Who's Can We Blame for Being Fat? Certainly Not Ourselves

This is another fantastic editorial about the argument that we "haven't got time to cook."  When in fact, we do have time to cook, we just chose to use that time doing other things that are "more important" to us.    The same can be true for those of us (myself included) who don't work out (or at least don't do so regularly).  Certainly part of the problem is that the media helps to validate us by constantly telling us that we don't have time to cook and food companies use a products "convenience" as a way to market products to us that help to make not making time to cook much easier for us. 



This infomercial parody illustrates the preposterous nature of this argument about convenience. 



I never knew peeling potatoes was "so difficult" but thanks to this new product now I do.  You see, it's not so much that we are busier today than we were decades ago, it's that businesses have become so adept at manufacturing demand by telling you how difficult it is to do it the "old" way.  Why peel a potato with a vegetable peeler (or a knife) when you could run the skin away?  Why boil potatoes and then mash them when you could make instant potatoes in a fraction of the time?  Why make a sandwich for lunch when you could buy a frozen meal and pop in the microwave?  This convenience is killing us and making us fatter and less healthy. 

I'm reminded of the lawsuit against McDonald's that wanted to sue the company because of weight gain.  The last time I checked, McDonald's wasn't making the claim that there was anything healthy about their food.  And secondly, have we become so stupid culturally that we think we can eat hamburgers and fries daily for every meal (and remain sedentary) and somehow we won't get fat or have other health issues? The bottom line is that we need to make time to cook just like we make time to be on Facebook or text message friends or any other number of non-essential things we do on a daily basis.