Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Look, you can eat 100% healthy and work out and cook all of your own food, never eat out, and still have health problems. And need health insurance.

I wouldn't dream of claiming otherwise, nor do I object to blatantly socialist nature of the proposed health care reforms. This nation became a socialist country under Lyndon Baines Johnson. There is nothing I can do about that and I cannot see any point in objecting to any pending legislation owing to its "socialist" nature.

And no, I do not expect you to suddenly begin inhaling packaged cookies. Whatever on earth gave you the notion that I was making such a claim? The point I am making is that there are a great many people who do inhale such stuff and that it is making them obese. Such people are responsible for their behavior and no one else. The trouble is, the government is unlikely to treat with us that way.

As I have pointed out, the government is ill-equipped to implement anything other than a one size fits all solution. They will treat with you and I as though we do inhale the equivalent of packaged cookies because that is what so many people do.

Personal responsibility says, "I can take care of myself quite handily, Uncle Sam, thank you very much. No, you are not going to tell me how I must live my life."

The Chili's restaurant chain used to serve a chili burger that was actually their "Old Timer" served open face with a quarter cup or so of chile con carne and cheddar cheese. They stopped serving it so I stopped visiting Chili's restaurants. This will not make any difference to them and I know it, but that was the only thing on their menu that I liked.

@NYCeater,

The thing that you just don't seem to be getting is that *this* isn't the crowd who goes and buys the cookies!!!!!!!

Yes, I do understand that. Here is what I want to know. Are serious eaters going to standby and allow the behavior of fools, the majority who are not Serious Eaters in this case, dictate their diets? There is nothing wrong with eating the occasional hamburger w/ fries and a coke, but there is are grave risks associated with eating such stuff every day.

This doesn't even make sense! You wrongly assume that someone who would purchase cookies at the store would then sit and eat 700 calories worth a day?

Oh, yes, yes, sure. Nabisco's Chips Ahoy brand of cookies claims 5 calories per gram. A bag of those last about thirty minutes in the average household. Then there is the cold cereal, already too sweet, with a couple of teaspoons of sugar on top. The large serving of potato chips with two sandwiches made from sliced bread and cheap lunch meat, sugar cured, and a beer or a cocktail or tall soft drink, and then we all go out to the local fast food joint for supper. I watch what people do, I do notmake assumptions. Do you know who does make assumptions? The Federal Government. When they see the majority doing X and Y they assume that everyone does.

The Federal Government has no choice about whether or not it wants to make assumptions. The people in the government have not got the time to make allowances for individual behavior. They always impose a one size fits all solution because that is the only way they can do it.

Now, let's talk about agendas. Guess who has a clear agenda, Robert Kenner, Elise Pearlstein, William Pohlad, Jeff Scholl, Robin Schorr, Dianne Weyermann, Eric Schlosser, Richard Pierce and Melissa Robledo and probably a great many more who I have not named. Any of those names ring a bell with you?

My position is that I want the freedom to buy the foods I wish to buy, from whomever I choose to buy them, without interference from the government or from some wigged out NGO whose members suffer from a Messiah complex. Ergo, I am arguing in favor of individual freedom.

And, unless you have data to back your claims, it is you who assume that the majority on this forum do not wish to read what I write. While we are on the subject of majorities, what if the majority does not wish to read what I write? Nothing about this arrangement of this forum forces them to read anything I post. You don't have to read anything I write if you do not want to. Nothing and no one is forcing you to read my posts.

@mother91,

You brought up something that piqued my interest and I have been doing a bit of casual research on it.

I can recall exactly when the latest anti-smoking campaign reached fever pitch. It was right after this rather odd air crash. It was one of those days when the Universe Changed. A man named Don Estridge, the man who was in charge of developing the first IBM PC, was sitting in the front part of Delta 191 because he did not smoke. A number of his key employees were sitting in the forward section of the plane as well. Two of them, however, were sitting in the after part of the plane because they smoked. The two sitting aft, as well as many other passengers, survived. Nearly everyone sitting in the forward section survived.

This crash changed history in two ways. The next version of IBM's personal computer was a complete dud and smoking on domestic flights were banned within a month.

If you look at when our obesity problem started, 1980, and when this crash occurred, the match in trends is striking. As the number of smokers declined, the number of obese people increased dramatically. Mind you, people were kicking the habit at an increasing rate prior to the Delta 191 crash, but the government did not become serious about stamping out smoking right after the crash.

What we have here is a very strong clue, not proof and I do not believe that smoking is a preferred solution to obesity. I can say that I had to struggle to keep my weight down after I stopped smoking and that struggle was more unpleasant than the withdrawal symptoms.

There is always hot water cornbread or "hoe-cakes".

Again, GOM, you just spent half of a long post talking about your political views. You keep making assumptions purely to back up your rants on "our odious leadership.

