Big whoopie, I’m a food blogger now! Well, OK, we’ve gotta fill categories somehow, so it’s been food a couple times. I am far from the only blogger online to rave about the Mediterranean Diet, but it’s the only sensible diet there is to find with real research to back it up.
Naturally, sticking to the Mediterranean Diet is just about the most anti-American thing you can do. Walk home from the store with a bottle of actual olive oil (easier said than done) and a bag of kale and pick-ups like these:
will follow you down the street yelling “FAGGIT!” So I go into how American food culture is one big conspiracy to keep you tubby as a hippo. This brings us to a very topical subject…
Bill Maher is in the hot seat yet AGAIN for his remarks about fat Americans. Previously it was the comic book fans, now it’s the lardies. Now I just got through saying in the Mediterranean piece that I’m a tubbo too, and working to cut that down (my present weight is still after losing 90 pounds!). I’m still not offended at Bill. He’s got a point.
Like usual, he’s tone-deaf, so his point gets lost in aiming at the wrong issue. It’s not that Americans don’t care about their health – at least not all of them. It’s that the deck is stacked against you unless you’re rich enough to have the leisure time to sit around reading the labels on 25 bottles to find out which ones really contain olive oil. It’s that the more convenient a food is, the more likely it is to be loaded with sugar, carbs, and junk. Just look at that banner image up top – Monster energy drink, 54 grams of sugar! But that’s what the average middle-classer is stuck grabbing right now between their two jobs, their night classes, and shuttling their kids to daycare.
Along with good health care, other countries also do this pinko, Socialist thing called REGULATED FOOD AND NUTRITION. They eat healthier because their government promotes better nutrition, exercise more because the infrastructure provides them with an alternative to driving everywhere in a car, get exposed to less junk food because the government limits junk food marketing, get a better start because their schools provide healthier lunches, and more.
The Ex. Dir. of the Global Obesity Prevention Center points out that obesity is “…a systems problem. In the past several decades, it has been treated as a single cause, single effect problem… but it’s related to so many things.”
So there you go, Bill! You’re right, but the crowd is mad at you because you’re blaming them for what isn’t their fault.
UPDATE This tweet concurs that Americans have a fat tooth:
Americans have the tastebuds of toddlers. They saturate savoury foods with sugar and hide their flavours. Candied walnuts and sweetened cranberries in salads. Sweetened sauces over meat. All followed by syrupy fruit pie with ice cream.
— Janet Elizabeth Childerhose (@JEChilderhose) November 23, 2019
“Americans have the taste buds of toddlers…” – among many comparisons between toddlers and American culture, this is yet another one one the nose.
UPDATE So late to the party that I feel stupid for not discovering this sooner, but there is an Australian documentary called That Sugar Film (2014) that explores food packaging and labeling on a hidden sugar safari. They have a website here.
Granted, he’s focusing on Australia there, but the brands and corporate culture have enough overlap with America. And granted, the documentary is about on par with Super Size Me (2004) for journalistic standards. Still it is eye-opening. This documentary tends to attract trolls online who always post “Well Nutella has sugar, duh!” That’s not the point. The point is how much sugar, and how much there is in everything else to go with it. He also points out alleged “healthy” foods that are just Nutella in a different shape. The point is how hard industry works to hide our sugar intake with different names.
The point is that there’s no healthy alternatives left. If you snapped your fingers and just made the added sugars disappear from the grocery store, you’d be left with maybe 5% of the store.
