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 Take A Load OffPosted 04.16.2003 by Mastercrapper (159)
My girlfriend is getting her master's degree in public health (we balance each other well -- I study business and rapacity, she studies goodness and well-being), and she is convinced that the nation's #1 public health problem is obesity. Today she pointed me to an article in the Wall Street Journal showing that Americans, in an effort to overcome stress through self-medication (and to minimize time away from the tube), have been eating even more -- incredibly -- fast food and junk food since the war began.
I quote from the article: The tendency to cope with national crises by indulging in food is becoming a pattern. During the first Gulf War, and immediately after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Americans ate more take-out -- and consumed more fat and calories -- according to several studies. And while it's still too early to have national statistics on food sales over the past few weeks, diet companies say they are already seeing warning signs. Nutricise, which does diet counseling by e-mail, says that of the 4,000 members who responded to a recent survey, 70% are eating as much as 20% more calories and more fat since the war began. They are eating "mostly sweets and cakes and cookies," says Charles Platkin of Nutricise. Now, one of the things I have observed in myself is that I am hungriest when my stomach is upset. If I'm stressed or hung over, I can soothe my roiling gut by piling in something greasy and carbohydrate-laden. But the same urge tends arrive when I have to take a shit. If I've got some densely-packed powerlog besieged by a reticent colon or an uncooperative musculature... well, I tend to reach for the cheese platter, or the Snickers bar, or any other quick-fix source of sugar & fat. Is it possible that Americans are gaining so much weight because they are so full of shit? Is it possible that an entire nation of shit sausages is misinterpreting the desperate pleas of their fiber-deprived fudge makers? Instead of noshing away on salad greens and bran muffins, are Americans relying on the serotonin rush from a Big Mac to make the pain go away? In culinary school, I learned to cook French dishes that feature rich sauces impregnated with cream, butter and cheese, or with olive oil, goose liver and duck fat... probably the fattiest "comfort foods" in the world. And yet, time and again, we Americans note that the French are not just smug, smoky and smelly, but also quite slender. One possibility I would like to suggest is that the French are more attentive to their bowels than we are. Colloquial French, which I learned on an exchange program as a teen, provides some evidence of this distinction. The French lexicon features many more poop-based idioms than English does -- but especially in the areas that make an American prone to overeating. Consider frustration. Instead of "that cheeses me off," the French say, "ca me fait chier," or literally, "that makes me shit." Note the difference between the idiom of ingestion and expulsion. And, as the French have no fewer than one thousand ways to describe their persistentdiscontent, another example, the word "emmerdant" -- literally "en-shitting" -- describes them at their most annoyed. Or look at nausea. Here in New England, when something is horrible and gross, we say "it makes me wanna chowder". The French tend to use the term "deguelasse", which means the same thing except that "degueler" means to expel from one's throat. They embrace bulimia, a proven (if controversial) way to control one's weight, while the term I grew up with implies intake of an incredibly caloric and fatty food. And finally, look at our stressful preoccupation with minutiae, a third motivation for snacking. In America, we talk of "nitpicking", a reference to way in which our primate ancestors dispose of bugs found on their bodies by eating them. The French idiom is wonderfully colorful -- "enculer les mouches" -- literally, "to buttfuck flies." While the idiom speaks to the small endowment of the French males, it also invokes an intensely aerobic (and ass-focused) activity -- not a gustatory one. I have no love of French culture, although my palate certainly appreciates that nation's gifts of cow and vine, and no doubt there are other nations that make more frequent reference to the bowels and ass than does our Protestant motherland. But I wonder if perhaps, in these trying times, before we supersize our "Freedom Fries", we might want to listen to our bodies and hear what they are really telling us: we need to shit our stress away. Just like those French motherfuckers. Like Mastercrapper? He's featured in The Journal of Ass Production! Post new comment
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