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Would you like a heart attack with that, sir?

Calum Logan

by Calum Logan

21 May 05:50am

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Filed under: Fat, Health, Hospitality, Junk Food, Obesity, Overweight

43 comments

I am the postgraduate dream. I live on minimum wage; I have a flirtatious relationship with the poverty line. However, I think this is a karmic repercussion of my own bad choices. As a younger, less-worldly type I entered into a line of work - dirty, unrewarding work - from which I seem unable to escape: I kill people.

I need to get me an anti-fat suit. Pic: Dean Martin

In the beginning it all seemed like good fun. Harmless fun. However, recently the inescapable truth has dawned on me. Hospitality is about killing people. Most of us are all too familiar with government propaganda about the perils of smoking and drinking, two activities frequently central to hospitality.

However, it’s not these which really grate against my sensibilities. It’s the fat that is propelling me towards a nervous breakdown. They haul themselves out of their cubicles and waddle in at least once a week. Very often they appear more frequently, their numbers certainly seem to be growing.

Sometimes I wish I could refuse them entry just as I would a drunk; after all there a number of similarities. The most glaring being their suspect capacity to make responsible choices for themselves.

Readers may be appalled at my attitude. However, if I was to continue to sell booze to someone busily drinking herself to death I wonder what the attitude would be then? Yet there is not even the mildest consternation when I provide the morbidly obese customer with yet another-calorie drenched meal.

I am on the frontline for an industry growing rich on fattening up its customers. Food is everywhere and is now the stuff of delusion rather than a means of keeping body and soul together. The popularity of shows such as Masterchef illustrates the strange place of food in contemporary society. 

The show’s hold is built on emotional engagement with its wannabe reality stars. Across the course of a season, we can befriend, admire, or despise a showcase of different characters. Yet there is no reality here, at least not for the viewers.

All contestants know they are on show; they know the game, and act accordingly. Preparing sophisticated food is simply a colourful prop in a show entirely based on the celebrity dream: everyday people can become rich, better looking, and have a new life if they can successfully navigate a televised obstacle course.

Despite this major food themed fascination the increasing bulk of society seems to have little insight into how their food is prepared, where it has come from, or what its effects might be. Apparently they also don’t care: they just want lots of it and the sensual pleasures of consumption.

The transformation of mealtimes from a social occasion with attendant rituals, protocols, and restrictions seems nigh complete. Contemporary eating is more a matter of scoffing a shitload of calories and falling into a satiated stupor. Perhaps this is the fundamental problem behind obesity.

The life of the average person is slowly little else but consumption. Consuming food, booze, and televised transformations they will never make. Devouring a day’s worth of calories in a single plate - particularly in the form of saturated fats, accompanied by plenty of sugar and salt - is surely a form of self medication, a means of dealing with modern life.

Although eating out is social activity commonly imagined as enjoyable, it seems stalked by misery. Eating has become an empty ritual, but maybe it provides the only chance to feel some contentment in an otherwise crushingly barren day.

So, until the “invisible hand” of market forces sees fit to direct me to other employment, I shall go on feeding up my soon-to-be-dead customers. Together, we’ll continue living out the rituals of our mutual misery.

Most commented

43 comments

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    • acotrel says:

      06:40am | 21/05/11

      Eddie Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud is the original propagandist.  He’s influenced the major corporations in the US and globally with his ideas.  He suggests that if you want to sell something, you should first create a subconscious demand, then satisfy it with your product.  With something as addictive as eating, it’s easy! Have a look at MasterChef sometime.

      Reply

    • deb says:

      07:43am | 21/05/11

      hungry jacks anyone?

      Reply

    • Mother Lover says:

      08:07am | 21/05/11

      I can’t wait for our standar of living to fall - then our consumption might return to something leaner.  The edge of poverty can be enlightenment - everyone should read Down and Out in Paris and London to see how it’s done.  Let’s help the real battlers, but please tax the high earners and alcahol, and anything with too much sugar and salt in it.

      Reply

    • Toady says:

      08:20am | 21/05/11

      What a load of dribble.  Yet another contributor thinking that we need saving from ourselves, so let’s ratchet up State interference.  Here’s an interesting concept - let people take responsibility for their own actions!  A good start would be by making everyone contribute something when they visit a doctor - bulk billing only reinforces the belief of entitlement and that the government is responsible for our health, not ourselves.  When that happens, then we can tell these massively obese junk food eaters that, if they don’t want to pay, don’t be such pigs.

