Interesting to say the least

So after working from home this morning due to weather, I got bored and watched "Super Size Me" on Netflicks. 

Now we all know that McDonalds' food is not good for us.  We also know that for the most part, it tastes good.  Yes, there are people who don't like it, and I was always a Burger King gal myself, but I did my Mickey Dee's time in high school mostly and then occasionally as an adult.  Now, Morgan, the creator of the film, ate MDonalds food three times a day for 30 days.  If it wasn't on their menu, he didn't eat it.  What he saw was that not only did he nearly gain 25 pounds in a month, but liver function test, cholesterol and maybe other blood work results went through the roof.  He developed a sense of addiction; feeling sluggish when he wasn't eating but getting a high when binging on his Big Mac and fries.  He only Super sized when the McDonalds' employee offered it which was only nine times during the month.

Even though McDee's claims to place healthy things on their menu, Morgan discovered that the "healthy" items tend to pack just as many calories and sugar as items like the Big Mac. 

I am late to the party with this, because the movie came out in like 2002 and I am just now seeing it.  I rather wish I had seen it seven years ago as it would have steered me clear of the golden arches for life.  No, I rarely frequented it in my adult years, but there were times when dang, a quarter pounder with cheese sounded good and they always had the best fries of any fast food place in my opinion.

What continues to floor me in this country is now much our sizes have indeed changed.  Even before my surgery, I was famous for To Go boxes because even with a normal size stomach, I was more often than not, unable to finish my restuarant portion of food.  Even to order a salad in a place like Uno's is insane; the salad is so massively gigantic that a normal person who is concerned about weight and nutrition should not be eating all of it.  We've become the fattest country in the world and it is so incredibly easy to understand why.

I think I told you all my story about all of my "lasts" before surgery; wanting to have just one more time the items I loved that I would not be touching again in my life.  One of my pit stops was Dairy Queen for a large chocolate malt and when they handed me the cup, I nearly died.  THAT was not what I had remembered a large shake to be.  This thing was huge.  Even as a super morbidly obese person, it was too much malt for me by about half.  In good conscience alone, I knew I should not drink it.  Thankfully, I couldn't finish it anyway though I tried. 

Sadly, until Americans take a stand and say "no more!" we are going to continue to be the fattest country.  We're busier now than we used to be, so we eat out more often and those of us who have been conditioned to be part of the "clean plate club" are going to be in trouble, because the plate and the portion are probably double now then they were ten years ago.  I'm sure there are real statistics for that, so this is just a guess.  We are conditioning our kids to eat crap simply by what they eat for their school lunches.  My kids are allowed to buy lunch twice a week and in my looking at the menus, none of it looks appetizing and probably little of it is actually made in the cafeteria, but comes out of a box in a freezer.

I still struggle with choices, so don't think I don't.  The things I loved before, often still look good to me. The difference is that now I am more aware of what those things did to me. I'd love to find an organization that fights for the rights of the consumer in this country, to help them make better choices and educates them on what they are eating.  It's almost scary how little we really know.