by Freida Marie Crump
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Greetings from Poosey.
I’m just taking a wild stab here, but I’m guessing that if you’re so dumb that you buy a huge bucket of buttered popcorn at the movie theatre, slathered with salt and fortified with every fat in the civilized world, and if you don’t realize this will hurt your diet, you’re also so dumb that you can’t read a label on the box listing the exact calories. The FDA doesn’t share my prediction. A year from now any chain store with over 20 locations will have to state the number of calories on the container. This includes convenience stores, coffee shops, gas stations, pizza places, movie theatres, amusement parks, and supermarkets with prepared food.
We’ve tried regulating morality and that’s been pretty much a failure (see: Prohibition). Now we’re going to attempt at monitoring stupidity. Some 300,000 shops nationwide will be required to show calorie counts on all items – and three guesses as to who will eventually pay for the research, labeling and extra labor. It’s estimated that we eat 32% of our calories outside the home. So, the FDA’s plan is to slap labels on everything in an attempt to take away our title as the heaviest nation on the planet.
An admirable goal, but are we simply regulating ourselves to death? And if they are indeed going to try to change our eating habits with labels, why not apply warnings that truly get our attention. The tobacco industry went from “Cigarette smoking may be dangerous,” to “This sucker is gonna kill you!” If we must indeed label fattening food why not get down to business? I suggest some of these labels:
At the chicken place: “If your gut sticks out so far that you can’t hold this bucket of thighs and wings close enough to read the label then you shouldn’t be eating it.”
At the movie theatre: “The FDA warns that if you are dumb enough to spend this much on a box of popcorn then you’ll never be able to figure out the calorie count and may in fact need help spelling ‘calorie’.”
Warning to be placed at the fast food restaurant: “Look, we load the cheese with fat and the French fries with salt because we know that both fat and salt give us an urge to eat more fat and salt. Let’s be honest, if you truly want your little Bubba to eat healthy food you’d be eating at home right now.”
At the deli counter: “These are processed foods. You just walked down the aisle of fresh produce and bought nothing. We’re using the same ingredients that are offered fresh and unaltered just 30 feet from where you’re now standing, but if you want to add sodium and mayonnaise to your broccoli to make yourself think you’re eating healthy, then please ask for the large container.”
For display at the hot wings restaurant: “Deep frying these chickens didn’t add enough calories so we decided to slather on some sweet, sour, and spicy goop to support our local economy, namely the cardiologists and ER personnel.”
On the soft drink dispensers: “Congratulations! By consuming the Big Gulp size of this soft drink you have just swallowed more calories than a third of the world eats in a single day! You have just become your own nation!”
On the menu at the fancy sit-down place: “Trying to show off your healthy lifestyle by just ordering a salad? That pecan-encrusted chicken salad that we tout as ‘Healthy Eating!’ contains 1,080 calories and 1,650 mg of sodium, complete with 16 grams of saturated fat. If you run around the restaurant shouting ‘Look at healthy me!’ for exactly 108 minutes you can work it off then be ready for your dessert.”
At the entrance to the State Fair: “Devour all the elephant ears, deep fried Snickers bars, and cotton candy you like. You can justify it by saying the fair only comes once a year. On the flip side of this sign you’ll see a list of the other state fairs along with participating hospitals.”
To fight this lunacy I offer a few tips. Only vending machine operators who own over 20 machines will be required to list the nutritional information. If you want to drink your soda guilt free, look for a small operator. Also, “seasonal menu items” are exempt from the law. The same goes for daily specials. Eureka! Keep ordering the fried mushrooms and the Tuesday Mac and Cheese with Mashed Potatoes Special and you’re home free without the guilt following you out the restaurant door.
The real insanity in all this is the assumption that when people eat at home they read labels. I guess I do too. “Microwave for three minutes.”
You ever ‘round Poosey, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.