Too many chefs at the keyboard

A few days ago, I was repeating the ritual of restocking the dairy at home and inadvertently grabbed fat-free half-and-half. I think the cartons of this product should be neon in color and include a symbol warning consumers of impending doom. Something along the lines of Mr. Yuck would warn folks quite nicely. What is the point to fat-free half-and-half ?! Doesn't half-and-half exist in the first place so we can get our hands on the good part?

This morning, I was plodding through some newsprint, sipping contaminated coffee—what exactly is in fat-free half-and-half, anyway?—and reading that obesity is a social epidemic. I am paraphrasing here but the idea is that if your sibling is obese, your chance of becoming obese increases 40%. The conclusion was not that you share your sib's genes, rather that obesity spreads much in the same way fashion does. Fashion! Good grief. My morning angst slowly changed from "what poisons am I ingesting by using fat-free half-and-half" to "ohmigawd keeping up with the ever-spreading Joneses is not causality IT'S THE FOOD, STUPID!!" I love this comment:

" ... The study found a person's chances of becoming obese went up 57 percent if a friend did, 40 percent if a sibling did and 37 percent if a spouse did. In the closest friendships, the risk almost tripled. ...

Despite their findings, the researchers said people should not sever their relationships. ... "

Sheesh. I can just hear phone lines buzzing with the following: "I'm really sorry, Sally, I can't go for lunch with you at The Trough today because hanging out with you might make me fat."

To sum it up nicely, I point you to Inkling. She spent some time reading the comments to the story when it ran it the NY Times and describes the experience as the fascination of the abomination: much like a train wreck, you can't turn your eyes away from the gore. Rather than suffer through the comments myself, I find it easier to point you to her summary.

Aside: One of the studies Inkling links to studied multiple social factors on eating behaviors. As the number of people at a meal increases so do the size and duration of the meal. Meals eaten in large groups were over 75% larger than when eaten alone. Wow! My comment about eating at The Trough was done tongue in cheek. Good to know research backs me up.

I escaped the newsprint and went to the internet, coffee in hand. You may be wondering why I'm even using the abomination known as fat-free half-and-half. Well, I can only justify my actions by hating waste more than than taste (should I have written waist instead?). I'll drink the swill rather than just dump it and lose the $3, add the carton to the landfill and the contents to the water treatment plant without trying to learn from my mistake. Anyway, while reading RSS newsfeeds, I came across the following list of stories at The Consumerist, defender of those buy things. This is a non-doctored screenshot of the order in which the stories hit the wire:

I think Meg and Ben need to have a little inter-office convo as they're posting stories. I believe Meg's question about why people are fatter now than ever before, posted at 9:11 AM, was at least partially answered three minutes earlier when Ben posted the video of McD's rolling out a bigger bovine-on-a-bun menu item.
Links: obesity article, McBeef video

Once these words were out, I was gussing them up a bit and pulled down the following menu:
I propose a change to these menu options. How about instead they range from Smallest to OBESE ? Then we can justify the research into a link between typing and gaining weight.

Are you gonna eat that?