Going along with this week’s anniversary trend of recapping some of the lessons I learned doing the various segments comes this “Top 5” lessons list from The Fast Food Critic.
Lesson 5: 9 Times Out of 10, The More Ingredients Something Has the Worse It is For You. That’s not always an ironclad rule, but it’s always a good guideline. Increasingly, food seems to be concocted in Frankenstein’s laboratory with little regard to what should ACTUALLY be in the food. Just look at the laundry list of chemicals for a Wendy’s Frosty where you can’t tell if you’re eating a milkshake (which is supposed to be milk + ice cream) or something with fewer natural ingredients than crystal meth. Then look at a banana, ingredients: a banana. Almost always, the fewer ingredients listed for a product is better for you.
Lesson 4: It Really Isn’t That People Don’t Get Enough Exercise. All my life I’ve heard that young people are fatter because “they sit on their ass playing video games and aren’t outside like we used to be.” Well you know what? That’s bullshit. The foods that young kids are eating can NOT be burned off as easy as foods that existed fifty years ago. Trans fat and high fructose corn syrup aren’t found in nature, have extra molecules of fat that the body has to work harder to burn off, and if you’re eating that in significant doses, you won’t burn that off if you’re outside four hours a day. Exercise makes people feel good and will add years to their life, but diet cannot be ignored. In summation: if you make your kid run laps around the house but give him a pack of oreos right afterwards, you’re doing it wrong.
Lesson 3 (which goes with 4): You Can’t Sell Lung Cancer to Kids (Cigarettes) but You Can Sell Them Colon Cancer (McDonald’s). Now I know that even if a ten year old eats McDonald’s everyday, he won’t get colon cancer for years and years, but the habits that kids pick up become ones they have as adults. Diabetes, obesity, and hyper-tension are through the roof for young adults in America and that’s directly related to the encouraged diet of Oreos, Burger King, and Doritos chips that is given to them as kids. Kids can’t turn on the TV without Reese’s cups or McDonald’s or Cheetos marketing directly to them, but when is the last time you saw a commercial for lettuce?
Lesson 2: Food is the Number One Killer in America. What kills the most Americans every year? It’s not cigarettes (although those are awful and people that still smoke in 2011 should just save some time and put a gun to their head). It’s not texting while driving or any other over-exploited freak occurrences. And it’s damn sure not terrorism. What kills more Americans than any other thing is the food they eat. This might take the form of heart disease or high blood pressure or colon cancer or the catch-all of “obesity” but it’s not possible to die from those things if you’re only eating salads and fish.
Lesson 1: Even Our Food Has a Political Divide. Something that truly boggles my mind is that food has apparently become political, as increasingly red state people will defend their right to eat fried twinkles every meal AND their willingness to feed that to their kids. While blue state people seem to prefer Whole Foods, “vegan” whatever, and Michelle Obama’s suggestion that kids eat something called a “tomato” every now and then. This makes no sense to me as I would think everyone could get behind the cause of not eating twice their daily recommended calories but apparently not.
Ahhh great tips AL – great tips
Happy birthday al – keep up the good work