Poor Food

Food, glorious food! Who doesn't love food in America?! (at least 51% of us who are now overweight!) I'm in this group...I love food. I love eating out, I love the taste of a good baconator... mm.. I shouldn't write this before I go to lunch...

Sadly, companies have done a great job at marketing their products. Banks, fast food restaurants... basically all the companies that are doing well have great marketing. See, the better the marketing, the more we buy their products. The more we do that, the more we become dependent, justify irrational behavior, and even get addicted to these things.

I'm not a coffee drinker, but I know some people (maybe you're one?!) who, if they don't have their Five-bucks, I mean Starbucks, coffee in the morning, they're grumpy all day. That's an addiction, my friends. I don't think I have an addiction to anything...the closest would be Dr. Pepper, but really I just like to drink things. Whether it's pop, juice, nectar, powerade, or even (gulp) water, I just need some fluids in my body.

The topic of today has to do with all-you-can-eat buffet's and how they market their products. These places (Chuck-A-Rama, Sizzler, Golden Corral) take the approach of laying out a ton of food and allowing you to eat as much as you can. They make sure to keep your dirnks filled, because filling yourself up with liquid refreshment usually leaves less room for food. My mom always told me to not drink too much or I'd get a pop belly. I was warned, mom, and I didn't listen...

At first glance, this is a great deal. How cool is it to be able to pay as much as you would for a normal dinner and eat as much as you want! That makes not only good food sense, but good financial sense, right? Wrong, chicken-breath!

In our capitalistic society, we are programmed now to get the most amount of product/service for the least amount of cost. Get deals. This is what wealthy people do, right? They end up with more for less. We get to beat up office depot when they have a sale of 2 notepads for the cost of 1, right? But let's take a step back for a second and think about this. The very purpose of a business is to make a profit. They can't survive if they spend more than they take in. So if a business is having all kinds of sales and knocking down prices so far down that it would be insane to pass up, how can they make a profit?

Businesses know that the most important thing for them is to get people in their doors. If they can do that, they can sell you more things. So if a sale on shoes at payless gets you in the door, maybe you see something else you like and have to have. That means you spent some money you wouldn't have normally spent. This is how businesses think.

So let's come back to the food buffet business. How can they even make a profit with such low prices on food? Think about it, what is the fat-person to skinny-person ratio in Chuck-A-Rama? Like 8:1? People fill themselves up with food because they eat as much as they can. That's the whole point of a food buffet - to eat as much as you can for a low price! From a business standpoint, they want you to get fat. The fatter you get, the more likely you are to come into their restaurant. They may lose some of the money they could have normally gotten by pricing their dinner plates a little higher for less food, but if they get you to keep coming back because of the good deal, they've won. Maybe some days you order a special dessert or more beers. The point is, they got you in their double-doors and that is how they make money.

On average, obese people spend more on food than skinny people. This is just common sense, right? If you eat more food, you'll usually pay more money. So that good deal that you got at the food buffet...it doesn't add up. People go there, gain weight, and end up spending more money on food throughout the year anyway. This doesn't end up making financial sense.

Unlike other things (it's GREAT to get deals on things other than food, especially if they are things you were going to buy anyway), more food isn't always better. Food represents fuel. It's not meant to be eaten at the rate Americans eat food. And the type of food. This can be tough because we sometimes have to fight our basic survival instinct - to eat as much food as we can. This was developed in us because food wasn't always as prevalent as it is now. McDonalds weren't lined up throughout the jungles. People had to find and kill their food, and if they didn't find any, they didn't eat. So their bodies told them to eat more when they could for the times when they weren't going to be able to eat as much.

But we can't do this. If there's one thing that won't disappear any time soon, it's food. I know this because I'm guilty of it. I love a line from the movie Captain America - the First Avenger. Stanley Tucci (one of the best actors of all-time in my opinion) says to soon-to-be-Captain America, "Because a strong man, who has known power all his life, will lose respect for that power. But a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion." I liken this to food. I've been skinny most of my life and I've also been fat. I know the value of both. I think obese people know what other obese people are going through better than if someone had never been overweight. The value of being healthy far outweighs (pun intended) the value of being overweight. The trouble lies in the motivation and execution to the process of being healthy.

Is it bad to eat at these places every once in a while? Of course not. Is it bad to seek out these places every time you're going out to eat? Probably. So, again, when it comes to food, more isn't always better. This is a battle that I myself am still fighting. And even though I lose a lot of the battles, the war still rages on. Know what will help win that war? Staying away from food buffets, no matter how good their marketing is.