Lunch time joy and sadness: a nutritional tale of woe
the salad bar: my home away from home
So today at lunch, I headed down to the Crown Room (Hallmark’s cafeteria) to put together a salad at the salad bar down there and as I got in line, I found myself standing in line behind a very tall and very overweight gentleman. I was honestly shocked to see him in line here. At the salad bar. But the moment the shock wore off, I felt a sense of pride for him. I thought, “Ya, buddy! Way to take control of your health!”
I thought, “I have no idea how much weight this guy’s lost. He could be down 50 lbs. This could be day 1 of the rest of his life!” And I started to get excited. In that excitement, I noticed he had an average sized plate, with a decent layer of spring greens and was pulling a little bit of nearly each of the veggie sections. He grabbed some kidney beans and some carrots. Some sunflower seeds and some craisins. I was really proud of the guy…
While he was doing all that I began to create my lunch time artistry and by the time I got to the end of the line, I saw the end results of an awful coup de grace. The man had piled high on top of his healthy and nutritious lunch a layer of diced spicy fried chicken pieces, and then drenched the whole thing in this thick lemon poppy seed dressing.
*cue epic fail music*
My hopes and pride were dashed. I nearly said something to the man, but thought better of it, but the Lord’s prompting I feel. Were I do say something, it would have been if I’d seen him reach for the fried evil. 
It reminded me of this hilarious bit form Scrubs. Dr. Cox is trying to be better to his patients and not criticize them or antagonize them, per the request of the chief of medicine, but it doesn’t go well. Things come to a head when an obese guy steps on the scales and we find he’s not lost a single pound:
“Let me ask you a quick question: are you trying to make my head explode? Because you have no idea just how frustrating it is working your ass off trying to inflate a tiny little balloon inside somebody’s clogged artery when all that person has to do, really is – oh, I don’t know – go for a walk in the morning or choke down a fresh green salad. And you come back here looking like that? And, I know here, I know I’m supposed to be Dr. Give-A-Crap, but you wanna hear the God’s honest truth? And this is a fact: you are what you eat. And you clearly went out and devoured a big fat guy, didn’t ya?”
Anyhow, I can’t really completely blame the guy. He’s been for so long the subject of a cruel standard of nutrition in this great country of ours. I mean, that temptation was even staring him in the face! WHO PUTS SPICY FRIED CHICKEN AT THE SALAD BAR? They had two kinds, in fact. Regular and spicy.
Not at this salad bar, but at some I’ve seen them even put chocolate cake right there next to the fruit….you know…in case you want to top off the whole thing with desert as a to-go order.
I still hold true to the idea that a huge step in the right direction is simply “out of sight, out of mind”. You can train yourself to forget the taste of something bad for you, and then when you come up on it, you aren’t jonesing for a big bucket of it.
Maybe I should join the food industry and start making things right from the inside out. Better yet, I’ll stay outside the food industry, inform people of the truth of things, raise hell about the problems, and only buy what’s good. How about that? Mk.
~cheers~
