No boring bits?
When an icecream company promotes the fact it has no boring bits it does raise the question; Exactly how obese are we that it makes marketable sense to suggest we get bored eating an unadorned portion of a competitors icecream?
It is a modern western luxury to be capable of calorizing ourselves to death or become so weight obsessed we starve ourselves to death. I could look up the facts but we all know the gist without me boring myself studying; poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle cause a deep fried bucket load of health problems.
On the eating disorder scale I am far closer to obese than sickly skinny; unfortunately when anybody comments on my relatively lither appearance than their morbidly obese mental picture of me it is inevitably to do with a lower rate of socialising in the preceding weeks than a long term lifestyle change. I admit to not having a soap box worthy of carrying my girth on this topic but when has that ever stopped me?
Unless fat has clogged your ears and diabetes taken your eyesight* you know how to eat well and move a bit so have no excuse for a paunch. We are free to eat what we want and exercise our arse off (literally) yet increasingly eat rubbish and live sedentarily. That said two recent attempts and shirt loads of other products and policies that make it harder to be fit really get my goat. One of the recent cases was the pressure applied to the World Health Organisation not to release clear recommendations on exactly how much your daily sugar intake should be and instead make a bland statement about balanced diets. The second was a decision to take down a website with star ratings for the health of food (with alleged implications on the independence of our assistant health minister and her senior staff). Both cases, labelling laws, official dietary advice and government policies are rife with the whiff of junk food lobbying stopping campaigns that might make a difference from getting off the ground while supporting rubbish healthy living promotions (it was all covered on an ep of Hollowmen).
Smoking kills, and that was well known by tobacco companies when they were actively rubbishing the science, but Tobacco dealers continued to take healthy profits from their unhealthy products long after they stopped the charade and admitted the truth. Smokers of my generation have got into it knowing the facts, even if they got hooked when young and reckless. Likewise anyone living on icecream with no boring bits knows the consequences. As the makers of that ad know, we are a bunch of lazy fat bastards and the companies profiting should be happy with that. However it is a new level of bastardry for purveyors of cholesterol to hide the information for the rare times (or the fit few) who are trying to improve their diet. The promotion of bad food as health food, deliberately burying information to stop customers learning the implications and blocking policies that will help is worse than James Hardie’s asbestos bastardry. James Hardie was also prepared to cross the bridge from blissful ignorance into wilful deception for profit but sugar/fat companies have seen the example of tobacco and asbestos and chosen the same evil route. I am a fat bastard, but let me choose to take my health in my own hands, there are enough of us round ones around to prop up bad food companies without needing to beat the path to hell and damnation tobacco and asbestos have trodden.
*I know you haven’t been living under a rock because your too fat.
