If you’ve eaten out in the U.S. lately, you may have noticed something quietly depressing:

Everything… kind of tastes the same.

New York or Nebraska. Airport sports bar or “gastropub.” Chain diner or “local” place with Edison bulbs and a craft beer menu.

Same fries.
Same onion rings.
Same frozen chicken tenders.
Same “funnel cake fries” pretending to be dessert.

It’s like someone copy-pasted the same menu across the entire country, changed the logo, and called it “choice.”

So what happened?
How did a country that once had real regional food, real diners, and real recipes turn into a nation deep-frying the same factory-made appetizers from coast to coast?

And—more importantly for you and me—what does life feel like when you step outside that system and move somewhere like Colombia, where food still tastes like it’s made by humans, not spreadsheets?

That’s what this article is about.
Yes, Colombia is cheaper. But the real upgrade isn’t just on your wallet—it’s on your plate, your health, and your entire relationship with food.

Let’s dig in.

A journalist named Alec Oppenneer from More Perfect Union did a piece that perfectly captured what a lot of us feel but can’t quite explain:

Jalapeño poppers in a Florida sports bar?
Same as the ones in a Michigan brewery.
Mozzarella sticks in a small-town diner?
Same as the “bar bites” in a fancy pub in Seattle.

Different menus. Different logos.
Same factory. Same box. Same freezer.

Behind a huge portion of that sameness is a company called Sysco (no, not the tech one—this is the restaurant food distribution giant). Sysco doesn’t just deliver food:

For a restaurant owner under pressure—especially in a rural town with few alternatives—Sysco makes it brutally easy to stop cooking from scratch and start ordering everything out of a catalog:

It’s fast. It’s consistent. It slashes labor costs.

But there’s a hidden price tag:

So while Americans feel like they have endless choice—50 items on the menu, thousands of restaurants, entire apps dedicated to delivery—the reality is:

And it’s not just Sysco’s fault.
We built an entire culture on:

That’s not cuisine. That’s logistics.
And we’ve accepted it as normal.

Now, drop into Colombia.

Walk into a neighborhood restaurant in Medellín, Bogotá, Bucaramanga, wherever—and something feels different immediately.

You order the “menu del día” (daily lunch special).
You sit down.
And what arrives is:

Almost none of that touched a factory line.

There’s no giant Sysco truck backing up to the kitchen door.
There’s a guy with a pickup who just came from the market.
There’s a butcher down the street who knows exactly which farm that cut came from.

Here’s what you notice in Colombia:

Food here spoils, because it’s supposed to.
You can smell freshness, not preservatives.

You go to ten restaurants in the same neighborhood and order the same dish—say, bandeja paisa or ajiaco—and you get ten different versions.

Every place has its own seasoning, its own tricks, its own history.

Food still has personality.

This isn’t just about taste.
It’s about what happens to your body when you step off the industrial food treadmill.

Let’s look at some basic realities:

Now compare that with Colombia:

Is food the only reason? Of course not.
But it’s a major contributor.

In Colombia, day-to-day eating looks more like:

When you remove:

…and replace them with actual meals made that day, from actual ingredients, something changes.

You feel lighter.
You crash less in the afternoon.
Your skin looks better.
You sleep better.

You’re not fighting a giant food system designed to keep you eating more, more often, with more additives—three times a day.

When I first moved to Colombia, I honestly thought I was overdoing it.

I was eating big plates, full meals. None of this “sad salad at your desk” energy.

But something weird happened:

Why?

Because almost everything I was eating was still, at its core, food:

You eat three solid meals. You walk to the market, to lunch, to the café. Your entire environment gently nudges you toward a healthier life—without you becoming “that person” with the color-coded meal prep containers.

Recently, after a crazy stretch of travel through Europe, Asia, the U.S., and back to Colombia, I noticed some extra weight had followed me home. I decided to tighten things up (I’m doing keto right now), and Colombia makes it incredibly easy:

It’s one of the best places I can think of to reset your diet without feeling deprived.

Here’s a part most people never think about:

When you buy lunch in Colombia, where does your money go?

That little empanada stand on the corner?

The pesos you spend circulate sideways—to farmers, millers, street vendors—not upward into a corporate supply chain.

In the U.S. restaurant model, money often flows like this:

Restaurant → Distributor → Factory → Packaging Company → Trucking Company → Corporate HQ → Shareholders

In Colombia, it’s more like:

Restaurant → Farmer → Butcher → Market Vendor → Local Family

That’s part of why the food here feels different.
It’s not just fresher—it’s more connected.

Ask a Colombian chef about their ingredients and be ready to sit down for a story:

Ask a U.S. restaurant manager the same thing, and they might have to check the Sysco catalog to see what’s actually in their “signature” aioli.

One of the quiet tragedies of the U.S. industrial food system is how it flattened regional identity.

The burger in your hometown used to taste different from the one an hour away. That’s mostly gone now.

In Colombia, regional flavor is still alive and loud:

Travel a few hours and you’re not just in a new city—you’re in a new kitchen philosophy.

You could eat your way across the country and almost never repeat the same dish in the same way, unless you want to.

When people talk about Colombia, they usually lead with:

And that’s all true.

But here’s the thing:

For the price of a bland appetizer and a soda in the U.S., you can get:

Made that day.
By someone who actually cooked it.
With ingredients that had a face, a farm, and a story, not a SKU number.

Meanwhile, fast food in the U.S. isn’t even cheap anymore. A Big Mac combo can hit $10–$15 for:

Half filler.
Half regret.

In Colombia, that same $10–$15 gets you a real meal, coffee, and dessert—and you walk away feeling like a person, not a science experiment.

One last thing you’ll notice when you eat in Colombia:

Nobody is in a rush.

Meals aren’t pit stops between meetings. They’re part of the day’s rhythm.

That alone changes your relationship with food:

And that, in turn, changes how you experience your life.

So yes, when people say, “You can live for a fraction of the cost in Colombia,” they’re right.

But the deeper truth is this:

Back in the U.S., most people are trapped in an industrial food system designed to maximize profits, not:

In Colombia, food still feels alive.
It’s personal.
It’s cultural.
It’s part of a circular economy that supports real people.

It’s not perfect here. No place is.
You’ll find fast food chains. Colombians love fried things too. But even then, it’s usually:

And that’s the difference.

When you bite into an empanada here, it’s not just flavor you’re tasting. It’s life.

And maybe that’s what so many of us are really chasing when we move abroad:

Not just cheaper living.
But real living.