Junk Food

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.

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.

Continue reading "Would you like a heart attack with that, sir?" »

There’s a big event on today awash with celebs, skimpily-dressed WAGs and meatheads who get sweaty for a living.

I speak not of the Allan Border Medal, that self-congratulatory wankfest, aka the poor man’s Brownlow, where Shane Watson will again be recognised as the only bloke in Australia who can play cricket.

I’m talking about the Super Bowl, which starts at 10am today eastern time and goes for, oh, I don’t know, about a day or so.

Continue reading "It ain’t called the Super Bowl ‘cos the portions are small" »

At least once a week, when I open the newspaper there seems to be some fresh new panic about the tsunami of childhood obesity that is crashing on our golden sandy beaches which a generation or two ago were filled with healthy bronzed young men and women who were either training for the next Olympic Games or about to pull on a pair of battered Dunlop Volley sandshoes, borrow a beaten up old wooden racquet and fly off to win Wimbledon.

Yep, every time a politician opens his or her mouth (usually on the way to a four course five star lunch at a taxpayer funded Parliamentary Dining Room) they sadly shake their heads, wobble their double chins and lament the rise of the TV obsessed Generation XXL.

If you ask most people who they blame for this sad decline, they would nominate a man who might be best described as Richard Nixon, Colonel Sanders and Hannibal Lector all rolled into one. I’m talking of course about Ronald McDonald. He’s there, supersizing our kids against their better judgement till their belts burst open.

Continue reading "There’s no such thing as junk food, only junk diets" »

Today we would be shocked if cigarette and alcohol companies targeted their advertising to children.

We would be shocked because the evidence is there to support such outrage. We know that tobacco kills and that alcohol consumption can have grave short-term and long-term health consequences.

So shouldn’t we be equally shocked when our children are targeted for junk food marketing? The evidence is there.

Continue reading "Keep junk food away from our kids" »

Further to last week’s column about the McGriddle – the maple syrup-injected breakfast atrocity which is mercifully only available at Maccas in the US – Australia should brace itself for the arrival of another rogue foodstuff which makes the McGriddle look like an iceberg lettuce.

A group of culinary perverts in the employ of KFC has developed a truly astonishing “sandwich” called the Double Down. It has no bread. Instead, it’s two original recipe chicken breast fillets, with bacon, two types of cheese and the sinister-sounding “colonel’s sauce” sandwiched in between.

The only nice thing you can say about this atrocity is that at least it’s gluten-free. Other than that it’s merely the latest bit of comestible one-upmanship from a fast food industry which through its actions is really inviting government intervention of the most draconian kind.

Continue reading "Bite me" »

It’s finally happened. I never thought I would encounter a form of junk food which repulsed me. But on a holiday to the US last month I was confronted by a foodstuff so disgusting, so evil both in design and execution, so incredibly, inedibly putrid that my entire value system has been shocked to its core.

Despite generally having a healthy diet, and spending hours flitting about the kitchen knocking up all sorts of effeminate dishes, such as a deeply suss saffron risotto with home-made chicken stock, or pesto with basil gathered from the garden in a poncy basket, I’ve long held a perverse enthusiasm for eating crap.

The crapper the better. Dodgy kebabs, late-night chiko rolls, shallow-fried at home out of the box hidden in the back of the freezer, even those mysterious Hot Pizza Heroes from the local servo, turbo-charged before microwaving with the addition of extra cheese and half a handful of jalapeños.

Continue reading "Breakfast from hell on the highway to heart disease" »

David Penberthy’s health sandwich is laden with a generous helping of cynicism and a pinch of exaggeration.

By calling for a reduction of the harmful fats in our food, Bob Carr is not seeking to ban fast food outlets. Instead, he is highlighting how easy it would be to make our takeaway foods substantially healthier.

Australians love to eat out - nearly one in three of us do so almost every day, which adds up to a massive 3.8 billion meals eaten out every year.

Continue reading "Big fat exaggeration" »

Our supposedly classless society is showing signs of being divided into two camps where people’s private choices as individuals and their behaviour as families are regulated on the basis of their affluence.

And it’s in the area of nutrition, preventative health and exercise where the working class, for want of a better term, is increasingly being treated like a bunch of babies, while the more affluent members of society continue to live as they please.

It’s only a small thing but it’s a signifier for the times, a demonstration of a mindset which holds that working class people are unable to modify their behaviour, while the gentry can be trusted to keep its conduct in check. But get along to the SCG, that great people’s arena, where our knockabout, egalitarian society lets the members drink as much full-strength beer as they want and limits the great unwashed to light beer.

Continue reading "A bourgeois recipe for working class palates" »