I expect this will ramble quite a bit, so please forgive me in advance. My gmail webclip this morning was How Mac N’ Cheese Is Like A Cigarette. One might expect that such a provocative headline would actually discuss neurochemistry, but it was a little light on details. (To be fair, it points to what is presumably a more informative book.) My wife and I are quite bad at eating healthily. The following is a list of the meals I can recall preparing since we got our new kitchen setup: frozen pizza (x3), frozen chicken cordon bleu, baked potatoes with cheese and bacon, baked potatoes with the nasty soy product that my wife calls butter and salt and pepper, tacos (shell, lean ground beef, cheese, tomato, salsa), nachos (taco leftovers), boxed macaroni and cheese. I almost always eat a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, and my breakfasts recently have been either a pop-tart or pineapple and strawberries.
My terrible diet is in no way a result of my parents feeding me this way in childhood. My family ate all of these things on occasion, of course, but it was very rare to have a meal without a vegetable. The problem was that I hated them, and once I was old enough to be given some choice in the matter stopped eating them. My tastes are slowly changing (I now think that peppers and onions can make excellent flavorings, for example), but I would still never touch most vegetables. I can perhaps be convinced to avoid what the author of the above-linked article calls “food that is extremely palatable”, but there is no way I am going to start eating something that I find disgusting.
To a point I would like to eat healthier foods. While I was a bachelor I used only whole wheat bread, but we now compromise on “whole grain white”. When you take two people who are unhealthy, picky eaters and pair them together you pare down the acceptable foods to the intersection of their tastes, not the union. I also admit to laziness; when I buy fresh ingredients that will require significant preparation time they often sit until they are about to rot. Fortunately, I am not overly concerned with this. “Here for a good time, not a long time” might be maligned as a slogan of the short-sighted hedonist, but in part it is quite sensible. I find eating a tasty meal to be one of the most exquisite, if mundane, pleasures of my life. If I could live 75 years of eating what I enjoy or 80 of grimacing and holding my nose at mealtime, that is one of the easiest choices I have ever made.
While I do not blame my parents for my poor choices as Ms. Arnst does, nor am I as willing to blame food manufacturers as she. I know full well that the groceries I buy are full of fat, sugar, salt, and preservatives; Kraft is not pulling any wool over my eyes. I will not blame them for making products that taste good. I am, however, willing to put some of the blame for my weight (at 5’7″ and 175lbs solidly in the middle of the overweight band) and that of the nation on restauranteurs. The explosion in portion size over the last several decades is absurd.
This makes business sense for the restaurant owner, unfortunately. If ingredients make up only 1/3 of his costs (just an educated guess, but probably a reasonably accurate one), then by doubling the amount of food he gives out and increasing the price by 50% he earns a greater profit and the customer feels that he is getting a good deal. In fact, many restaurants seem to hinge their fame on serving absolutely ridiculous portions. The consumer (including myself) has a hard time resisting buying at the lower price/unit, and even more difficulty wasting some of what he has purchased. The customer has the option of taking home half of his meal for later, but food is rarely nearly as good when reheated. The result is that when I eat at a restaurant I almost always leave stuffed to the point of being uncomfortable without ordering anything beyond an entree. This is entirely the fault of my own lack of self-control, but business could help by at least offering the option of buying smaller portions.
One day in the last two weeks Rachel was craving ice cream, so we went to Dairy Queen. I was not particularly hungry, but it had been years since I last ate a blizzard and I remembered them as being delicious, so I ordered a small. Their smallest serving was at least 12 oz., more ice cream than anyone ever needs in a single sitting. Of course, I ate the entire thing, and it may have even tasted better than I remembered.
I am somewhat skeptical of the article’s claims that the obesity epidemic is much more about food than exercise, as I am about many fad diets. I have no scientific data on which to test my theories, nor do I practice them myself very well, but I firmly believe that moderation in all things is the most healthy diet a person can eat. The body needs protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins, salt, etc. To completely cut any of those things from your diet or severely curtail them may induce weight loss, but it cannot be healthy. I also think that while the abundance of highly processed foods does have a significant impact, sedentary lifestyles are the primary reason Americans weigh so much more today than in years past.
When a colonialist killed an animal, you can be sure he consumed every edible part of it, including all of the fat. The difference is that he put in 12 hours of hard labor chopping wood or some such thing, while I and many other people sit at a desk all day. I also, on this note, find it somewhat humorous that 200 years ago exercise was a byproduct of useful work while today most people get their exercise from exertions that accomplish absolutely nothing. How much energy could we save if treadmills, stationary bicycles, free weights, etc could somehow turn the forces applied to them into the non-scientific definition of work?
I think there were other things I wanted to say, but this has gone on long enough without any structure or central thesis. In summary, I will continue to eat, drink, and be merry until it affects my quality of life more than switching to bland or worse foods would.