Fancy a traditional English fry-up for breakfast? How about a chicken curry or some kimchi? Or would a lamb samosa and some baba ganoush from a halal kitchen be more to your taste?
Step right this way. The athletes’ dining room in the Olympic village is a food court like no other, offering the world’s elite athletes healthy, hearty food and fuel, 24 hours a day — and doing it the Slow Food way.
The milk is organic, the coffee free-trade and eggs free-range. The chicken, which is flying off the grill as athletes opt for basic protein, carries Britain’s “Freedom Food” label, certified by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals as meeting its strict animal welfare standards.
Recycling and compost bins proliferate and where possible, local farmers have grown the produce. The seafood part of Britain’s famous fish and chips is made from sustainably caught fish.
And yet, off in the back corner of the dining room, next to the coffee bar that’s disproportionately populated by Italians queuing up for their morning espresso, lurks McDonald’s and its Sausage & Egg McMuffins.
Fast-food giant McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Cadbury are official sponsors of these games and have branding rights inside Olympic Park. And so the Golden Arches have no corporate competition in these parts — just whatever chief Olympic caterer Jan Matthews and her crew of chefs from around the world can dish up for the more than 24,000 athletes, coaches and team officials from 200-plus countries who pass through her dining room on any given day.
“Our view was that if we got good ingredients and we had good chefs, we would get great food,” Matthews said over coffee one morning amid the breakfast bustle in the dining room. She acknowledges the incongruity of McDonald’s in her Slow Food-inspired dining room, but says no one is forcing anyone to eat it.
“I think it’s a choice thing,” she says. “The fact is, people like it.” And besides, McDonald’s in recent years has changed its menu to reflect demands for healthier food. And it’s an official Olympic sponsor.
Matthews’ aim in her kitchen was to showcase British food, sustainable food and food that reflects the trend for better animal welfare, because “better animal welfare in many cases actually does mean better meat at the end of the day.”
It’s an Olympian feat given the numbers involved. Over the course of the 17-day games, Olympic organizers estimate 14 million meals will be served to athlete and spectator alike. On a busy day in the athletes’ dining room, chefs will serve 65,000 meals. In the Olympic village alone, that breaks down to:
— 25,000 loaves of bread
— 31 tons of poultry items
— 232 tons of potatoes
— 19 tons of eggs
— 75,000 liters (20,000 gallons) of milk
Matthews goes through the shopping list outlined in her “Food Vision” — a manifesto of sorts for these 2012 Foodie Games — and realizes the numbers are already way off.
“I think we’ll probably beat that, and that, and that and that,” she says running her finger down the line. “Demand across the board is higher than we anticipated.”
But fear not, Michael Phelps. The food won’t run out while you’re off winning another medal. Matthews says her food budget, which started out in the single-digit million-dollar realm, is flexible and no more expensive than if she hadn’t insisted on an environmentally sensitive menu.
“If Michael Phelps comes in and he wants his eggs and his steak, he gets his eggs and his steak,” Matthew says.
Phelps is not alone in getting special treatment. The Australians requested jars of their beloved Vegemite, the brown goo (high in Vitamin B) that’s a popular bread spread Down Under. The highly endorsed Americans asked that Kellogg’s cereals be available, if not advertised as such.
Matthews brought in the grain spelt for the handful of wheat-intolerant athletes.
But most athletes are sampling fare from home and far away at the five food “pods” that ring the cavernous dining room. Front and center sits the “Best of Britain” offering traditional English breakfast of eggs, sausage, roast tomatoes and mushrooms.
For a country whose culinary reputation for years centered on mushy peas and boiled potatoes, the decision to showcase British food might strike some as odd. But the “Best of Britain” food station is the most popular among athletes and coaches, Matthews said.
The selection of fruits at the Europe/Americas/Mediterranean station would make any foodie’s mouth water. Condiments take up an entire counter: Balsamic vinegar, rapeseed oil, sweet chili sauce and blue cheese dressing.
Next door at the halal food station — which provides food slaughtered and prepared according to Islamic law — curried spinach and aubergines vied for attention with the baba ganoush and fava beans.
