Breakfast vs. Smoking: The Real Killer
This is likely mankind’s most atrocious achievement to date. Move over, chemical warfare. You’re outta there, atom bomb. Holocaust, pfft. Make way for…the Hungry-Man All Day Breakfast.
People lob all sorts of vicious epithets and righteous condemnations at companies like Phillip Morris and R.J. Reynolds, but at least they have the common decency to label their death-dealing products with the Surgeon General’s Warning. All we have from Swanson’s is a panel of nutrition facts, which is heavily reliant upon complex math to fully understand. The kind of person this swill is marketed towards can’t grasp the full implications of 231% Daily Value*. To them, that’s a great deal! Almost two and a half day’s worth of cholesterol in one meal? What a bargain! And that’s the intellectual elite of hick America. For the majority, I imagine those tiny letters n’ numbers are so hard to read through a diabetic squint that they just ignore ‘em.
“I know what I like, and I like a lot of it!”
Well, if you like visits to the cardiologist, by all means, scarf. But for all the indignation, all the condescension visited upon folks that smoke and the corporations that facilitate the filthy habit, the food industry goes on veritably unchecked, governed only by our basest sense of personal responsibility. Corps like Swanson's or McDonald’s offer a more thorough, guerilla threat to public health than ardent anti-smokers seem to recognize. And this is why I find so many of these health-chic-conscious, social trend fascists so dubious: they don’t care about the condition of the human race. Their fellow man is little more than a foil. Their mission isn’t to preserve or better life, it's not about practicality, or vitality, or even common sense; rather, it’s simply to force their own agenda, to extend their immediate control over the world around them. Not only to be right, to inform others that they are wrong. It’s a real Freudian trip, and it’s one I don’t want to take any time soon.
Of course there is considerable overlap in the demographic that would eat something like a Swanson breakfast and those that suck back a pack and a half of cowboy killers on the daily. That’s neither here nor there. We joke about these things, have a merry laugh, but grimness is in the giggling. Ridicule has become so commonplace and ironic it doesn’t serve its proper social function anymore: to make us stop.
Crack, for example, is a ridiculous drug. The crackhead has emerged as a bona fide icon in pop culture; mercilessly lampooned, yet everyday a new kid sucks the glass dick for the first time and never looks back. Why? Was a time, you could chide, goad, jest and joke someone long enough to activate their self-consciousness and compel - at the very least - the contemplation of change, if not its embrace. But between the escalation of the mass consciousness and our own unacknowledged devolution (i.e. “enlightenment”, “progress”, et al), we’ve reached a point where our problems are too rooted and complex to respond to such simple, essential treatment. This has further developed the need of industry, ingratiated overpopulation via the rate of employment, creating jobs through rehabilitation programs and prevention initiatives; it’s a complicated ball of twine. We ain’t untangling it any time soon.
But the best place to start is the most obvious. Some might say that’s cigarette smoking. I’d say fast food. When something as crucial as nourishment is so treacherous, so vile, so convenient, the malevolence of the tobacco business truly pales in comparison.
*Based on a 2,000 calorie diet, natch!