Almost a month after Thanksgiving I was cleaning out the refrigerator and found containers of leftover mashed potatoes and green beans that had turned very ugly. I wasn’t the only one with too many old leftovers in the house. Everyone in my office ate turkey sandwiches for at least a week. Now, it’s almost Christmas and the whole food ritual is about to repeat itself. And this time it will last until the arrival of 2006.
But it never really ends in the United States — land of the endless buffet; of the greasy sandwich accompanied by two sides; of prepacked, precooked, frozen food with preservatives that will remain in your stomach forever.
When I came to live here I was alone for three months, not worrying about food in this nation of pizza-in-30-minutes-or-less, all-night Waffle Houses, multiple McDonalds and endless gas station convenience stores. I ate a variety of fast-food junk, not in obscene quantities, but it was all I ate. That’s how the 15 pounds I have not yet been able to shake off somehow got into me.
This whole “fat America” thing has been talked about a lot in the media (it was the topic of an entire post-Thanksgiving cover story in this paper) and is seen way too much on the streets. Be honest: How many times do you see somebody walking towards you and say to yourself, “How in the world could someone get that fat?”
I’m not going to talk about the dieting craze and all that, I’ll just focus on how fat people get fat. It’s very easy to get fat, because fatty food tastes better than healthy food, regardless of what anyone whose been on the “brain wash” diet tells you.
The thing that’s different in the United States is availability.
In Mexico, we love greasy and sugary foods. More than half the population survives on a daily diet of tortillas (made from corn flour and oil) and soft drinks. But we don’t consume so much of it. We just eat what we need.
Here, people eat out of impulse, because there’s a food joint around every corner and too much variety: a “donut of the month,” “brand new sandwich” and exotic new “holiday treats.”
The concept of snacking may not have been invented here, but the US has mastered the art of marketing snacks as a basic nutritional requirement. There are entire aisles in pharmacies and even gas stations exploding with munchies, both the salty and sweet kind, to satisfy our “hunger.”
Restaurant rations are absurdly big, unless you pick a carb-count special. In a capitalistically correct move, food dealers have dropped the “small” size altogether and replaced it with the less-threatening “regular.” (Hey, this is America, nothing here should be small.)
And forget about exercise. In the few times I’ve owned a treadmill, stationary bike and home gym, you know what I did with them. I did what everybody else does with those fine pieces of equipment — realized their most practical function is to serve as very expensive clothes hangers.
As far as I can see, there are only two alternatives to obesity: either close your mouth for good (which also would be sound advice for some thin people) or go with the flow and pig out without regret. After all, these are the holidays, we’re in America and those few extra pounds aren’t showing yet. Are they?
Hernan Mena, a native of Mexico, is associate editor of the regional Hispanic weekly newspaper, Que Pasa.
This article appears in Dec 21-27, 2005.