Rotisserie chickens roasted on a spit at the “African and Caribbean” station while at the bustling “India and Asia’s Finest” pod, Hong Kong fencer Sin Ying Au piled some fried rice next to her eggs and bowl of hot milk.
“I like it very much,” she said.
“Every day they have a new style, and I think the taste is very authentic.”
Polish team psychologist Maciej Regwelski lined up behind her, looking for some traditional Polish stuffed dumplings.
“We don’t have typical Polish food here,” he said. “Sometimes there are little pierogis at the Asian station,” but not today. He walked away with sushi. For breakfast.
While Matthews is delighted that so many athletes are spreading their gastronomic wings and “tucking in,” she’s well aware that they eat for one reason only: fuel.
“They’re not looking for rich fancy food,” she said. “They’re looking for good quality, good tasting food that will give them the protein and carbs that they need.”
Matthews made the daily menus at the village available to national Olympic committees ahead of time, so coaches could plan down to the calorie what each athlete should eat and when, depending on training and competing schedules.
For athletes without team nutritionists, experts at the “nutrition kiosk” just inside the dining room entrance offer meal-to-meal advice.
Watched over by his two coaches, Nicaraguan swimmer Omar Yasser Nunez Munguia finished his plate of sliced fruit as he surveyed the tempting options nearby, noting that in his previous Olympics at Beijing in 2008 there were only three choices in the athletes’ dining room: international, Mediterranean and Asian.
“There’s much more variety here,” he said, though he acknowledged that he’s sticking to fruit for breakfast, and lunch and dinners of grilled chicken with a bit of pasta and salad on the side.
For now. After he competes, he plans to celebrate by breaking his diet.
“I haven’t had a Big Mac yet,” he whispered, looking wistfully at the McDonald’s just a few yards away.
Fancy a chicken curry or some baba ganoush? Games athletes have it all
Fancy a chicken curry or some baba ganoush? Games athletes have it all
Lifting sanctions on Syria will prevent Daesh resurgence and strengthen the nation, experts say
- Conference in Washington discusses effects US policies are having on post-Assad Syria, and the continuing economic hardships in the country that could fuel terrorism
- Participants praise US President Donald Trump for taking the right steps to help the war-torn nation move towards recovery and stabilization
Syria faces serious challenges in the aftermath of the fall of the Assad regime a year ago, including rebuilding its economy, lifting refugees and civilians out of poverty, and preventing a resurgence of Daesh terrorism.
But experts in two panel discussions during a conference at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, attended by Arab News, agreed that US President Donald Trump had so far taken all the right steps to help the war-torn nation move toward recovery and stabilization.
One of the discussions explored the effects American policies are having on the rebuilding of Syria, including the lifting of sanctions and efforts to attract outside investments and stabilize the economy. Moderated by the institute’s vice president for policy, Kenneth Pollack, the participants included retired ambassadors Robert Ford and Barbara Leaf, and Charles Lister, a resident fellow at the institute.
The other discussion focused on the continuing economic hardships in Syria that could fuel terrorism, including a resurgence of Daesh. Moderator Elizabeth Hagedorn, of Washington-based Middle East news website Al-Monitor, was joined by Mohammed Alaa Ghanem of the Syrian American Council, Celine Kasem of Syria Now, and Jay Salkini from the US-Syria Business Council.
“As we went into a transitional era, US diplomacy took a back step for a while as the Trump administration came into office,” Lister noted during the first panel discussion.
Everyone has been “super skeptical” of where the new government led by President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, a former commander with the Syrian opposition forces, would lead the country, he said, but Trump had stepped up through policies and support.
“Frankly, I think in January none of us expected that President Donald Trump would be shaking hands with Ahmad Al-Sharaa” a few months later, he added.
“Despite the obvious challenges, this new (Syrian) government has to be engaged.”
The US had maintained strong ties to the Syrian Democratic Forces, and with Al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, Lister said, in the decade leading up to the collapse of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime on Dec. 8, 2024.