      Reply

    • Shane from Melbourne says:

      03:30pm | 22/05/11

      When ANYBODY in Australia takes responsibility for themselves then it will be a cold day in Hell. The public wants the handouts, they just don’t want the obligations that go with it.

    • Kilimanjaro says:

      08:23am | 21/05/11

      I am appalled at your attitude.

      You are a sizeist snob.  Eating as an empty ritual?  What pseudo-intellectual bullshit!

      Reply

    • Tracey says:

      01:27pm | 21/05/11

      Indeed.  What paternalistic rubbish. 

      Calum, seriously, I refuse to believe you cannot find another minimum wage job if this bothers your conscience so much.  I think you are using your “plight” as an excuse to have a go at people instead of looking at yourself and your life.  Perhaps, a little more self-reflection and a little less judgment about other people’s choices.  It will do you a world of good.

      Also, Masterchef actually has people going into the kitchen and getting excited about cooking again.  This has to be better that the processed food you sell everyday.  Following on from this is Jamie Oliver’s show about teaching people and kids in particular where their food comes from and how to cook fresh, healthy food.  This cannot be a bad thing.  We all have to eat.  Shows like this encourage us to think more about ingredients and what we choose to make and eat.

    • Tracey says:

      01:27pm | 21/05/11

      Indeed.  What paternalistic rubbish. 

      Calum, seriously, I refuse to believe you cannot find another minimum wage job if this bothers your conscience so much.  I think you are using your “plight” as an excuse to have a go at people instead of looking at yourself and your life.  Perhaps, a little more self-reflection and a little less judgment about other people’s choices.  It will do you a world of good.

      Also, Masterchef actually has people going into the kitchen and getting excited about cooking again.  This has to be better that the processed food you sell everyday.  Following on from this is Jamie Oliver’s show about teaching people and kids in particular where their food comes from and how to cook fresh, healthy food.  This cannot be a bad thing.  We all have to eat.  Shows like this encourage us to think more about ingredients and what we choose to make and eat.

    • marley says:

      01:37pm | 21/05/11

      Have to agree.  I’m not a particular fan of Masterchef, but it and similar programs are teaching people that there’s more to food than burgers, snags and thick shakes.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with caring about what it is you’re eating - ask any Italian, and he’ll wax eloquent on the wonders of fresh produce, fresh herbs, fresh-pressed olive oil, and the wonders of proper cooking technique, and of having the whole family sit down to dinner together. 

      It’s when food becomes bland, tasteless and uninteresting that eating becomes simple consumption.  When food is good, fresh and tasty, it becomes much more than consumption.  The more we know about food, what it contains, how it’s prepared, the less likely we are to live in junk food.

    • jdm says:

      08:57am | 21/05/11

      Im not going to lie, i could agree with you more. but that would be politicly incorrect now wouldnt it. its socialy accepted to be morbidly obese, its almost encouraged, its not healthy. . .

      Reply

    • morbidly sick of your fatphobia says:

      06:34pm | 21/05/11

      “socially accepted to be morbidly obese”? Are you kidding? The only representation of people-of-size in the media and popular culture paints us as either comedic or objects of disgust… Have you read a magazine lately? Image after image of morbidly skinny women, along with articles on how to lose weight.

    • Fiona says:

      09:44am | 21/05/11

      My hubby works at a brewery, keeping the machines that produce and package beer going. He is in the business of helping people to kill themselves. I am a nurse. I look after sick, injured people and help others to be born. I am in the business of helping people to live. We think between the 2 of us, it kind of evens out!

      Reply

    • Erick says:

      10:37am | 21/05/11

      Each of your occupations creates the clients for the other. It’s a win-win!

    • Fiona says:

      10:15pm | 21/05/11

      For us, yes it is

    • Reg Whiteman says:

      09:45am | 21/05/11

      Where I live in the Snowy Mountains there is hardly anyone who is morbidly obese - but then, there’s not a single fast-food place here. When I make the occassional journey to big centres like Albury or Wagga I am always astonished at just how many food outlets there are; every second shop on the main street in seems and all those food courts in the shopping malls. What’s even more astonishing is the gargantuan size of the humanoids lumbering from one take-away to the next. At 95kg and a 120cm waist, I feel positively svelte in comparison.

