Burma! Burma! Burma!

A certain Latinist told me that a few years back those protestin' Buddhist monks were awarded honorary doctrates from the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco. Fr. Privett, the president of the university said that he wished all of USF students were like the monks. Presumably he did not include the "not Catholic" part of the picture in his wish, but one never knows, now, does one?

Burma! The one Commie dictatorship that Fr. Privett doesn't like!

I shouldn't pick on USF, because so many wonderful folks have come out of there as of late. For instance, Boy Wonder, aka Mayor Newsome of San Francisco. Boy Wonder is always looking for the next hot thing to jump in front of, banner a-wavin'. It would seem that the soda pop industry is his next target. You see, there are too many fat people who just can't seem to say "no" to soda pop. And since, as we have learned from tobacco, moderation is not an option, one is either among the pure, or one is a six-pack a day soda guzzler, gripping at the Super Big Tub, desperate for that fix of high-fructose corn syrup.

So, the logical thing is to tax the industry to make them pay for "their fair share" of the medical treatment for those who, of course, cannot be helped in their decision making.

Now, the ironic thing is that San Francisco, and the Bay Area in general, is home to the slimmest bunch of folks outside of some third world famine zone. When I leave the area, though, I feel skinny, and I should not feel skinny. Have you been to the rest of America recently? Those people are huge. I mean, really, tremendously, outlandishly huge. And they don't eat all that well. You try to find a block of reggiano parmigiana in your average small town in the hinterlands.

Surely that pre-packaged crap can't be making them fat, as how can anyone stomach it? But they do, along with quarter pound bags of chips, buckets of high fructose corn syrup, etc.

Now, it is not my job to nanny anyone about their eating habits. I tend to eat a little too much, myself, and a little bit too high on the sweets side, since I do think we have to count dark chocolate as a sweet. But I weigh 200 lbs on six feet. If I get up to the 210 side of things, I figure that it is time to cut back to three meals a day. If I got up to the 225 side of things, I would probably schedule a one-month backpacking trip in the High Sierra, packing in only a fishing pole and a small bag of salt for dinner. I would certainly cut out the soda pop.

I like soda pop. I rarely drink it, though, because, well, it is loaded with calories and sugar, and the strong (and oh-so-fun) artificial flavors sort of jack up the flavor expectation, which is not a good idea for someone who is in the food world. A number of years ago I just stopped buying the stuff except for a once-in-awhile treat. It was as easy as that. I was pretty active and busy at the time, so I wan't even recoiling from some approaching weight (although I generally just guess at my weight - and tend to be pretty accurate. We don't have a scale, and I am usually within a pound of my guess when I do step on a scale). The point is, it is easy to stop drinking soda. It is easy to stop smoking, if one is smoking too much and cannot moderate. It is easy to stop eating chips. However, we have a whole industry of professionals whose job it is to convince us that we can't do anything without them. Instead of saying, "just stop it," they say, "ah, but your sublimated desire and anxiety and post-traumatic chronic fatigue allergy...you need to boost your self-esteem. Take this product."

But I digress.

The thing is this: all of the soda pop and chips and so on were around twenty years ago, when people weren't so fat. What has happened is that people talk more and more about diet and health, and spend more and more time worrying about it, and the government has a nifty new food pyramid, and then a nifty newer food pyramid, and the nanny state has been going at it harder and harder and the result:

Special Report: The Ballooning of America!

Well, now, Boy Wonder sees something of a future campaign: the people guzzling the soda pop are not to blame, it is the people who make the soda pop who should bear the weight of bad dietary choices.

And USF must be so proud of its little Secular Neo-Puritan!