It seems that fast food has been on the receiving end of some unwanted attention of late; at least, it's unwanted from the point of view of the corporations who manufacture and sell the noxious shite that generally passes for fast food. Namely, the hamburger.
I used to love going to Hungry Jack's. I'd order myself a double whopper with cheese meal (upgraded) almost every Saturday. Why? I cannot confirm or deny that I'd have had a good deal of booze on Friday night, but it's not an unreasonable supposition. (I was young!) Now, I'm not exactly sure what the correlation between beer and fast food is, but I do know that for me at least, one was ideally followed swiftly by the other. And the combination was lethal. Before I knew it, I was seriously overweight, with blood pressure on the rise.
So I can certainly sympathise with anyone who has struggled to live healthily. But for the last six months, I've changed my way of eating and drinking. I no longer eat fast food, and actually quit drinking a long time ago. By changing my diet and adding in some regular exercise, I'm getting closer and closer to the weight I'm supposed to be.
Losing weight isn't that hard, once you've made the decision to do so, providing you are committed to it, and providing you can understand just why you gained the weight in the first place. For me, it was for a variety of reasons, which culminated in a what was an insidiously vicious cycle: drink, eat, get sleepy, repeat. And get fat. Very fat.
Which brings us back to fast food. Those burgers I liked to eat contained, on average, 1022 calories (or 4273 kilojoules). And that's just the burger. Add the coke at the fries, and we're looking at an astonishing 1756 calories, or 7342 kilojoules. Given that the recommended daily kilojoule intake is 8700 kilojoules, you can see where we begin to have a problem. And that's not the worst of it. The worst of it can be measured in saturated fat and salt. That burger meal amounts to 202% of the recommended daily intake of saturated fats, and 86% of the recommended daily intake of sodium. Put another way, it's a heart attack in a greasy wrapper.
Now, I'm an educated and reasonably intelligent man. You'd think I'd know better than to eat rubbish like that. Sadly, I didn't. I also smoked for a number of years, too, so my track record for knowing what's good for me is pretty dismal. And I'm not alone. The experience of losing weight tends to attune one to the weight of others, and the number of seriously overweight people waddling around Perth is nothing short of frightening. But if you want an explanation of the phenomenon, simply glance at the shopping trolley of a large person next time you're in a supermarket, and the answer will present itself.
I could spend time deriding overweight people for their poor diet choices and pathetic lack of willpower, but it would be both pointless and hypocritical. I was overweight, and unless I keep working at it, could easily be so again. I needed to reach a point in my life where being healthy became of paramount importance to me. I'm thankful that it has happened, but I don't think I can claim too much credit for it. Sometimes, people seem to have very little control over when precisely their moment of clarity will arise.
But when it comes to children, I'm not sure waiting for them to experience a moment of clarity for themselves is the responsible course of action. Obese parents all too often produce obese children. And once obesity sets in, it can be very, very hard to eradicate.
Which is why I was so pleased the American city of San Francisco has banned McDonalds (and other fast food chains) from giving toys away with unhealthy food. It's interesting how McDonalds is trying to spin the decision so it appears as though it's the Happy Meal (i.e. the Coronary Meal) that's been banned, when it hasn't. If McDonalds wants to give a toy to every child who purchases a nutritious breast of whole chicken, with actual salad (sans cheese) on a real, whole grain bun, I don't think there'd be a problem at all, do you?
I think society is crying out for some entrepreneur with some cash, some vision and social conscience to revolutionise fast food in this country. Fast need not be a short cut to an early death. I can easily envision a restaurant with lots of colours and play areas for children, where the food is healthy, and the fries are replaced with fruit. And there are toys galore for the children, with every little meal they buy. It's a horrible reality in our society that "treat" has become a euphemism for "bad". Why do we treat ourselves with stuff that's actually harmful to us? It's profoundly, hazardously stupid.
And it's got to end. I'm not sure you can ban fast food, but then ethically and logistically, I'm not sure it's that different from banning smoking. The social and medical costs aren't that different. And when it comes to children, smokers are in trouble if they light up with kids in the car, so there's already some degree of commitment from authorities to protect the young from the poor choices of adults.
The debate about personal freedoms is long and tiresome, but essential. Too easily are freedoms lost to the best of intentions. But the obesity crisis in Australia (and other countries) is getting worse with every passing year. I think some seriously effective deterrents are going to need to be put in place before too long, to not only stop people from wanting to buy unhealthy fast food, but also to stop people from wanting to sell it. And the hip pocket seems as good a place as any to aim for.
But until that happens, we're only going to get fatter. Our desire for superficial gratification (or food porn) is alive and well. The only problem is, when scoffing down a Big Mac, we're barely one of these things.
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