      Instead of the government bringing in pre-commitment cards for poker machine players maybe they should think about bringing in a card for food. This card could record how many calories have been consumed from food outlets and, once a preset limit is reached (say 3000 calories for men and 2500 for women), no more can be bought until the next day. I am sure the technology exists.

      When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s it was a rare thing to have a fat kid in the class. There just weren’t all these hamburger and fried chicken places. There was no such thing as a pizza or a kebab. The only take-aways were from the Greek-run Fish and Chip shop/cafe - which also did decent meals. Ah, how I remember the mixed grill from the Acropolis Cafe! But they are all gone - replaced by all those American chains flooding every artery with fat, sugar and salt. Have a look at those amorphous hills of fat with eyes waddling to school these days. It’s disgusting!

      If the government was serious about public health they’d give us smokers a break and start limiting the number of fast-food outlets and imposing calorie restrictions on anything that is sold e..g. the calorie card mentioned above.

      It really shits me that I have to pay $20 for a packet of smokes, most of which is tax, yet at 60 I have not spent more than 4 days in a hospital in my entire life, can easilly walk 10km or ride a bicycle 30km - and yet the hospitals are full of obese gluttons half my age. Where is the justice in that?

      Bring in the calorie card and a fat tax I say.

      Reply

    • stephen says:

      11:24am | 21/05/11

      Your skinny mate cause you smoke, and there must be an Acropolis cafe still on every street in Port/South/North Melbourne doing the mixed grill with 10 day old sausages and chops so old they curl up like oysters under the burner.
      Actually, fast-food joints were designed to replace these lino-riddled pot-bellied dead-fat stinking old milk-bars, and thank-you very much Maccas, Hungry J’s and KFC, and if you Reggie can’t manage either your own or your children’s lives amongst the golden arches, then get out of the Human Race, and go join Bob Brown’s Greenies.

    • Pete says:

      01:50pm | 21/05/11

      “It really shits me that I have to pay $20 for a packet of smokes, most of which is tax, yet at 60 I have not spent more than 4 days in a hospital…Where is the justice in that”

      The justice in that is that you’re only now entering the decade where your smoking habit is most likely to kill you.  And lung caner is arguably a worse way to go than dying of obesity-related causes. Let’s hope justice doesn’t prevail hey?

    • martinX says:

      07:51pm | 21/05/11

      Pete: lung cancer is nothing. Mouth cancer, oesophageal cancer, tongue cancer - you could not imagine in your worst nightmares what they are like.

      Smokers like to say “well, ya gotta die of something”, but when they get the Big C diagnosis, do they take it on the chin? No way. They all run screaming to oncology, screaming to surgery, screaming to radiotherapy and, soon after, crying to palliative care.

      I’ve heard it said that if abattoirs had glass walls, no-one would eat meat. I reckon if ENT wards and theatres had glass walls, no-one would touch a durry again.

    • Fiona says:

      10:24pm | 21/05/11

      Ooh yeah. I second that about the ent wards. I’d know, I used to work in one and icu where all the “horrendoplasties” (radical neck dissections with/without laryngectomies and flap repairs, in other worded*^+king awful radical neck surgery for cancer) went.
      Some of those patients/victims also had korsakoffs, a dementia that can result from alcohol abuse.

    • Null and Void says:

      12:51pm | 21/05/11

      As someone who gets teased for being “too skinny” (read: normal weight) I agree with your sentiment. But then, it’s hardly surprising I agree, is it? Next obese person to tell me to eat a burger is going to cop a fat lip. Pun intended (and well rehearsed).

      Fat people shit me. Especially the ones who whine about it while eating a jam and cream doughnut and drinking DIET COKE. Like that helps it even out.

      I wonder if I’d be a large lassie if I ate junk food? I don’t eat take-away, never have…

      Reply

    • bikinis on top says:

      12:58pm | 21/05/11

      Dr Oz believes the three worst days for heart attacks are December 25 ,December 26, and January 1 !
      Unusual foods, unusual people, unusual pressures, and unusual expectations are the heart attack causes on these days.

