Viikko 19
Date: Sep 4th, 2013
Motion: THW allow U.S. food chains to land in Finland to widen the international selection of menus
Role: Chair (opp.)
Junk Food?
Recently I tucked into a junkfood meal that I took home as a takeaway. Many times previously I have not understood why people call McDonalds, Carrols, Dairy Queen, White Castle, Hesburger among others junk food, but that time it hit me home. It all began with my eating a Mega Burger as a meal with fries on the side….
Normally I eat a Double Burger (the equivalent of a Big Mac), which is the average or median meal at any given fast-food joint. Something that takes the hunger away but leaves also room for a dessert or a drink. A Mega Burger is meant to snuff the hunger out entirely. More cost, more substance. Or, so I thought.
When I was @ home eating my burger, I discovered 5 things about burgers that make me feel sick:
♠1) If I tried to eat it with my bare hands, all the mayonnaise in the burger would make the beef slip in and out and
make the whole thing wobble uncontrollably and uncomfortably.
♣2) If I tried to eat the burger with cutlery, I would feel poncy and useless.
♥3) If I ate the burger without warming it up, the burger would taste lukewarm and uninspiring, like warm beer does.
♦4) If I microwaved the burger first for a mere minute (@ max. heat), it would change its taste and turn into an
unsavoury and smelly meal.
◊5) All this time I had an alternative in the fridge to the burger meal: an equally insipid, salt-poor salmon
casserole, for free, without any cost.
In other words, there was an occasion on which I could NOT have enjoyed my junk-food meal by any stretch of the imagination or measure. Junk-food lovers, I believe, do not fall victim to this, as their portion sizes, eating venues and taste buds tend to be different. There was no way to enjoy that $9-12 meal, however hard I might have tried.
More emphasis should be put onto how and why greasy diners and short-order kitchens dupe us into buying meals that don’t match the amount of money we hand over. Their incurred expenditure per a meal may be 2 euros while we pay up to 12 euros. The profit margin is huge compared to a lot of other products on the market. That is the real reason why we are talking about junk food. Another reason is that French Fries taste like **** when they are warmed up uneaten a day later. But that’s something my fellow speakers may talk about later on.
Junk food is a masterly optimum nutritional-cum-monetary performance/calculation. If you eat too little of it, you are left hungry, craving for more. You can easily meet that craving by ordering a little bit more while you’re waiting. If you eat too much of it, you are left with a sick feeling in your system, but you can’t get a refund. Your disappointment will melt away through metabolism. The continuing profits come from those who have learnt to eat that small-to-mid-size meal. And the profit margin is hefty for the company which serves it, as it bases it on base, bulk ingredients bought anonymously from a grocery wholesaler.
Junk food is junk not only for its nutritional qualities but also because of its embittering financial qualities, leading us up to such a word as “junk bond”.
It’s the economy, stupid….!
Kesto: 4 min 44 sek
Arvio: * * * *. Aihe on hieman arkinen, mutta siitä on jotakin terävää sanottavaa. Lista sopii käsillä ilmehdittäväksi, sormi per asia. Aihe ei vastusta aloitetta täysin suoraan, mutta ei sitä voi oikein tulkita muutenkaan kuin kautta rantain vastustavaksi.
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