The Battle of the Binge

Disclaimer: The following contains language that may be viewed as offensive and politically incorrect by sensitive readers. I recommend that weight watchers should desist from reading any further.

After two months of coaxing consumers into stuffing themselves with ‘party food’ till they start resembling the Christmas turkeys, the media and the food industry have finally decided to do its philanthropic bit by canvassing ‘health products’. Of course, like all societies, the British society meticulously follows suit.

The festive season saw the entire nation seduced by the ilk of Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver into bloating themselves with luscious lobsters and tantalizing turkeys. But in the second week of January the tube experienced a total revamp or but I’d do well to use a mot juste and call it a ‘make over’: the culinary shows were consigned to the toilet pot while the fitness gurus and diet doctors hogged prime time idiot box. In their attempt to awaken the audience to a national crisis, they show repulsive images of diseased and disproportionate bodies and nauseating faecal analyses. Boots, one of the largest retail pharmaceutical vendor, went one step ahead in enticing customers post new year: ‘we help you keep your new year resolution’ it endorses the personal fitness pack! Kelloggs eggs the audience to drop a jean size with its fat free cereals. Marks and Spencers which was advertising its sparkling Xmas Cava and Caramel pudding a month back now advocates the ‘healthy stir fry and fresh fruit salad’. Detox and fitness DVDs have now exploded across the racks of local supermarkets with equal ferocity as the Christmas puddings and chocolate brownies did a few weeks ago.

Is Britain suddenly bursting at its seams after a harmless festive season? Not quite. Ever since I set foot on this soil, I have felt overawed by some of the gigantic masses of lard that I see on the streets of Britain. Most of them wear pencil heels and I cannot help but laud the shoe manufacturer who stress tested stilettos for over 100 kg weights. Greater commendation should go to the wooden floor constructors who reckoned the juggernaut of a 150 kg mass balanced on pointed heels with a predilection to trample everything in its wake.

The truth is the NHS has refused to treat certain obscenely obese patients with disorders offset by their accrued adipose simply because the patients in question refuse to change their diet and will avail of the subsidised knee replacements and heart surgery till the death knell relieves the doctor of his patient. Now don’t ask me who dies first! The root of the problem is not only a lack of awareness but also the absence of a systematic and disciplined way of consuming food. There is really no ‘lunch time’ even at my workplace. People just sit at their desks and eat whenever it is convenient. It all starts with disturbing the digestive cycle and filling it in with garbage snacks at odd times to making the garbage snacks the staple diet and finally robbing the body of its nourishment, simply because the snacks pander to the needs of the papillae on the tongue rather than the tissues and muscles inside the body. Post festival, the media uses this already existing epidemic of expanding adipose to their advantage. Detox one of the biggest buzzwords in the health industry has been rightfully decried as ‘a marketing strategy for selling purgatives’ by an NHS physician. Corrective surgeries have the cosmetic surgeons pocketing the fat with a fat cheque. Vegetables, pulses and sprouts have become ‘fashionable’ and I use that term with all the disdain I can muster, because there is a special celebrity weight watcher show on the tube. Yes, vegetables are sold at the prices of nuclear bombs in this country, but it is a price worth paying for one’s health. Coming to think of it, the exorbitant prices shouldn’t be a factor dissuading these people from eating nutritious food given that they spend a lot more at Debenhams trying in vain to purchase an XXL size of a bikini. Perhaps there is a special festival edition XXXXL size nowadays!

The worst outcome of this mega-marketing ploy is the guilt and self consciousness that impels heavily endowed individuals, constantly bombarded with negative images of themselves, into anorexic habits and uneducated techniques to rid themselves of the oozing waistline. However, I surmise, this is just a passing wave, once the wave has hit the shore and the waters withdrawn with the tide into the sea, the shore will go dry once again. Sad but true, a month later, the gruesome images of a pig: ears, nose, eyelashes inclusive, being butchered to make processed meat will be long forgotten and the incorrigible epicures will continue to gorge the crisps, devour hot dogs and wash it with a whisky like tyrannosaurs with insatiable appetites.