      Reply

    • bvo says:

      01:10pm | 21/05/11

      Bah! Junk food rocks, pity I have to workout for hours each day to burn it all off…..

      Reply

    • Valerie Woodruffe says:

      01:20pm | 21/05/11

      Worst news I have heard all day excuse me while I have a brain aneurysm

      Reply

    • Former fatty says:

      02:28pm | 21/05/11

      If you eat healthy and exercise regularly and you’re still fat, get your thyroid checked. Despite eating small low-fat meals and drinking nothing but water whilst working out at the gym 5 days a week, I went from 50 kg to 87kg within a few years. NOT FAIR, I thought. Doctor diagnosed me with hypothyroidism and it is apparently very common amongst women..Since starting on the medication I am now seeing the results I have been working so hard for. So people, get your thyroid checked ! Unless you just sit on your arse all the time and eat crap, then you deserve to be fat.

      Reply

    • Sickemrex says:

      02:29pm | 21/05/11

      I’m in two minds about the cooking shows.  I have absolutely no evidence for this but I suspect that people who eat more takeaway and restaurant meals are generally fatter than people who prepare food at home.  Let me repeat, I have no evidence for this!  I rarely ever ate fast food but prior to having a kid my husband and I ate restaurant dinners pretty regularly.  Since metaphorically tightening the belt as I’m working part time, and as the kid is in bed by 7 every night, we don’t go out for dinner anymore.  As well as saving $$$$, I’ve noticed that both our literal belts have tightened too.  So, I don’t think it’s entirely damaging for people to learn to use fresh ingredients and their oven stoves and ovens.  And surely, there’s not a fat person alive that doesn’t at least theoretically know about exercise and portion control, is there?

      Reply

    • Yasmin says:

      02:44pm | 21/05/11

      Dear ‘Author’.
      I don’t eat junk food. I cycle as a way of getting places. I go to the gym minimum 3 times a week. My heart rate, cholesterol, blood sugars and everything else you can measure is perfectly normal.
      So why did you use a photo with me in it, without permission, for this useless piece of guff you’ve written? I hope you look back at this article when you are older and are embarressed by your youthful stupidity. Try thinking around a few corners for a change. And go find your own photos to ‘illustrate’ your arguments. Is it because you wouldn’t dare confront a paying customer to take their photo? Why use this photo, which was originally taken in a positive context, to slam people who are larger than you. If you cared to find out about the people in it, it is a synchronised swimming group. A group that deals with body positivity - while actually actively involved in excercising. Have you tried synchronised swimming, lad? I’d hazard a guess that you are as weak as your arguments.
      From the one of the lasses laughing out loud in the photo.

      Reply

    • stephen says:

      03:31pm | 21/05/11

      I’d get my money back.

    • Nurse David says:

      05:58pm | 21/05/11

      If I were you I would take the advice offered earlier in these comments and get your thyroid function checked. For starters. Because f you indeed go to the gym 3 times a week, are between 20 and 60 years old, and eat healthily and are still obese you have a serious medical problem.

      Either that, or (like many obese people) you are trying to fool yourself and others that you are doing all the right things, but nothing is working. Most often these people think that moderate exercise over the week will combat their gross overeating, which is not the case.

      An honest appraisal of your life and eating habits will help you greatly.

      All three women in that photo are obese and WILL experience health problems due to being too fat. When you hit approximately 60 years of age the health problems will start. I speak from over 20 years experience as a registered nurse.

      I have watched people like yourself recover after being on the edge of morbid obesity.

      I won’t lie and say everyone who tried succeeded, but even those who refused to be honest with themselves about their eating habits lost a percentage of their fat just by being confronted by the truth - they ate too much.

    • Soos says:

      04:01pm | 21/05/11

      @Former fatty says:02:28pm | 21/05/11
      ...If you eat healthy and exercise regularly and you’re still fat, get your thyroid checked. Despite eating small low-fat meals and drinking nothing but water whilst working out at the gym 5 days a week, I went from 50 kg to 87kg within a few years… also, read up on the effects of Cortisol.

      Reply

    • Holly says:

      04:01pm | 21/05/11

      I agree: Eating has become an empty ritual in our consumerist lives. I hate that getting a coffee or a beer is almost a necessity when I meet a friend. I would love for these rituals to change!

