A Silver Polish Chicken and Wendy's Medium

I received one of the best emails of my entire life today. It contained a photograph of a friend's chicken. Not just any chicken, but a Silver Polish Chicken named Lucy who enjoys riding around on people's shoulders and goes "visiting". There is no end to what can happen in this world. That practically made my day.

The reason I bring up Wendy's is I went there for lunch today and ordered a combo. IT's not something I do on a regular basis but they've discontinued my favorite salad- Chicken Spinach Salad, and there was a crowd and I was under pressure. So I picked a number and went with it. Whe nthe girl asked me if I wanted a medium drink, I gave her a strange look but said yes. It's always been my understanding that medium drinks are standard with combo meals. Then she hands over 32 oz of soda. I'm not kidding.I walked back to the office iwth a bucket of soda. It was awful. So now I assume that 24oz constitutes a small. It's crazy to think that we have gone from 8 oz (in the 1950s when fast food restaurants really began taking off) to 24 oz SMALLS. I wonder what our 1950s versions would think of it.

I understand that Americans consume more than the norm as far as fast food goes and quantities and such. Entire books have been written on the subject. We know that we consume more calories and food than any other country and provide access to more gyms than any other country while maintaining the highest percentage of overweight and obese people. Not that we've truly made the connection. Otherwise there wouldn't be this issue.

The funny part about it is the reason we receive so much when we order "combo" meals, is that we literally asked for. We demanded to get our money's worth in the moment. No matter that open-heart surgery will cost aheck of a lot more than a burger and fries in the long run. What matters is that we receive as much fried and saturated foods as possible for a mere five or six dollars. I'm sure ther will be an increase of cholesterol problems in my generation coming up. I watched as the man in front of me, roughly 5'10" and probably well over 300 pounds ordered the "extra-large" combo meal. It was absurd to think of him consuming that much food, probably packing on more weight without even realizing it.

What kind of country have we become? That we are willing to ignore all the signs of impending doom in our arteries to be satisfied that we filled up with enough burgers and fries. It's frightening at the least, and difficult to imagine anywhere else but here. I'm not sure it would happen anywhere else but here. For some reason people seem to have significantly fewer self-control buttons than those in other countries. And they definitely eat. You'll never see a Frenchman pass up a baguette for breakfast or an Italian aspargus fritti. But for some reason they are much, much, smaller than we are. And that's what interests me- where did we go wrong? Why aren't we taught healthier ways to eat? Why do we expect so much out of food? It's not just to keep our bodies running. I'm sure we could do that on hafl the calories we consume. But there is some underlying reason we insist fast food places continually increase their production.