The Fat Diaries: Let Me Have Cake
I'm turning thirty today, and just my luck: My birthday's falling on Good Friday, a fast day for Catholics. So I can’t even have the one thing I want, a huge chocolate cake.
I’m thirty years old today. My birthday always falls on Earth Day, which has always annoyed me to no end. Not that I have anything against the earth, but it’s about the only holiday where if you open a present people are required to ask if you’re going to save the wrapping and use it again. This year it falls on Good Friday, which is a fast day for Catholics so I can’t even have a huge chocolate cake. That’s right. Huge. Chocolate. Cake. I may write a column on obesity in America but when I hit the big 3-0, I plan on doing it properly.
Maybe it’s a mortality thing. When faced with the realization of our own limited lifespan, a birthday dinner is the mental equivalent of a last meal. Given that we’re thinking about dying we’re inclined to hang the consequences and go, but that’s probably me just waxing morbid. In fact I’m SURE that’s me just waxing morbid. Turning 30 terrifies me. I don’t know what’s so horrible about it considering how much more I have going for me now than I did five years ago. I have two super kids, I’m thinner and healthier than I ever was. I’m no longer at major risk for developing diabetes and heart failure. I’m also seeing my career as a writer and artist taking off in ways I never dared to dream when I was 25.
I’ve lived to see a hundred different phases take the food market. I saw the neon 80s days of marshmallow cereals and colas with “all of the sugar and twice the caffeine,” to the 90s craze for low fat and “lite” and lean, to the 00s craze for Atkins followed by natural and “full of fiber”. Diet pills, flushes, teas, berries, meal plans, support groups, reality shows, and a bunch of other hallmarks of a society struggling with obesity have popped up like mushrooms overnight only to be mowed down. Are we really any closer to our goal than we were in 1981 when NutraSweet was invented? Contrariwise, are we any worse off?
Well mortal or not, I still look forward to seeing what the next thirty years can cook up. Are we going to see more improvements in the food industry or are we going to see food monstrosities the likes of which we can only contemplate (like deep fried Gushers Fruit Snacks)? Only time will tell. Time is now telling me that I have Easter Baskets to make. Happy spring holiday.
And because it’s my birthday today, for no reason, here’s a bunch of junk food commercials from the 80s that I liked. Thanks, YouTube. It’s like I never left.
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