The lack of personal responsibility seen in dieters never fails to amaze me.
As a frequent visitor to a popular weight loss program’s message boards, I’ve seen some doozies of excuses for individual failures. One of my new favorites is the current trend towards blaming the food industry for obesity.
Last time I checked, no one has ever been forced to eat at restaurants and fast food chains on a regular basis…AND made to order the fattiest thing on the menu. If you travel for work, does your employer really force you to order and eat an entire blooming onion? Perhaps if you are blooming onion roving reporter….but honestly, I’m thinking those don’t exist.
Does anyone really look at a 32 ounce milkshake and then gasp in horror at the 1000+ calorie count later? Apparently, they do. How can these people not know this is unhealthy, unless they honestly have no idea what is actually IN a milkshake.? And that’s another story altogether…why are you eating something when you don’t even know what it is?
Take a look at this story on AOL, and tell me that you can’t see the fat and calories in each and every one of these dishes. If you can’t…well, it really sucks being you.
I will readily admit that the fatty stuff often tastes better, but taste is not all there is. We feed our bodies to fuel our bodies, with a little extra thrown in there for fun. But when you order that order of chili cheese fries over the grilled chicken salad, that is YOUR choice, not the restaurant’s. As a for-profit business, the restaurant sells what people buy…and people will continue to buy calorie-laden items because they choose to, not because anyone made them.
Now, for a tidbit on mandatory nutritional disclosure. I am adamantly opposed to requiring establishments to provide this information. Make it voluntary, and if businesses lose customers because it’s not available (which I doubt will happen), let them then choose to provide this information for a portion, or all, of their menu items. But, honestly, do you really think the person who orders a triple bacon cheeseburger is going to stop ordering it due the calorie count? Do you then they are even going to READ it?
People who are trying to lose weight feel the world should cater to them. All restaurants should post nutritional information. All items should be low fat and low calorie. The fact is, people who care about the state of their health will do the research necessary to learn how to make the right choices, and if they don’t…they are doomed to fail. You can lead a horse to water…
And to the naysayers that say there is not enough education out there for people who aren’t nutritionally savvy, I tell them to “open their eyes”. In this world of Google, supersized book stores, and health magazines of every sort, if you can’t see it, it’s because you choose not to. In fact, let me Google that for you.
And if you choose not to, you simply are not ready to take charge of your health.
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