Alexa--
Hey! Just finished "dinner". Hot dogs. Yum. I like living on the edge.
So "someone" ("They"?) say that "on average" "people" suffer "mild food poisoning" two to three times a year. If there aren't any statistics on this, reliable or unreliable, this sort of propaganda seems to me useless at best, dangerous at worst. Even if true, so what? You wake up a six a.m. with diarreaha? Big deal.
I find the current American hysteria about food--its dangers, its tendency to make you put on weight--bizarre to say the very least. Especially given the absolutely horrific rate of obesity among the general population. That's the one thing that strikes travelling Europeans most forcibly: how damn FAT so many people are, while they claim to eat nothing but yogurt.
All this is, in my view, a very bad thing. Overeaters, bulimics, anorectics. Food should be enjoyed, and not worried about excessively. This stuff is just another way of trying to control one's life down to the nth degree.
I was an only child and had an overprotective mother. She, too, worried about what I ate: called the pediatrician to ask whether it was okay to let me have hoagies. (God was I embarrassed for her!) Needless to say, she extended this behavior into other areas. Since, as you'll have gathered, I have a pretty strong character, I didn't suffer permanent damage (though there were things about which I had lasting resentments), but it could have happened, and often does.
And now... Some chocolate? Red wine already at hand.
Janice |
