Sorry, I mean they’re going in the bin if you order the combo, they give you the fries, and you don’t eat them, and whilst you’re not being “overcharged” in the sense that the combo is cheaper than “Burger and Soft Drink”, the point is that you’re supposed to get three items for your money instead of two.
Like yourself, it doesn’t bother me too much (I just tell them not to bother with the fries or hash brown or whatever) but I’ve got friends for whom it’s an issue; so I merely mention something that’s been mentioned to me as it seemed like an interesting discussion point.
As someone who travels back and forth between London and the US regularly I think there are a couple of factors that tend to work against American healthy behavior:
Walking. Whenever the relations come to London to visit for a few weeks they always lose weight, in part because we don’t have a car and thus we do a lot more walking (even if it’s just to and from the bus stop or train station). It does make a difference.
Portion size. Seriously, one of the things everyone from her who goes to America comments on is the portion sizes in restaurants. A “small” drink in McDonalds in the US is a UK “large”. The amount of food you get at, say, Olive Garden is about twice what you get anywhere in Europe for a meal and quite a lot of it is starch (bread, potatoes or pasta). I can’t tell you how often American waitresses have been concerned that I didn’t like the food just because I couldn’t clean the car-tire-sized palte before me.
Processed food. US supermarkets seem to be 90% processed food anymore. Produce and meat that aren’t processed in some way take up very little space. It’s hard to stay strong and stick to the healthy food, especially when that blueberry-pancake-wrapped-sausage-on-a-stick is right there and doesn’t require any effort to make…
The only change that may work, suggested here, is taxing crap and subsidising lean meat, vegetables and fruit.
You don’t need a gym membership to exercise. There’s plenty of fields and streets to run around, yet people don’t. You don’t need a fashionable diet, just eat everything in moderation like our grandparents did and Continental Europeans still do. I also think “diet experts” and newspapers telling us one food is a “super food” one minute, then bad for you the next, have a lot to answer for.
So when a person on state healthcare assistance blows out a knee because he’s 175lbs overweight and your tax dollars pay to have it fixed, that’s none of your business? Ditto diabetes medication, heart disease treatment, medical leave from work. Is paying for his Rascal none of your business? Is it none of your business that your tax money also subsidizes the junk food industry, which made Mr. Rascalrider fat in the first place?
Pretty much. Thin people (mostly young athletes) who blow out their knees, people who refuse to control their diabetes regardless of their weight, smokers, drug abusers, people who drink and drive then have/cause car accidents, and young men who take stupid risks (any idea how astronomical the costs are for traumatic brain injuries?) cost me much more than fat people. A majority of people are fat after all, but very few are 175 lbs overweight and being overweight is not a guarantee of poor health and necessary expensive medical treatment… it just raises your risk factors for many chronic conditions. Short of locking everyone up in state-regulated prisons and forcing them to live our government’s idea of a ‘healthy lifestyle’*, there’s just nothing we can do about all this.
I can get behind getting rid of these filthy subsidies, of course. But it won’t happen - we’re a nation of grain-growers, we’ve got to sell those tasty grains and the many effectively poisonous products they can produce.
*and I profoundly disagree with what our government considers a ‘healthy lifestyle’, so I am not eager for them to enforce it upon me any farther.
Drinking and driving is illegal as fuck, and incidences have declined since it has been made so (along with increasing social taboo).
Smoking is increasingly regulated/banned/taxed to high heaven (and rightfully so).
You can’t stop athletes and young men from taking risks without stifling their quality of life. Preventing/reversing obesity would actually IMPROVE people’s lives.
I find that extremely hard to believe. What is your source for this claim?
How is asking (politely) for a source for an assertion “arguing for or against nannyism”?
If it’s so patently obvious that it’s true then a source will be easy to provide, won’t it? Better yet, why don’t you stay out of an exchange that was nothing to do with you if the only thing you have to contribute is to try and make it more difficult?
The cost of someone else’s weight-caused knee injury repair comes out of/increases my taxes (or insurance premium).
The cost of arresting and keeping a drunk in jail and paying for their rehab while in jail comes out of/increases my taxes.
I pay in and someone else gets something from my money.
Mind you, I don’t necessarily mind how this works completely. I do benefit by supporting such a system, albeit in a roundabout way. That overweight person with the knee replacement is my nieces’ grandmother who still works part-time at age 78. And that guy who went through rehab? Well, he is out now, sober, suppoting and caring for his mother. I’ve known him for about 30 years. Both are real-life stories. And I feel that I benefit from how they benefitted from the system. Jes’ sayin’.
Interesting you support tax dollars being spent to get someone to no longer be an alcoholic, but don’t support tax dollars spent to get someone to no longer be overweight. You support tax dollars being spent to treat conditions brought on by being overweight, but not to actually eliminate the overweight condition.
Wouldn’t things be better if your niece’s grandmother wasn’t overweight in the first place? Her problems are far from over even after the knee surgery.
I think we had a disconnect here filmore. I am simply saying that in both situations my dollars support someone else’s well-being. I am not saying anything more than that.
Read the whole thread. As I said in my statement above “I feel that I benefit from how they benefitted from the system.”
I am actually pro single-payer healthcare and I have already admitted my own obesity. If you think I have a problem with helping obese people lose weight, you would be wrong. I’m working on my own problem. I appreciate encouragement. I do not appreciate people making fun of my weight.