Not assumptions, observations. Currently we have a governor who abandoned his duties for a week, giving no one any advance notice, so that he could have a tryst with his lover in Argentina. Also, we have the wife of a well known congressman about to serve time for corruption charges. We need not look too far back to find a governor who became addicted to a prostitute and used state funds to satisfy his addiction. We have a Secretary of the Treasury on duty who falsified his tax returns.

I don't understand what politics has to do with what I want to make for dinner. I purchase the foods I want to eat from where I want to purchase them.

So far, so good. What if in the name of the health care reform, our odious political leadership elects to remove your favorite foods from the shelves of your favorite grocer? It is even more likely that the government will remove meats from grocery store shelves in the name of "the environment.".

The possibilities I am pointing out are not at all far-fetched. There are more than a few folks who already advocate such measures.

@joyyy, it really is ironic, isn't it? Glad to know you are enjoying the show though.

@dbcurrie, I apologize if I offended you, that was not my intent.

@hungrychristel, prior to violent video games, certain political activists and defense lawyers were blaming cartoons, like Bugs Bunny, for the violent behavior of juvenile delinquents. Before the cartoons got blamed, it was Rock and Roll music and before that it was the Jitterbug or something. When it comes to imposing government control, some will use any excuse, no matter how flimsy it may be. Both Republicans and Democrats are alike in this respect. I remember when one prominent Republican insisted that the move to put stannous flouride in our drinking water was a Communist plot. The intent was to control dental caries, but he drummed up enough fear that most water districts still do not use stannous flouride.

Well, dbcurrie, there are exceptions to every rule, but anyone who does not find the baking of cookies and its aftermath a chore after the ten or twelve batches in two months is likely to be active enough to not have a problem with his or her weight.

What works for you may not work for anyone else, let alone the majority, but the government has no option but to apply a "one size fits all solution." The problem, assuming the government chooses to address it, is too big to address in any other way.

Who do you want responsible for what you do in your kitchen and when? Do you want to be responsible for that, or do you want a government agency to be responsible for it?

@joyyy, we got a very different health education when I was going to school. We had "balanced diet" drummed into our heads until I was sick of hearing about it. We were constantly reminded of personal hygiene and had our shortcomings pointed out to us when necessary.

We also had to run four laps around the track during P.E. and then did calisthenics after that. If there was time left in P.E. after calisthenics we got to play Four Square or Dodge Ball or softball, or even rag football. What we were not allowed to do was to wander around the school yard and squabble.

Being male, I signed up for Ag, but got stuck in Home Economics owing to scheduling conflicts. In that class we got more "balanced diet" drummed into us with instruction on how to cook said diet. It turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I will admit that it is convenient, from a certain point of view, to have the government wave its guns and nudge people into line. After all the government can nudge you and you'll cough up more cash, right? They can nudge you and you will get into line for the draft. What choice will you have? I suppose if we are going to let the government nudge us over tobacco, we may as well let them nudge us away from the sugar bowl. Why not? It's all for the greater good and besides, it will be convenient.

We all have an interest in food, this is true. I think that healthcare reform is already a done deal. We are going to get it. Whether I think it is a good thing or not is moot.

And, for what it is worth, there is already talk about increasing taxes on sugar. In other words, now that our odious political leadership has seen fit to place itself in charge of our health care system, how do you suppose they will run it? Ever hear the phrase, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"? Obesity is, at the time of this writing, the latest medical bug-a-boo.

Are you willing to let the government control the size of your belly, or are you going to do it? Who is responsible for the size of your belly? You or the about-to-be-hired bureaucrats?

@joyyy, whatever the government does on this issue, we will all be in the same boat. Right now, the precise direction the government might take is not clear. Are you going to like it if they put a 100% surcharge on sugar? Are you going to like it if they suddenly decide to ration eggs? Or will you simply be satisfied to see the fast food joints put out of business? If they do put the fast food chains out of business, do you really think that the government will stop there?

I have not made an attempt to disguise anything. Quite the opposite obtains. I am trying to make things clear.

There are exceptions to every rule, Amandarama. If that is how you like to eat your lobster, more power to you.

So we need to focus on what we can control, right? Maybe we can't reduce the time we spend in a car or on train, but we can focus on the quality of our food, can't we? The idea I am driving at is that if you insist on better quality you eat less because the food costs more in terms of money or effort or both. If you focus on quality, you don't need to eat as much because you are buying food with more nutrient value. And, let's face it, you are supposed to be buying nutrients first, not convenience or sweetness.

When you bake your own bread, you eat less bread and that is a good thing. When you bake your own cookies, you eat fewer cookies and that is a very good thing.

When you buy cuts of meat that require more cooking time, you eat less and that is a good thing.

Here is the secret prize. When you eat less, you appreciate what you do eat better. Meals become something you can truly enjoy again and not something you gobble down while driving or standing over the sink.