      Reply

    • Phoenician Mary says:

      04:12pm | 21/05/11

      I notice that most critics of ‘fat’ shapes are coming from slim framed English genetically born.
      Australia has a second ‘type’ of shape - those with bigger breasts and hips- inherited from generations of Arabs and Greek - and born that way.
      What is fat to a prune-faced celtic doctor is normal in Beirut,Athens and Iran. Those boobs weigh as much as one entire english bridesmaid in a white dress. However, the Mediterranean diet works on their insides and has done forever.
      Suck it up skinny anglos - you are the most prone to heart attacks!

      Reply

    • stephen says:

      10:34pm | 21/05/11

      Fat people smell, that’s why we, the whities of the suburbs, may in the end allow the burka to be worn in close quarters.
      ‘Whew’ !

    • Fat food grower says:

      04:24pm | 21/05/11

      Has an uncredited picture of the AquaPorko team - a swimming group of fat positive women - been used for this fat shaming piece as intentional provocation?

      [ Article on Aqua Porko here: ]http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/why-should-bigger-women-apologise/story-e6frezz0-1226035562526]

      Calum’s opinion piqued my interests, but dissapointed by setting for the lazy humour of stigmatizing fat people.

      With entire primary and secondary industries in Australia dependent upon promoting poor nutrition, or unsustainable food systems..and their workers being the people also lacking budgets for great food choices….this is a great subject to hear about.

      A pity you stopped at the lazy humour of fat shaming though. Especially when government spin about obesity has resulted in more fat stigma while derailing from looking at the poor supply of nutrious, food options in lower income areas.

      Reply
    • Tory Shepherd

      Tory Shepherd says:

      09:56pm | 21/05/11

      Hey folks - we’ve had a few complaints about the pic - we do have the rights to use it, and it certainly wasn’t meant to be offensive. If you genuinely are one of the people on the pic and you genuinely want it removed, please email me directly at shepherdt@thepunch.com.au.

    • Mel says:

      06:04pm | 21/05/11

      I agree. The concept of an ‘emotional connection with food’ is completely artificial and encouraged in our society through shows like Masterchef (which I admit, I do watch on occasion), advertising, food packaging, etc. We have reached a point where as a society we no longer understand what ‘normal’ (in terms of nutrition content AND size).

      I rechently went traveling with a friend, who while not obese, is larger than me. Traveling together we got on pretty well - all except for the food issue. Anyone who has been on holiday knows the effect of eating out 3 times a day on their waistine. So I made a conscious effort to watch what I ate by ordering the occasional salad or sandwich, not forcing myself to each every last morsel of food on the plate, and choosing to drink water with meals rather than soft drink or alcohol (I would much prefer to eat my calories than drink them). After making snide remarks for 4 weeks (“is that all you are getting?” or mockingly “Ill get a tea with a side of air”) she eventually approached me concerned that I had an eating disorder! So my attempts not to overeat were construed as undereating. After we returned home she complained about how she had put on 5 kgs while away. I, on the other hand maintained my pre-holiday weight.

      People need to learn that our bodies were not designed to be filled with crap. What many people consider to be normal is far from it, and until they realise that, there is not saving them from themselves.

      Reply

    • Tam says:

      06:52pm | 21/05/11

      Nurse David, perhaps you can do some research into Health At Every Size (HAES) instead of trotting out the same tired old myths about weight and health, which have incidentally been disproved countless times. Yes, some people have thyroid problems which affect their weight, and they should definitely investigate and manage that if that’s the case. However, to assume that overweight = unhealthy is naive at best, and revoltingly offensive at worst. There ARE people who eat healthy, home cooked, nutritious diets, who exercise regularly, who are completely healthy in every   reliably measurable way (cholesterol, BP, cardiac function, thyroid function, liver function, BSL, etc) and who are still fat. There are also plenty of people thin as a rail who have way worse health than most of the fat people I know, and trust me, I know plenty of gorgeous healthy fat people, myself included.

      To the original author… what a load of offensive, sizist, ill-informed, naive claptrap. If it bothers you so much to be “killing people” in your low paid job, go become a cleaner, a garbo, a receptionist, a call-centre worker, a junk-mail deliverer (hey, then you can exercise as well and feel even more smug and superior to all the “poor” fatties!)... you have the option of making your own life choices, just like the people you mock in this article, it’s a bit rich to whine about their poor choices, when you can obviously make better choices yourself.

