Eating out a battle of wills Stateside
Next weekend I am catching a plane to summer. Don’t be cross. It is aworking holiday to North America for the month of July. Though I could go sooner – I packed my suitcase two weeks ago.
Among my sunfrocks and sandals (yes, that was bragging) I have also packed a lunch box. This is to avoid the situation I encountered on the same trip last year when breakfast made me cry.
I get anxious when I can’t eat all the food on my plate. It seems wasteful, and feels rude. So in various American cities, Iwould attempt to order something small and light, like a croissant with a little ham. Invariably, the croissant would arrive, bigger than my head, with most of a pig jammed into it, said pig clearly having died from being drowned in butter and cheese.
It was a constant dilemma-on-aplate: waste food and insult the chef versus fitting my pants. Hence this year’s personal doggy-bag, in which I will delicately secrete most of breakfast and save it for lunch. Or a homeless dude or a pigeon.
By the time I touch down in the land of the free refill, some of the supersizing may have been outlawed. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is attempting to ban the sale of fizzy drinks in individual servings larger than 16 ounces (453 grams), saying it is away to fight obesity in a city that spends billions of dollars a year on weight-related health problems.
Sixteen ounces is almost half a litre, served in a cup which looks like a bucket with one straw. That’ll still be legal, just not the next size up.
No-one actually needs that much fluid, unless they’ve run amarathon. And you probably aren’t running marathons if you’re into swallowing 18 teaspoons of sugar in one go. So a sugar drink that big is unhealthy and stupid. But I’m not convinced it should be illegal as well.
I do not like this current legal trend of identifying things that are potentially dangerous and making them illegal. Encouraging people to think and take personal responsibility appeals a lot more.
It’s that old saying: ‘‘Give a man a law and he will do right for day. Teach a man to take personal responsibility and he’ll do right forever.’’ Or go fishing. I’m sure fish come into it somewhere. Fish has heaps of Omega 3 which is also good for you.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the States, you can still get a fast-food chain bacon sundae – ice cream with bacon bits smeared with chocolate and caramel sauce, garnished with a strip of deep fried bacon. It’s been described by one appalled nutritionist as ‘‘15 teaspoons of sugar with some pig in it’’.
There’s a guy in Christchurch campaigning to bring it here. I admire his chutzpah – if that’s not an indelicate word to use when discussing bacon. He is quoted as saying not only does it sound like a great flavour combo, but its very existence will annoy ‘‘the sorts of people who really need to be annoyed from time to time’’. See comment from nutritionist above.
Imay well try one. Or a small portion of one. And bring the rest home for this dude in my lunch box.