Wednesday, January 19, 2011

You need more?


What better to wash that 50lb. hamburger down than with a 31 oz. coffee. Good grief have we gone totally mad? Forty plus years ago a regular cup was something like 6 to 8 oz. And rather than go swimming in a fountain drink it was considered extra large if it was more than ten ozs. Guess when some executive did some research and found that the human bladder could hold 16 ozs. then all bets were off. More is not better. More is just more and results in more around the waistline. Now there are prizes to see who has the latest entry into the Guinness Book for the largest (fill in your entrée of choice). And the fools that be actually think that one human being can actually consume such gargantuan portion in one sitting. And the prize if they do? It's free! I can only assume that this has become the latest diversion much like flag pole sitting or marathon dancing was back in Mom's and Dad's day. But really do we need food items that would feed half the town when so many on this planet consider themselves lucky if they can eat grass or dirt in any given day? I'm no wet blanket to spectacles but you'd think that we could get just a bit more creative and practical in our feats.

With the current economy I can appreciate what those at the bottom of the pile are experiencing. I know now why the less fortunate carry the weight both figuratively and literally. They have everything going against them. The bulk of what comes from food pantries is rice, pasta and potatoes. It will keep a body alive but not in the healthiest of terms. Then there's the Russian Roulette of caned goods. Will they consume something that's been at the back of a cupboard two years beyond its' use by date? A broth soup is not supposed to slosh in a can when it's shaken as if it were a solid glob. Any fresh foods like produce must be consumed within the first 48 hrs as they were close to being composted anyway.
There is the stress of what I'd call "you can't have your cake and eat it too". That's the fear that if you eat something then you might not have anything for later or tomorrow. This results in skipping meals in order to save. But that's not a good idea since hunger will eventually kick in with a vengeance resulting in over eating. There's that never ending array junk foods. Like it or not a bag of chips looks very tempting and would fill a hunger pang for at least one meal. But such substitutes are no answer for good nutrition. It's all about survival and the subconscious takes over in desperation. I can only imagine what the Russians went through during WWII. I understand there were no dogs to me found on city streets during the German siege.
The thin veneer of civility slowly erodes when circumstances change for the worse. A war, a natural disaster an economic down turn or being born to poverty kicks in the survival instinct. We got to witness that some years back when the Kurds of northern Iraq were forced to flee their homes and live in the hills. These were by American standards middle class folks with homes and cars and jobs. Had it not been for their dress you'd have though they were from middle America. Yet in just a few short weeks conditions in their camps were reduced to something close to a Mad Max village. People at the bottom aren't necessarily lazy they're terrified. As we see from the latest events fear moves people to work against their own best interests. Survival is a great motivating factor. We will do what it takes to get by.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Eat the filthy rich.

Anonymous said...

After boiling of course..

squatlo said...

My wife and I went to see True Grit at the theater a week or two ago after not visiting a theater since "The Simpsons Movie" a couple of years ago. I don't get out much... mainly because other people do.
Anyway, we stopped at the concession counter for popcorn and a coke. The kid behind the counter assured me that it was the same price if he super-sized everything, special of the day or something, so what the hell, embiggen it.
Needless to say, I needed both hands to hold this drink. It was about three-quarts of beverage in a waxy paper cup, barely fit into the cup holder in the seat arms.
What the hell are we doing? Is that "normal"? Do we wonder why our kids waddle around like mumu mamas at Kmart when they're ten years old?
Jeez!

S.W. Anderson said...

You might find my 2004 post, "Extreme eats can pose risks of many kinds," interesting.

What Starbucks and some of the others are doing is analogous to the Costco principle. They want you to buy more in one transaction because that is more cost-efficient, and thus profitable, for them.

You watch some typical downtown Starbucks. You'll see some customers come in two or three times a day to buy a small coffee or latte, or whatever. So, send them off with a 31 oz. whatever and they're probably fixed for the day, at least if they have access to a microwave oven for reheating.

BBC said...

The bulk of what comes from food pantries is rice, pasta and potatoes.

No excuses, I've ate that stuff all my life without getting fat, they get fat off of it because they eat too much of it and are not active enough.

How does a 32 ounce cup of coffee stay hot until you get it all down? Not that it would matter to me, I'm known to drink cold coffee.

I drink two pots of coffee every morning, that's more than 32 ounces, but I do piss a lot, hahahaha

BBC said...

Eat the filthy rich.

Define the filthy rich. 100 K, 200 K 300 K?

MRMacrum said...

Just giving the masses what they didn't know they wanted until it was offered to them.

Randal Graves said...

Oh great, does this mean we're all going to end up as nuts as Mel?

Tom Harper said...

Pretty shrewd business strategies by the food industry, diet/weightloss/fitness industry and the pharmaceutical companies. Get fat and unhealthy from eating junk food in 5-pound increments, pay through the nose to join a "health" club, pay through the nose again for the latest weight loss gimmick, and "ask your doctor about" all those feelgood drugs you see advertised on TV. Each one of those drugs has side effects, which lo and behold can be cured by another drug made by the same company, and that drug also has side effects which can be cured by...

Gee, why are millions of Americans so fat, sick and broke?

jmsjoin said...

That is really sick! They wonder why people are over weight. All this overt sized crap is for people who could care less if they get fat. With me if I don't need it I don't want it and because of discipline not financial constraints.

S.W. Anderson said...

BBC wrote, "I drink two pots of coffee every morning . . ."

That's my kind of coffee lover! I drink one cup a day, but I keep it going all day long and into the evening. ;)

Tom, now that you know their secret and revealed it on the Internets, don't be surprised if you're waylaid, hauled into an alley and force-fed triple-cheese triple burgers and two-liter milkshakes until you lapse into a carbohydrate-induced coma.

Ranch Chimp said...

Good posting Demeur, I spend a fair amount of time in lower income neighborhood's in Central Dallas ... it is so difficult to even find anything halfway healthy in your poorest neighborhood's actually. Rare to find any large store chain's, alot of small inde place's usually run by folk's from place's like Pakistan or South Korea, and they never even hire any of the folk's from the neighborhood's they serve, only familia ... but the income's are so low in some of these area's, that the store's even sell cigarette's singular ... just some of this reminded me of that.

Later Guy ....