Sunday, January 31, 2010

It's HOW Many?

This week I had an evening doctor's appointment, and as it was a late day at school I had to drive straight there (much further East on my Island) from school. This meant no time to stop and make dinner.

Now, slowly but surely I'm returning to my Oberlin Granola Crunchy roots. I stopped buying produce that isn't organic..then I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Fast Food Nation and stopped buying meat except from the small organic case at the local supermarket (because uh, EW). Then I did some reading about bovine growth hormones and whoops! Milk and cheese and butter too. And then, one day last summer I was driving through the idyllic farm country of the area surrounding our little cottage on the lake and saw a small plane swooping over a field of wheat....spraying....some...was that water? Oh wait. That's...in my BREAD. And my convenient pizza dough bought at the supermarket...guess I'm getting that bread machine out and buying organic flour...and covered with organic mozzarella and...wait why am I buying organic mozzarella and making homemade pizza dough if I'm just going to pair it with Ragu? Oh look, they have organic tomato sauce too.

Well you get my point. Locavore, organivore, whatever. But everyone has emergency days when he didn't think ahead and bring a sandwich. So, yeah, I drove through McDonalds in a hurry. And I thought, "Okay, get the Happy Meal, that's for kids, it won't be nearly as bad as a grown up value meal."

Oh, Miss Victoria...you foolish mortal.

So I eat this tiny hockey puck ammonia filled cheeseburger and the miniature bag of pressed dehydrated potato french fries and drink my Diet Chemicals and go to my appointment and pick up the kid at my Mom's and return home, exhausted and...hungry. Big surprise, that (WARNING...WARNING...WARNING... TEACHER ABOUT TO USE A SWEAR WORD) crap didn't fill me up at all. Well hey, I only had a Happy Meal! Go look it up on Weight Watchers, you've probably got enough points out of the 29 you get every day to have a nice piece of whole grain toast and a little organic peanut butter and a glass of skim milk!

Go ahead, ask me how many.

Fourteen. FOURTEEN POINTS. Half the daily calorie intake of a 38 year old woman, and not a particularly skinny one either.

And they're marketing this meal. TO MY CRIMINALS. Give me five minutes in the same room with them.

But technically, it's none of my business. How do I write letters home to parents saying PLEASE DON'T FEED YOUR CHILDREN THIS TRASH THREE OR FOUR TIMES A WEEK AND DON'T BELIEVE THE UTTER BOLLOCKS THAT REPLACING THE FRIES WITH APPLES MAKES IT HEALTHY? It's fast, it's cheap, it's tasty, it's convenient. And it's creating second graders almost as tall as I am, weighing what a fifth grader should weigh.

Maybe some of the parents read my blog? I can always hope.

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