Buy Big So You Can Share With Bin Laden
I eat healthy. I work out twice a day. I don’t take vitamins and I don’t use any medicines. I don’t drink soda. I don’t eat fast food. Nothing fried, nothing cooked in a microwave oven.
Whenever any of this comes up, people immediately feel the need to comment on it, probably, I imagine, to justify their lack of discipline or their unhealthy diets or whatever complacency they have. When you say you exercise, people immediately respond with “Yeah, I really should do that”. When you say you don’t eat fast food, people say “yeah, me neither” as they push the McDonald’s wrappers under the seat in their car.
But it’s not just about being healthy, or being thin. It’s not about saving money or having low cholestrol. It’s really about fighting the all-too-American urge to over-consume. Here in the good old U.S. of A. we’re not citizens, we’re consumers. It shows in everything about our country… they don’t say “we can’t do this or that because it would be wrong”… instead they say we have to listen to the voters (politics) or the stockholders (business) or the viewers (television). Why does McDonalds continue to make the crap they make? Because people continue to eat there. Why does Wal-Mart continue to sell low-quality imported crap? Because people continue to buy it.
Okay, I’m getting a little carried away. Let me rein it in a bit. My point here is that when Brinker Intl. (parent company of Chili’s, On the Border, Maccaroni Grill, etc) is having board meetings to discuss how they can make the seats bigger without reducing their quantity, it might be time for us to re-evaluate our diets. (And did you know that an Onion Blossom at Chili’s has 2400 calories in it?) When the best selling item at Hardees is a single hamburger that contains the entire recommended daily allowance of calories for an average adult, we may have a little bit of a problem — and that’s before mad cow disease.
I would like to think that 9/11 has changed things a bit, too… but the reality is that it hasn’t. Why do so many foreigners hate us so much? Perhaps it’s our wasteful attitude. We overconsume. We think we deserve more than anyone else, and to that end, we’re not only wasteful in the portions we consume, we’re also wasteful in the packaging and wasteful in the creation of that packaging, and wasteful in the shipping of that product, and wasteful in the acquisition of resources to manufacture that product — all on the backs of other people who are less fortunate than us. I would love to think that we opened our eyes a bit when 19 guys flew planes into our buildings, but the truth is that we’ve kept right on doing it. “Don’t let the terrorists win” we say. Hah! We’ll just waste more! That’ll show ‘em…
I hate eating out. The food is great everywhere, but there’s just so much of it. I’ve learned that the only way I can maintain my diet, my health, my way of life, is to throw all this great food in the garbage. I hate doing it, but I have to throw food away because if I clean my plate — like mom and dad taught me to do — I’ll get charged for two tickets on airplanes and in theaters: one for me and one for my fat ass.
It’s the same when i buy DVDs. All I really want is that little disc. You could wrap it in a thin cardboard or paper sleeve, and it would still work the same. In fact, cardboard or paper would be far more environmentally friendly — trees are renewable, oil (that’s where plastic comes from) is not. So what’s the point of the giant plastic case then? It’s ostentation. It’s a better display in the store, and it’s a better display at home. We all have to buy expensive racks to put our movie collection on display. Bullshit. I throw those stupid cases away, and contribute to the non-biodegradable landfill.
People like me are not in the majority, however. That’s why little discs come in enormous plastic boxes, and a single American meal could feed a family of four in Europe. That’s why our landfills are full and our asses are big. And maybe that’s why dirty, hungry people with no food and no air conditions… people who work all day for a few dollars (and often less!) doing jobs we hate… people who could live like kings on nothing more than the scraps we throw away… maybe that’s why they hate Americans. If so, I can’t say that I blame them.
