I was surfing around yesterday and headed over to see what Sixty was ranting about, and saw his take on this. It’s taken me until this morning to stop laughing hysterically and using terms like “stupid bunch of backwards fuckers” and then I said to myself, it’s not fair to pick and point, maybe I should throw in an alternative suggestion.
For those that don’t click links, a few Representatives in Mississippi think that restaurants should be fined in some way for serving overweight people in their establishments. Aside from the obviously insane images this brings up, “Step this way sir, and please stand on the scale while we check for a free table.” I can not begin to fathom what was going through their heads when they wrote this one up.
For starters let’s look at some simple flaws here, like the fact that people need to eat. Granted, overweight people could eat at home and prepare their own meals and carry them out for their work day etc, but seriously, that’s not going to happen now is it. I mean what happens if you’re traveling across country or something… oh wait… it’s just Mississippi, we’ll just not go through there, that’s easier.
Personally I think that rather than focusing on the problem of overweight people eating out, I think they could have looked at the source of the problem, it’s not that they’re eating, it’s that they’re eating too much or eating the wrong things, and they are probably not getting enough exercise. Maybe we could revise this so overweight people couldn’t buy cars, that would force them to walk everywhere… I kill myself sometimes, really I do…
My personal favorite right now is to make a revision in regards to the criteria for resolving the issue of people generally being in poor heath and eating out. Here’s an idea, instead of forced starvation on the masses, why not look at what they are being served. The average entree in most restaurants is probably enough to serve two adults. We are taught as children to eat what is put in front of us, or at least I was when I was a kid. There have been numerous studies that show that people will eat until they finish things even if they are full. So maybe we should look at making the people who serve up the super sized unhealthy, unbalanced meals instead of the people who eat them. If you go out, and you are only given healthy choices, then you will eat better right?
Let’s look at an example of what I’m talking about here… the ever perceived healthy alternative to lunch, the “turkey burger”. First, a quick look at a popular chains take on this “healthy” burger… they offer a regular size burger with the normal fixings which comes to 812 calories. Holy Fucking Cow..ummm Turkey! Ok, that’s a bit much, they also offer some mini burgers for those that don’t want to eat one of the big ones, that should be better right? Two of the mini burgers have a total of 655 calories. I should probably mention that on the site under the nutritional information it does state that the counts are for the specific item only and does not include any side items, dipping sauces, bread, or crackers served on the side. Now to put these in perspective, I have some prepared turkey burgers in my freezer right now, I buy the ones that are already in patties so I can just throw them on the grill, wanna take a guess at the calorie count on those….. 160.
I do take into consideration that I’m putting forth the effort to lose weight right now, but when I look at things like this it really scares me. I’m averaging between 1200-1400 calories a day and exercising, I could have 2 of those burgers, no buns, no lettuce and tomato, just two slabs of meat and it would meet my count for the day, and we wonder how obesity has become such a widespread problem. Instead of throwing the book at the people who serve the food and the people who have become the statistics, why not look at education. Oh wait, that would make us all responsible for ourselves and we couldn’t sue or blame people for our problems!! Sometimes I look at the state of things and honestly think that we are getting exactly what we deserve.
