United States - Fatty Food Heaven?

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Well, Jack, I respectfully disagree. Before I was married, I used to room with a bartender at one of the more popular restaurants here in H-Town. We also went to college together because U of H has a huge restaurant program (Conrad Hilton school), on campus, which he attended (but I was off in an entirely different program). Nevertheless, you think they would have taught him a few things about responsibility. Often times I used to sit a his bar after I got off work at the electronics store and watched him and his partners pump massive amounts of alcohol into their partons for hours, many of them regulars - in the old days they were called "Bar Flies." I used to ask him if he had any regrets for all the customers who would leave his bar compteley drunk and drive off into whatever fate awaited them. He would just shrug his shoulders and say, "As long as they tip me well, the rest is their problem."

The managers of his restaurant did not care much either, because they were in the back counting all the cash they were taking in at the bar. Let me ask you this: what is the first thing they offer you when you sit down at a table? If you guessed a beer, a margarita, or a bottle of wine, you win the big prize of the day.

But we were speaking of "tragedy," yes? We were supposed to be all boo-hooing for all the big restaurant owners and corporations who can't help it that their patrons show such a "lack of restraint." Ah, several years later I was with the same electronics store when one of our managers turned up missing one morning. It turned out that he was in the hospital, ICU, and would probably never be returning, because the night before he had left a restaurant, and yes, drunk, and had an "accident." He was somewhat lucky, because even though he had broken half the bones in his body, the family of four he had crashed into were not so lucky, not even the two young children who were burned to death in the car he ran into. There is tragedy, and then there is "tragedy."

I know that I am somewhat off a little here, becuase the topic was "fatty food." But I wonder if the same group of people who could care less about real "tragedy," could really care about the few thousand extra calories in what they serve their customers.

 

JF,
that's not absolving the individual of his responsibility to take care in his own affairs, but rather a refusal to give the producer of a crappy product a pass. You need two for that game. For the mythical powers of the market to work with the described (desired?) corrective effect, it requires equal knowledge on both sides. Now we two have more than a hunch that this is bad food. Swell. That lacking in many others, there is always someone biting the proverbial grease ball burger.

What the market rocks at is the correction after the fact, at which point damage has been done. That's a general rule. Needless to say, I don't share your faith in the market. Put more pointedly, I don't see the harm of the uninformed or stupid as the acceptable price (they have) to pay for the corrective powers of the market to take effect.

 

As for knowledge ("harm of the uninformed"), the nutritional data for most chain restaurants is available on request. At the very least it is available on their website. And to say that people don't know that McDonalds is unhealthy is a poor excuse. If they don't "know" then it is denial. It's not like nobody is telling people that eating this stuff is unhealthy. To say that they are uninformed is intellectually dishonest.

As for the market: Have you seen the commercials that Burger King is running now where they use a hidden camera and tell people that they have stopped serving the Whopper? As the commercial says, people freaked. The demand is driving the market.

Besides, you're not going to convince a recovering addict that anything but personal responsibility is the answer to this problem. People aren't going to stop abusing substances (and yes, filling your body with unhealthy junk is substance abuse) until they make the individual decision to do so. When adults make the choice to be self destructive, then they are responsible.

 

JF,

that's it! You're biased

Even though Ronald Reagan told his country's youths, just say no, how come, I wonder, that despite common sense (drugs = bad) and well meaning pleas for abstinence there still drug consumption, and a perceived need for the DEA? Because demand drives the market?

The dose makes the poison (with all undue modesty, what a particularly witty phrase in this context, and what a smooth lead over!). Personally I feel very uneasy when, as US conservatives and neo-liberals like like to do, 'the market' is being revered like a natural force, like wind is worshipped by a pagan tribe. What about a hurricane?

And as for getting nutritional data on request only, what do they have to hide? And what else is there they don't tell us even when we ask?

 

I guess I have to ask you, what is the solution? Businesses are not going to stop selling a popular product. Their customers would merely go to a place that gave them what they wanted. That is what I mean by the demand driving the market.

I would like to see nutrional information on menus (A bit hard for fast food places, but many post them next to the counter). That would be interesting. My guess is people may initially be shocked, but would likely continue eating it anyway. Nutritional information is put on food in the supermarket and it doesn't stop people from buying and consuming unhealthy food.

 

My gut feeling tells me that it would be best to purge the planet of Starbucks, McD and the like, especially Starbucks (because they are evil, spread like the flu, and their coffee sucks, bad). But not Burger King, and Taco Bell (said to be great, never checked). I'm a little subjective I guess.

On a more serious note, forcing them to show their nutritive data prominently would be a great thing. And improve health education, especially as far as the benefits of healthy nutrition and exercise are concerned.
But in the end you're right, it's, pathological obesity aside, a choice to be fat. It's like I wrote initially, like my tomcat, people eat much because they can and because it tastes well. Eating feels good. It makes you feel good (so does sport, albeit in a different way, and not instantly). The stuff they serve at fast food chains is so saturated with aroma and boosters like sugar, glutamate and whatever that it is hard for the stuff to not taste great. And of course that sells. And selling such food cheap amplifies that. Plus, many people have never learned to eat sensibly, and probably never will.

So, yes, it's unhealthy and stupid to eat it, but it's in demand, shall we just let the market decide what's good for us? Don't we all know what's best for us? Point is, many people don't, and we likely can't change that.

