A Small Taste of Fast Food: Dave Draper

[Guest guest]

For those who may not know, Dave Draper, one of the all-time bodybuilding

greats, publishes a most enjoyable and informative free email newsletter that

some of you might care to receive. You may join here:

<http://lb.bcentral.com/ex/manage/subscriberprefs?customerid=11196>

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Here is an extract from his latest issue:

A SMALL TASTE OF FAST FOOD

<<How did I know forty years ago that " fast food, " the vulgar, insidious

preparation of chicken, beef, fish and potatoes with its slurpy beverages,

was bad for me? I felt the same way about slippery green snakes that hissed

in the grass. It was something in the way they looked and slithered and

shimmered.

Fast food has covered the planet like moss and challenged mankind's health.

It's put a chink in the armor of the vanishing individual and propagated the

grinning, baying masses. The profile of the economy has been rearranged by

the powerful industry and its many and long-reaching tentacles. Where there

is immense power and growth so is there politics and favors, oversight and

corruption.

At a recent fast food owners and operators convention in Las Vegas amidst

laughter, food and drink, a Carl's Jr. bigwig pointed out with solemnity the

problem certain consumer groups present to the industry with their

narrow-minded views on health and environment, employee's rights and wages.

Thorns in the sides of the giants, these long-contended issues are valid and

make them mad. Make them worry.

Let's take a quick look:

All the food in a fast food restaurant is frozen, dehydrated, condensed,

highly processed and freeze dried. It is full of fat and sugar, salt and

preservatives. Secret flavors prepared in laboratories account for the taste

appeal of the fries, meat and milkshakes. Without them you would doubt their

authenticity as food. The single flavor " strawberry " to concoct a

mouthwatering shake at Burger King contains 48 different chemicals with names

like benzyl isobutyrate and ethyl methlphenylglycidate. I'll have water and a

napkin, please, hold the food.

The fast food industry loves the government as long as it can govern it,

usurp it or dodge it. They get considerable tax breaks for hiring unskilled

workers that they promise to train and don't. They underpay their teen

workforce, do nothing to develop them as " Young America, " lose them before

insurance and vacation benefits accrue and generally use them up. Okay.

What's the point? It's not right and I thought you might be interested.

How about this? Fast food is in school cafeterias with all its unbalanced and

nocuous ingredients. Just what little Tommy and Susie need to grow fat and

hypered and insulin-dependent. It's also perfect timing to develop their

taste for fat and syrup to ensure that they reach for the junk the rest of

their lives. Who let this stuff in the schools in the first place?

We swing into the wide parking lot beneath the golden arches, gang in toe and

make our order of jumbo Cokes (310 calories), Super-Size Fries (610 calories

and 29 grams of fat) and double burgers with cheese and bacon (45 grams of

fat and about 1,000 calories). The kids are off in the red, yellow and blue

plastic playground sliding down slopes and planning the toys they'll snag on

the way out the door. One hundred million McHappy Meals were sold in ten days

during a record-breaking Teenie Beanie Baby giveaway. Thanks, Mom; do I get

to keep all the fat and calories, too? How about the degenerating habits?

Yes, I know, you're right. Sociology is neither my expertise nor the scope of

this newsletter but I'm learning. The relevance of man's greed and power and

ego, along with his ignorance and denial, cannot be excused from the

unresolved condition he faces today: unchecked, self-destructive, weak-willed

obesity. It's been thrust upon us by ourselves. I simply want you to know the

source of some of the problems. Understanding a problem can help with its

solution.

The United States has the highest rate of obesity in the world, twice what it

was some thirty years ago. Nearly half the population is in the red zone --

about forty-five million adults are obese. One quarter of all kids are

overweight and out of shape. There is an alarming seven million folks walking

around who are ranked as super obese and weigh at least a hundred pounds more

than normal. A fat and unfit nation has locked hands with the fast food

culture, a death grip that needs to be loosened.

There is no definitive epidemiological study that proves the relationship

between obesity and the fast food restaurant. I'm just haunted by this

nagging suspicion and their coincidence. Fast food restaurants spread like

wild fire in the late sixties and early seventies with the obesity epidemic

trailing in its billowing haze. Mc's leaped the seas and opened shop in

Great Britain, doubling its outlets throughout the years of '85 to '95. It

was noted that the obesity rate of our great ally doubled as well. Pity.

Japan and China have not been spared. These once lean nations are growing

pouches. They need to be on the alert for diseases they've never known: heart

disease, stroke, diabetes... you know the list.

Obesity is hard to cure and some researchers believe prevention is the best

remedy. I believe it is part of the prescription but it will not fix what's

broken today as we desperately seek a healthier, more agreeable weight.

Resisting a brightly lit, aroma-filled Jack in the Box serving fat, sugar and

chemicals in abundance is a good practice.

Here's a thought: Simply stop eating at the fast food chains. If we stood up,

together and at once, and demanded much more in food quality and respect from

the giants we'd get it. We outnumber their entire force thousands and

thousands to one. Humbling odds.

Hurry. A new fast food restaurant opens every two hours.

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Dr Mel C Siff

Denver, USA

Supertraining/