“Of course, we’ve had 10 years of a superb partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces, but they were a non-state actor not a sovereign government,” he continued.
“Now, we have a sovereign government that we could test, we can engage, and we can see where that goes. And in working through a sovereign government, there is no comparison that comes anywhere close to what we’ve seen on Syria.”
Lister praised Trump, saying: “I think a lot of that goes down to President Trump’s own kind of gut instinct of the way to do things.
“But there is a deeper, deeper government bench that has worked on this through Treasury and State and elsewhere. I think they all deserve credit for moving so rapidly and so boldly to give Syria a chance, as President Trump says.”
Ford said a key aspect of the process as Syria moves forward will be the removal of all sanctions imposed by the US against the Assad regime under the 2019 Caesar Act, an effort that is now underway in Congress.
He said Trump recognizes that the future of Syria and the wider Middle East lies in the hands of the Arab people, and has pursued policies based on “shared interests” including a “national security
strategy” to help the war-torn country shift away from extremism and violence toward a productive economy and safer environment for its people.
The Trump administration recognizes this reality, Ford added, and will “work on a practical level towards shared interests.”
However, he cautioned that “Syria is not out of the woods, by any stretch of the imagination” in terms of ensuring there is no resurgence of violence driven by desperate people burdened by the harsh economic realities in the country.
“If they can work with the Syrian government, and with more and more important regional actors as the United States retrenches — like Israel, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Egypt; it’s a long list — it will become more important,” Ford said.
“There is still a way for the Americans to work with all of them, even if we don’t have big boots on the ground, or if we’re not providing billions of dollars.”
Nonetheless, “America’s voice will still be heard,” he added, thanks to the interest Trump is taking in Syria.
Adopted by Congress six years ago, toward the end of Trump’s first term as president, the Caesar Act imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Syria, including measures that targeted Assad and his family in an attempt to ensure his regime would be held accountable for war crimes committed under its reign. The act was named after a photographer who leaked images of torture taking place in Assad’s prisons.
Lister noted that the removal of the US sanctions has been progressing at “record-breaking speeds.”
In pre-taped opening remarks to the conference, which took place at the institute’s offices in Washington, Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of the US Central Command, said the Trump administration’s priority in Syria is the “aggressive and relentless pursuit” of Daesh, while working on the integration of the Syrian Democratic Forces with the new Syrian government through American military coordination.
“Just to give an example, in the month of October, US forces advised, assisted and enabled Syrian partners during more than 20 operations against (Daesh), diminishing the terrorists’ attacks and export of violence around the world,” he said. “We’re also degrading their ability to regenerate.”
Cooper added that the issue of displacement camps in northeastern Syria must also be addressed. He said he has visited Al-Hawl camp four times since his first meeting with Al-Sharaa, “which reinforced my view of the need to accelerate repatriations.”
He continued: “The impact on displaced persons devastated by years of war and repression has been immense. As I mentioned in a late-September speech at the UN, continuing to repatriate displaced persons and detainees in Syria is both a humanitarian imperative and a strategic necessity.”
The US is working with Syrian forces to “supercharge” this effort, Cooper said, noting that the populations of Al-Hawl and Al-Roj camps have fallen from 70,000 to about 26,000.
The second panel discussion painted a very bleak picture of the economic challenges the Syrian people face, with the average income only $200-$300 a month, a level that the experts warned could push desperate people to violence just to survive.
The US-Syria Business Council’s Salkini said many major companies and factories that once operated in Syria had relocated to neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Iraq and Turkiye.
“We’re looking at about 50 percent-plus unemployment,” he said. “Let me give you statistics on the wages: A factory worker today, his salary is $100-$300 a month. A farmer makes $75-$200 a month in salary. A manager (or) a private in the military makes $250 a month.
“So you can imagine how these people are living on these low wages, and still have to buy their iPhone, their internet, pay for electricity.”
Many displaced people are unable to return to their former homes, the panelists said, because they were destroyed during the war and there is no accessible construction industry to rebuild them.
The capital, Damascus, faces many challenges they added, and the situation is even worse in the country.
