Mindless Eating Machines

A recent TV special on CNN highlighted something that may explain why Americans in particular are so darn fat – and not just fat, but dangerously obese. The term “Mindless Eating Machine” conjures visions of Great White Sharks and Amazonian Piranha, but it turns out the moniker fits your average U.S. citizen much more aptly.

Is it picking on those much maligned North Americans? Not at all – in this case, they deserve it. Because while Europeans have a problem with obesity - about 17% of the population suffers form it - Americans take the cake, the French fries and half the frozen food section at almost 30%. Then they eat it.

How can this be explained? You’d have to have been in the deep freeze for the last 20 years not to know the majority of food Americans eat is fattening garbage, so how can they continue to feed on it like sharks around a bleeding swimmer?

According to fat researchers – no pun intended – it’s because of the overwhelming availability and low cost of foods. Americans are wealthy and vending machines, free doughnuts and fast food joints are all too close and convenient. So guess what? They eat without thinking - mindlessly, if you will.

75 years ago, none of these quick and rich food sources existed and few had the money to overeat. Now, food is cheap, plentiful and rich. Add that to the fact that people no longer work long, hard, 10-hour days in the factory or field, but sit behind desks in air conditioned offices less than 10 feet from a vending machine.

Then there’s the drive to and from work – a quick stop at any of the fast foods places and they can suck in a 1000 calories in just a few short minutes.

These things are so ubiquitous that even the strongest willed has to battle constantly to just say no. He or she may be successful nine times out of ten, but the average American may pass up to 20 fast-food joints and convenience stores just to get home from work.

Getting gas? Every gas station has a well-stocked store with tons of ice cream, potato chips, hotdogs – of dubious quality – and an assortment of candies that a child of the 1920s could never even dream of.

Shopping anyone? The supermarkets are loaded with even more of the same. The healthy shopper notices just how empty a modern super market is if you take all the crap out. There are entire sections stocked with items that have no healthy food value whatsoever. Even going to the good sections means threading a mine field of filling, fattening and unhealthy diet choices.

Even at work, the climate is about as friendly to your waist line as A-bombs are to Japanese cities. Free doughnuts and coffee – once a luxury, now the norm – vending machines, small restaurants, take-out food and candy jars are all part of the scenery.

In the same CNN program, they noted that if a candy jar was placed at a workers desk, he or she ate up to 20 pieces per day – more if the wrappers were removed from the waste bin and the jar secretly refilled when it got low. Since each candy had about 20 calories, that’s a whole bunch of empty calories.

Interestingly, when the candy jar was move just six feet away, consumption went down dramatically. The problem is resolved; it seems, by removing the pernicious influence.

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