 

Tal,
as for being fat being a choice ... what's silly about it is that it is exactly what I mocked JF for I trapped myself there - and that is laying the blame on the consumers. That is my pun, and I accept your scolding. I stand corrected. I do think that when you're overweight a statement like: I beat it and so can you, just say no to being overweight! does indeed defy average experience. I wasn mocking that only two posts ago, and forgot already.

I see what a pain it has been in some of my relatives of mine to lose unhealthy weight. It's not easy. Talk about changing your life. A very hard thing to do.

 

What? You realize that they get to pick and choose which reactions they show, right? How many hundreds or thousands of people did they have to go through, do you think, before they came up with the appropriate reactions? Are we absolutely sure that the people weren't actors?

 

If you're going to bring up commercials, I prefer the one where the accountant asks a guy for a receipt for a meal from a burger joint. The guy says, "Can I just photocopy my butt?" The rest is visual, and absolutely priceless.

THe most addictive substance in the world is... SALT. Once you have it once, you want it forever - this is why baby food has NO added salt.

Something I've always wondered... why is it necessary for a company to support multiple product lines: original, low salt, fat free, etc? Why not phase out the least nutritious version over time? Product changes don't all have to be a repeat of the New Coke fiasco.

 

I'm fat. I don't see it as a choice, but the consequence of a series of other choices I routinely make. For years I was rather sedentary, working only when I had to, and excercising even less. The Marijuana I used to smoke made it possible to remain sedentary for longer periods of time, as well as making me crave empty calories (not that I cared back then). When I finally gave up the weed, I still found that I would have periods where I was hyperactive, so I still got some excercise.

However since I hurt my back, excercise and work have become difficult, and avoided where possible, and in the last year, my financial situation has been better, so I've spent more on junk food (which shows).

All of this is a choice, habits formed. What I need to do is find other habits that can replace these bad habits without causing too much pain...

 

I think dmc pointed out very well the responsibility issue. Culinary culture has a great part in play for why people are fat and American culinary culture seems to largely favour a use of excessive fat and sugar as well as oversized portions, some countries have similar trends and others have not. Changing this will be about changing how people think first and then what they eat.

Point of the matter is that I don't see why you can't eat a mcdonalds hamburger every now and then if you enjoy it? Ragusa&co are probably biased in the regard that they actually don't like the food so they'll be happy to be rid of it but I'm pretty sure they too eat some stuff which is probably is not too healthy and they'd not wish to give up for simply because there are people getting fat by eating excessive amounts of it.

Fighting obesity should come with endorsing healthy food, possibly with tax reliefs and also providing education. To be honest the likelyhood that either of these will help people allready overweight or obese is quite slim but atleast hopefully it will do something to prevent the constant increase of overweight and obese people. I think using the carrot rather than the stick is the better way of adjusting the markets in a more healthy direction.

 

No offence, Tal, but what on earth are you talking about? Simple fresh in-season fruit and vegetables are miles cheaper than any fatty restaurant foods. A carrot costs about 5c and an apple costs about 20c and a potato is about 10c. A packet of rolled oats that costs about $2 will keep you in porridge for breakfast for a month.

Compare that to a meal at a middle of the road 'family' restaurant that costs about $20 a head and there is no contest. Eating healthily and eating economically are not mutually exclusive.

 

Tal,
I guess one key problem people have in reconciling eating with it being an addiction is that you naturally need to eat to live. You don't eat, you die. It's not that humans are so much addicted to food, they are dependent on food for their survival. It's some unlucky wording, IMO. It might help to better focus if we split the issue up a bit.

We can carve out basically two fields: If we speek of a 'food addiction' and resulting overweight, what do we mean? If you count pathological anomalities like bulimic eating or odd metabolism as one field, what remains is habits (personal/ cultural), and unconscious behaviour.

And in this latter field 'food addiction' is at it's most basic and from an objective point of view excess consumption first of all - overweight people do indeed simply eating more than they burn - which still leaves a great deal of room for the why's.

 

I can make a big pot of chicken soup that lasts a week for a fraction of the cost of any sort of processed unhealthy fast food. I am still adamant that eating healthy basic food is miles cheaper than eating lazy modern unhealthy food.

How about growing your own vegetables?

 

Harborboy,

And rightly so. In Germany you pay to get fed at some fast food shop some 4-ish Euro for a basic dinner (one burger, large coke, fries) and you probably want something extra, so add some more 3-ish Euro. For two persons, double that. And that's for one meal.

For that money I can buy the ingredients to cook about two decent 2-person dinners, meat and veggies and a dish, or wine instead of the dish, and will probably have something left for one more (excess potatoes, onions, carrots etc).

We had home grown veggies at my parents. My father was an agricultural engineer, and a farmer at heart. Home grown veggies are the best well, if you can fend off those bloody pigeons (hint: a pigeon will keep an enterprising, crafty cat happy and well fed for a day, for free).

You find quite a lot of people who just don't know how many vegetables look in their natural form. How can they let them out of school not knowing that? I am always appalled when I see that. When I have children I'll make sure they don't grow up like that. Little story: An aunt of mine sells farm goods at a local market, and one well off lady came along referring to the sticks of bruxelles sprouts (no, they do not look like marbles) as 'nicely decorated'. She, in cold blood, returned that because of that they cost extra God, was I laughing She left a happy customer.