It looks like up north it's black people who are the fattest -- down here in Dixie it seems to be more white people are porkers. I'm not sure why that is. But though I've railed against life-controlling food nannies before, I can't but admit that more and more Americans are turning into giant, grotesque blobs. Including yours truly -- well, okay, I'm not so huge I need to be weighed on a loading dock. But I've definitely got that middle-aged spread thing going. A lot of it really is, I think, the fact that we literally eat more. When I was a kid you didn't get the four pork chops "stacked like pancakes," that Kathy experienced in one of our restaurants. We got one pork chop -- another was "seconds." And that was at home -- if we ate out we might get two, but one would go home in a bag. Though of course we didn't order something so mundane as pork chops when we ate out -- us kids ordered chicken (a treat in my red-meat household) or spaghetti (which wasn't as good as that my parents made, though). My parents ordered steak if we were at a steak place, fish at a fish place. Sometimes as a treat my mother would eat lobster, but I didn't (and still don't) like lobster.
But anyway -- even back then portions were smaller. People just didn't eat as much. Fast food wasn't very good, and mostly for kids -- but as a very occasional treat, not as a necessary part of a balanced diet. Also, burgers and fries were small -- smaller than the "small" portions they serve today. There was no such thing as a large anything except sodas or shakes. And at restaurants, you got a meal on a plate the same size as your plates at home, not gigantic platters piled with enough food to feed an Ethiopian family of ten for a week. On the one hand, the huge portions are great because you can take some home -- but then that depends on how appetizing you find congealed food reheated in the microwave the next day. (And then there is the fact that just about every time I eat out I end up getting the runs, but my rant about dirty, dirty Orlando and the unwashed hands of its transient restaurant worker population will have to wait for another day.)
Anyway, I had already decided that dinner would be salad and a cheese sandwich (one slice of cheese on whole wheat bread). Fortunately my lack of money is helping my diet. Help me lose weight! Don't donate! (Aw, just kidding...)
[Update: numerous grammatical errors have been cleaned up. My soon-to-be-ex-job is eating my few remaining brain cells. More on that subject someday, if I can bear to write about it.]
