now understand that the system is broken AND there are no competent doctors here. There are no decent primary care doctors. Even worse is the pediatrician situation - this is a key factor in our likely need to move on sooner than later. Even when we have driven an hour for this or that specialist appointment, the care has almost always been disappointing - and remember, this is not someone whining from a suburban United States basement. This care is starkly disappointing compared to anything we've seen in Hong Kong, the UAE, Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore. We even had clinic visits for COVID swabs in Cambodia that were more pleasant than most of our doctor visits in Germany.
Health care for our children is free, except every once in a while we have to pay €5 for a prescription. That is, in fact, how much any prescription costs here, which would be great except that whenever anything appears serious we often have to hold our breath and eventually go to the ER.
Medicine is territorial, stubborn, and disappointing in this part of Germany; our area is largely rural and largely devoid of competent practitioners. At least it doesn't cost anything out-of-pocket, I suppose.
Recap on costs or lack thereof: No copays. No deductibles. No tricks. This is the pinnacle. And we just have a standard public plan - not private, nothing special. And this includes periodic derma screens, ophthalmology, gyno, half of our dental cleanings, etc. The problem is that you have to: a) secure a referral for everything, b) secure appointments (often up to seven months out) from places that never answer the phone, and c) be accepted as a patient. Anyone can deny you medical service, and those whose German is subpar are frequently denied care. And once you get in...don't expect much anyway. Best of luck.
We now know this, and we warn you: coverage and care are not the same thing. If you seek an expatriate life, Europe is not the place to find it, and it hasn't been for a while.
Child Care
Moving on from the disaster of health care: let's discuss the gift of Kindergeld, a direct-to-bank-account deposit every month per child. I can't say I don't see Germany confronting its aging issues. What's more is that legitimate preschool starting at twelve months will only run you a couple hundred Euro per month. That's it. Not several hundred per week. Not a couple thousand per month. Approximately the amount of the Kindergeld, in fact.
Now it's not all strawberries and unicorns. You have to get on a list ASAP to get your little Bubs into a Kinderhaus, and then someone has to have space. How to get on the list? We can speak to the Bodenseekreis and City of Überlingen: register with Little Bird. After registering our top three choices with Little Bird, Penelope secured a spot at a Kinderhaus that we love and that she loves at 28 months - really not bad. With Penelope in, Logan secured a spot starting on his first birthday. We are quite pleased with our Kinderhaus, and Penelope's German is excellent.
Playgrounds...and Other Outdoor Activities...but Mostly Playgrounds
One of the best things about raising kids in our corner of Germany is they can spend an enormous amount of time outdoors without any real safety concerns. Better yet, there are TONS of parks and playgrounds, and the playgrounds here are incredible. We are so jealous of the contraptions Penelope gets to climb on.
As Philip Oltermann explains in an October 24, 2021 article in The Guardian, Germany's overarching playground equipment philosophy is to teach risk competence. Indeed, some of the playground structures we've seen here leave us in awe. They look so fun; they must be incredibly exciting - and somewhat intimidating at first - for the kids. The idea is that kids will learn to make smart choices and protect themselves from harm in a relatively controlled environment that offers a certain degree of danger. Natural apprehension when approaching such equipment leads to kids learning when, how, and why to be extra careful.
Oltermann cites a landmark February 2004 study by Kambas, et al. in the German Journal of Sports Medicine to explain why insurance companies tend to accept this philosophy. The study found that an increase in motor proficiency in kindergarten-age children reduces overall number of accidents. It's pretty much as simple as that.
Again, the playgrounds here just look like incredible fun to us bumbling adults, but if they make Penelope stronger, safer, and better-prepared to deal with risk, we'll take that, too.
Playgrounds are, of course, only part of the outdoor advantages here. We are able to run, hike, and bike all the time, and we can see the Swiss Alps from our street.
No Honeymoon, Mostly No Problem
The other farther away more 'exotic' places we lived had lengthy transitional periods during which time our corporate overlords smoothed certain things out and provided this or that sort of assistance.
Germany, however, provided no such honeymoon. To a certain extent, though, we appreciate that. This is more of a 'normal' existence - we have no expat bubble; our wages aren't astronomical compared to the local per capita GDP; we needed a car immediately to get anything done (this last one is a product of living in a rural area, which is entirely new to us).
In short, there was no honeymoon period during which time we had stars in our eyes and thought everything seemed so novel and cool. Germany has no real need to import English-speaking talent like the UAE and Vietnam and Hong Kong and so many other places, so we just had to get down to it: furniture, doctors, baby stuff, car stuff -- figure it out. Mostly in German. It's a far more normal middle-class existence. Mixed feelings prevail.
Germany is far from perfect, but it is a Western existence in a place where we don't have to worry about guns, US politics, or extortionate child care rates. Also, Penelope's German is excellent. As long as this keeps up, she'll be fully bilingual. People at her school actually think someone else at home speaks German. Heh. Well done, Bubs.
Germany might not be our forever home, but there are enough parts of it that have been worth it. There are also enough parts that have solidified our appreciation for the developing world. Again: mixed feelings prevail.
One way or another, we'll eventually retire to a warm, Spanish-speaking country in about twenty-five years to drink sangria and margaritas until we expire. Aha! Look how German the five meals a day have already made me with casual morbidity...
In case you need to know anything else about assimilating into German culture, follow Jordan Prince (@jordanprince) on the Instathing. You're welcome.
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Germany provides a unique, balanced lifestyle with quality food, renewable energy, affordable healthcare, and a family-friendly environment. Five meals a day, scenic playgrounds, and bilingual opportunities for kids make it an enriching experience. MCDVoice Survey – Your Chance to Refine McDonald's Menu Selections.