The usual eccentric billionaire offers you a cool $10,000 a year for each year you forgo either chocolate or cheese. Which do you give up? And he’s sunk millions into creating tests to check for both. You’ll be checked randomly once a month, and if you fail you not only are kicked out of the program but also must give back any money you’ve gotten from him in that calendar year.
No, he won’t give you $20,000 to give up both.
Which do you choose? If “neither,” how much does he have to up the fee to get you to do it?
I picked chocolate because I’m trying to give up sugar on my own. $10,000 a year from him is just more motivation.
Chocolate, and it would be relatively easy. Oh, I like chocolate - but I could do without it, too.
Chocolate. Too many things I like to eat have cheese cooked into them; I could probably live my whole life without desserts if I had to.
I actually don’t eat a lot of chocolate. Almost all the food I like contains cheese. Easy question.
I don’t think I’d have much problem giving up chocolate for a year, but I don’t think I’d do it much longer than that. $10,000 isn’t that much money for a whole year of avoiding something I like.
I definitely wouldn’t give up cheese.
I’m basically a bit lactose intolerant, even though I like cheese and can eat it in moderate quantities, I could easily give it up and would probably be healthier.
You’ll get my chocolate when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
I’ve gone for a year without candy before, so I’m pretty sure I could do it again if I wanted to, any monetary compensation would just be an extra bonus. I probably wouldn’t last more than a week without cheese, however.
Chocolate in a heartbeat. I only like milk chocolate, and that I can take or leave. Dude’s going to owe me millions!
The acid in chocolate gives me mouth ulcers. Sure, I can eat a chocolate cake, but not a Hershey bar or a Tootsie roll. It’s also not that great.
Cheese, however, is ubiquitous in my daily life. Every sandwich I eat has cheese on it. I put it on salads and nachos. It’s everywhere. And it’s healthier too.
Easy question.
Millions?
Either you’re secretly one of the Howards or your math skills need work.
Chocolate, because I have to go out of my way to get it. Cheese would be easy too, it would just take more effort and label reading to make sure the thing I was eating didn’t already have cheese put in it before I got it (like jarred tomato sauce).
I’m Swiss. Cheese and chocolate are my birthright. But cheese is all-embracing. Cheese is often the only reason to eat something. If given a choice between two things to eat, the thing with cheese is the one. Always the one. Oh, cheese, how I love you. Chocolate is nice too. But cheese is like the air I breathe, except it’s melty and good on pizza.
Sigmagirl, turophile forever
Pizza?! How could I forget pizza! Take my previous answer of “definitely lose the chocolate” and make it “definitely, definitely…”
I have to be honest. My feelings about cheese border on the spiritual. Every time I eat it, I believe in God a little bit.
Chocolate is pretty good, but I could easily give it up for life for a cool $10k.
Super, super sharp cheddar is as good as it gets.
I saw a TV news program doing a show about an air conditioner unit going out in a chocolate shop. All the chocolate melted. The 2 women on the program just could not get by the waste of chocolate. It was upsetting them both badly.
I can’t imagine life without cheese - no more lasagna, ham and cheese sandwichs, most Mexican food. Hell I even like a little parmasagn on my steaks on occasion. On the other hand I haven’t had chocolate since Christmas and while I’ll miss chocolate chip cookies and baking a little bit into my pecan pies I think I’ll survive just fine.
The real question for me is 10K a year worth it. It’s not enough money to buy a car or do more then a little project around the house, I guess I could use it for a vacation. I’m not sure that I would enjoy a big vacation more then I would enjoy not worrying about avoiding chocolate through the holidays. I’d need a couple of days to decide and maybe come up with something to spend it on that I would enjoy more.
With the exception of cottage cheese, which I eat a lot of, I’ve more or less completely cut cheese out of my life since I started counting calories. I like cheese–I mean, I LOVE cheese, but it has shocked me how easily I was able to give it up once I started thinking in terms of “One piece of cheese or one whole bag of popcorn”. My sister pointed out that cheese is basically butter (ok, a LITTLE more protein) and that you’d never think of eating a butter enchilada, however delicious it was. You’d never eat a steak that was 75% fat. That helped a lot.
Again, I still like cheese, but I really have come to feel that in most contexts, what it brings is less than it costs: a cheeseburger has 20% more calories than a hamburger (250 vs 300), and while it’s better, it really isn’t 20% better. On something like a turkey sandwich, the cheese is an even higher percentage of the calories, and with enough other veggies and some good mustard, it brings even less flavor.
Chocolate, on the other hand, I can really enjoy in moderation: a single Hershey kiss, slowly allowed to dissolve in the mouth, is a real treat that isn’t easily replicated by anything else. So I will keep my chocolate, thank you.
I don’t like chocolate anyway, so…
To quote a t-shirt I often wear: “I’m an English major. You do the math.”