A few days ago I went out to lunch with Scott at a local restaurant and while we were waiting for our food to be ready I found myself looking at the other diners surrounding me. Adjacent to us were these two morbidly obese women, they looked like mother and daughter. It wasn’t just “fat” but rolling down between their legs and the chairs weren’t even able to support the extra wibbly flab that drooped over the side.

Generally these people do not interest me, beyond a twinge of pity for their unpleasantly short lives and the ruin they made of themselves. I unfortunately also caught an eyeful of what they were eating. Eating is a pleasant verb, what they were doing wasn’t that, it was more like shoveling. Burger, double-order of Fries, and a giant big-gulp cup of frozen custard. They were chowing down, not even slowing down enough to catch their breath as they matter-loaded. Witnessing this display of gluttony was incredibly disgusting and offensive to me.

What really bothers me is that the restaurant we went to HAS MANY HEALTHY CHOICES. These two women just weren’t interested in making any of them.

And this isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way about people like that. When we go to the local market and I spot one they almost always appear to me in the same way. Massively morbidly obese, more than just fat, but fat-under-pressure. They are in the little electric cart scooters slowly moving through the store. The poor scooters, unaccustomed to being under such duress make this agonized wimpy sqwuck-squick sound as they struggle to move the human elephant about the store. Then I see what they’ve loaded in their cart – and almost always it’s the same. A dozen frozen pizzas, and the edge of the cart is lined with six-packs of soda, all arranged so the six-packs are riding the edge of the cart. Then sometimes there are tubs of sour cream and butter. Not a single vegetable in sight.

I can’t feel anything but disgusted pity for these people. They just waddle through their sad lives and in a lot of ways it upsets me. It doesn’t have to be that way. They don’t have to always sit down everywhere they go so the fat rolls can just droop over the edges of their chair.

But there is nothing that I am going to do. There is no point, plus it would just lead to me getting in trouble if I tried to wake them up by rifling through their carts asking them why they bought such awful “food”.

And then I start to think about the markets and restaurants. It’s not their responsibility to ensure that people eat well, but they certainly don’t give a damn when someone who clearly does not need a big-gulp frozen custard waddles up to the register and orders one. A similar tack could be made for the market, so much “food” there that really shouldn’t be there at all!

People amaze me. They shovel in all this bullshit, all these product-lies and it does taste good, it tastes like food, but IT IS NOT FOOD. Food is mostly vegetation, fruits, nuts, proteins, and only a scant touch of fats and oils! How many people can trace their unhappiness in life to the fact that they haven’t had a proper meal in decades!

I don’t want to hear about the woe from congestive heart failure, from all the cancers that are eating us alive, at least not from people who could have chosen to live better lives! Everyone knows that certain things are bad for you and that you should avoid them! I just can’t be sympathetic to people who are for the most part on a very slow track to suicide. Eating yourself to death, slowly.

What should people do? There is one clear and easy strategy that works for me and would work for anyone else really. It works for anyone near a supermarket or a megamarket. Only buy things that are on the rind. Every store is designed in pretty much the same way, with the foods you really should eat on the exterior walls, and everything that is bad for you or is bound to kill you in the middle aisles. Spend most of your time in produce, to start! Learn to cook! Cook REAL FOOD from REAL INGREDIENTS.

And for the love of God, stop using the handicapped motorcarts if you aren’t handicapped! Being obnoxiously fat is not a handicap. It’s a suicide attempt.

People bother me. So much. Gah.