      Reply

    • The Original Holly says:

      08:37pm | 21/05/11

      I see we have another Holly.  Just as well I broadly agree with her.  Quite frankly foodies bore me to tears and some just plain disgust me.  Whenever I go to a restaurant (which is not often) even if I am dished up some wonderful fresh produce, I cannot savour the taste because it is drowned in someone’s creation of a sauce.  Restaurants, especially those trendy ones with lots of hard surfaces make it impossible to hold a conversation. 

      You can’t beat the unadulterated flavour of fresh food, preferably home grown.

      Reply

    • marley says:

      09:13pm | 22/05/11

      You’re just going to the wrong restaurants.  The sauce should be an addition to the dish, not a smothering of it.  It the sauce is all you can taste, the chef is an idiot.

    • Bettie says:

      01:49am | 22/05/11

      Eating is beautiful. Eating poorly prepared food with no imagination is not beautiful (thought one may argue it is acceptable if done for survival purposes). Eating is an art form and calorie counting is disgrace. I find it terribly sad that this article has been written at all, because it furthers the medicalisation of our bodies and our relationship to food - all people, regardless of body size, have the right to enjoy a healthy and fulfilling relationship with fresh produce and wonderful culinary experiences. Ticking boxes and adding up numbers is less important than savouring the beauty of the yield of fields and orchards. That so many people are quick to deride the importance of this historical, emotional, temporal connection is simply awful.

      As for the fat-hating bollocks - I too exercise regularly and have fitness and health goals that aren’t related to my weight and I’m a curvy girl with junk in her trunk - and no, I don’t overeat. I probably eat better than you (and enjoy it more). I think we forget that it isn’t our job to police other people’s bodies; and we perhaps should remember that before so broadly offering criticisms that are undoubtedly offered from the sneering pulpit of privileged chiseled masculine good looks, deemed to fit the social ideal.

      I’m also mortified that a photograph depicting a personal friend of mine looking absolutely smashing and doing something positive and gorgeous, is being used as supporting evidence for this steaming pile of tripe.

      Reply

    • Tracey says:

      02:58pm | 22/05/11

      I couldn’t agree more, Bettie. Body size does not equal healthy or unhealthy eating and exercise habits. 

      I think as a society our relationship to food is an unhealthy one because we are made to feel that its something that should be rushed, or if we enjoy it, needs to be done in secret. I think fastfood is a symptom of that.

      There is also this idea that people have a right to judge and police other people’s choices, or what they assume their choices are.  There are plenty of skinny people who eat nothing but junk food and its not doing their bodies, souls and longterm health any good.  They just don’t wear a “kick me” sign on their bodies the way that some people think that larger people do.

    • Kath says:

      09:53am | 23/05/11

      What a horrible, hateful piece of work this is.  You act like eating is something that human beings can just opt out of if their bodies are above a certain size.  Just stop, you’ll get thin.  Human beings can no more cease eating altogether than they can cease breathing altogether.  Eating can not be equated to smoking or drinking, both of which are activities the body does not require to survive.

      But what’s worse is the hateful, bigoted and IGNORANT language you use to talk about fat people.  If you spoke about anyone else like this you would never have had this steaming pile of crap published.  The Punch should be deeply, deeply ashamed of itself.

      Reply

    • Oz says:

      06:12pm | 25/05/11

      No one is telling you to stop eating altogether you moron. Just eat small portions of healthy food and do some exercise!

    • neue liebe finden says:

      05:58pm | 14/08/11

      Blue Happy,notion avoid gather act observation head brief entirely gather how after reject stuff reasonable find during change understand individual fruit pay activity iron tell positive okay better appeal selection sight grow result retain box shot already really powerful day date absolutely smile at available thin mind assumption fast appointment reduce stage rest memory method pick light where us course health music base considerable turn elderly commercial beneath commitment site impression continue really potential aim emerge person approach appointment outside village recall seem admit scientist gather once department increased window roof him next consumer opportunity order

      Reply
 
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Superman needs saving

Can somebody please save Superman? He seems to be going through a bit of a crisis. Eighteen months ago,… Read more

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