🚀 go-pugleaf

Leif Erikson wrote:
> Elmo wrote:
> 
>> Leif Erikson wrote:
>>
>>> Jag_Pop@Hotmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>> Leif Erikson wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Elmo wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> .
>>>> (snip)
>>>> .
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> We're talking 3500 square foot (and larger) McMansions,
>>>>> for people with two children at most, and who
>>>>> themselves grew up in the 1950s and 1960s as one of
>>>>> three to five children in a 1400 square foot house, and
>>>>> consider their youths to have been idyllic.  Multiple
>>>>> big-screen TVs (HD cable, of course) scattered
>>>>> throughout the McMansion, when they may have had a 17"
>>>>> black-and-white with rabbit ears antenna and perhaps
>>>>> six broadcast channels available.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> .
>>>> "six broadcast channels" ! ? !
>>>>
>>>> We only had three. And had to frequently bang the top
>>>> or sides of the tv to improve reception.
>>>> .
>>>> My wife and I sat in a movie theater lobby recently and
>>>> did some people watching. We love to people watch.
>>>> .
>>>> Have things changed radically overnight? Or do parks
>>>> and outdoor cafes, bookstores, garden shops, hiking paths
>>>> live theaters and museums have a different breed to watch?
>>>> The movie theater lobby
>>>> (a large one for a fourteen theater multiplex) was obese-city.
>>>> The trim were few, very very few. The kids were mirror images
>>>> of the parents. I saw kids with soda containers the size of
>>>> Oktoberfest Bier steins - NO, BIGGER! (Oktoberfest! now there
>>>> is people watching!). Disgusting and shameful display.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, "fourteen screen multiplex" tells you all you need to know.  
>>> What kind of movies were they showing? I can tell you that it wasn't 
>>> whatever today's equivalent of "My Dinner with Andre" or "Tampopo" 
>>> might be (I don't go to the movies any more; can you tell?) No, they 
>>> were showing Hollywood grind-em-out lowbrow fare, in most of which 
>>> the star was Special Effects.
>>>
>>> I know just what you're talking about.  Movie theaters have for 
>>> decades been among the most unholy temples of Americans' tendency to 
>>> excess.  I remember seeing popcorn buckets that were big enough to 
>>> bathe an infant, and I can only guess they've gotten bigger.
>>>
>>>
>>>> .
>>>> My theory is: SUV and Minivans. People that ride hogs
>>>> are effected in appearance by it, why not SUV?
>>>> Big fat, guzzling, selfish, view obstructing SUV. The family
>>>> dog and the master look alike over time, why not SUV
>>>> and rider?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> But SUVs and minivans are symptoms, not causes.  They do go together 
>>> in lockstep with all the other grossly excessive forms of consumption.
>>>
>>> There's a restaurant chain out here in California called Claim 
>>> Jumper; don't know where else they might be.  This place is infamous 
>>> for obscenely large portions.  Nothing is worse than some 
>>> heart-attack-on-a-plate dessert they serve called the Chocolate 
>>> Motherlode Cake, described on their website as "A 'Giant' Slice of 
>>> our Six-Layer Chocolate Cake." The word "giant" in the description 
>>> doesn't do it justice - it is Gargantuan.  One slice of this crap is 
>>> more than enough to serve four adults generously, but I've seen some 
>>> blowpig devour one by herself.
>>>
>>> This kind of restaurant is almost entirely a suburban phenomenon.  
>>> You don't see them out in small towns, and you don't see them in the 
>>> trendy, too-hip parts of big cities.  The really sad thing is, it 
>>> exemplifies what far too many people think is The Good Life, but it's 
>>> simply grotesque.  And it all comes down to what I earlier described 
>>> as the American philosophy, summed up as a motto:  if a little of 
>>> something is good, a lot must be great.  That belief simply is wrong, 
>>> to the point of being immoral.
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Not kidding.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Unfortunately.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Portion sizes contribute to the problem by providing more calories than
>> any reasonable individual should consume which interacts with the 
>> ingrained
>> edicts to "Clean Your Plate!" [1] and "It's a sin to waste." so that we
>> consume more calories.
> 
> 
> People are not passive in this.  People choose to buy, and consume, the 
> jumbo portions.  They choose them because they *want* them.  The "clean 
> your plate" admonishment is *not* an exhortation to eat lots of food; 
> rather, it is an attempt by mothers to get their children to eat the 
> nutritious things that children often don't want to eat.  It *is* a sin, 
> or at least a failing, to waste food.  Don't take too much in the first 
> place.
> 

You're confusing yourself with the average obese slob.
They don't think about what they eat.  That's why they're obese.

> 
>> Where really upscale restaurants charge a lot for a
>> plate containing a relatively small portion, carefully prepared and very
>> carefully presented "for your dining enjoyment", it's more common to 
>> see a
>> family-oriented place providing much larger portions.
> 
> 
> Only because the greedy-gut people who go there *want* huge portions.
> 
> 
> 
>> I think that some of
>> it has to do with the economics of the restaurant business.  You need 
>> to get a certain amount of money over and above what the cost of the 
>> food to cover overhead -- building, heat, taxes, owner's profit 
>> margin, etc.  If you're an upscale joint, your clientele is paying a 
>> premium and knows it.  If you're a local beanery or a franchised 
>> operation (like Friday at Applebee's
>> in the Outback or Chili Tuesdays with Ruby etc.) your clientele needs 
>> a more practical reason to part with more money than the food is 
>> "worth" and if you give them a big portion they won't feel so bad 
>> about paying for it. 
> 
> 
> But restaurant economics are the same the world over, yet you don't see 
> Gargantuan portions in restaurants in France and Italy.  Not every 
> French restaurant is a two- or three-star corner of culinary heaven; 
> they have what are by their standards just average places, and they 
> don't serve 24 oz. Porterhouse steaks in any of them.
> 

I've never seen a place where a 24 oz. Porterhouse is the only option.
By the time someone gets to the stage where they would willingly ask for a
24 oz. steak, they're too far gone to matter.  But if they did, and they
only ate that, it would be about the same calorie level as a 4 oz burger
made from 20% fat ground beef on an oversized bun with a mound of fries,
a salad loaded with mayonaise-based dressing, and a "free" sundae with
whipped cream for desert.  And of course you'll want a Large Coke with
that because the small one is priced so high that you get twice as much
for less than 1/4 the price -- refills are free so drink up.

> 
>> So you load them up with low-cost calories in the side-dishes.  French 
>> Fries, pasta, nacho chips, and the like.  Price the individual sides 
>> high but include 2 or 3
>> with the platter specials at a price that's lower and you get people who
>> buy the special and eat the extra calories.  Worse, they come to 
>> accept that as a "normal" portion size.  And I don't even want to 
> 
> think about the
> 
>> kind of specialty foods that you can buy at entertainment venues 
>> (sporting events, fairs, and the like).  Huge funnel cake -- about 6 
>> pancakes worth of batter fried in oil and dusted with sugar.  Deep 
>> fried Twinkies (frozen, dipped in batter and deep fried) for Fud's 
>> sake!  And Doughnuts!  How many workplaces
>> have a Doughnut Day where when it's your turn you're supposed to bring in
>> 2 or 6 dozen of those delightful fat pills.  Oink! Oink! OINK!
>>
>>


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common aims based on a common reality. It involves the
compromise, the art of what's possible.