Fat Read Online Free PDF

plate is so large, and sits underneath a mound of meat with a just sprinkling of vegetables.  Plates are undeniably smaller everywhere else in the world, and meat is used more as a garnish than as the meal entire.  Most have to get by with what we would consider weeds and bugs, spending most of their days procuring and protecting their non-guaranteed meals.  Food here is an entitlement in excess.  It must be offensively odd for others to watch the average American at a buffet -- plates overfilled with food, much of it going uneaten and cleared from the table as a routine into the waste bins of busboys.  It is no accident that the domestic health perils of obesity, like heart disease and diabetes, start developing in new immigrants from cultures traditionally without those ills, a result of their increasing assimilation to their new homeland’s cuisine.  And those conditions continue on in their proceeding generations as their plates grow more American with every bite.  Looks like the food arriving to the table had created a natural pause to Kate’s update.  Damn.  The food just got here.  This is no time to sit in silence.  Better rev back up her train of thought. 
         “Sounds like he’s doing great, what else have you guys been up to?”
         This dinosaur shaped meatloaf was comically large but admittedly delicious – soft and moist, seasoned lightly with thyme and topped with a tangy sweet tomato based glaze.  The mashed potatoes were fork-drippy creamy, as if they were more butter than potato.  This was going down so smooth that, for a second, I envied the heavies that ate like this every meal and got to enjoy more quantity of this goodness.  This place was an assembly line for the obese. They were filing in through the restaurant’s front entrance, advancing to their seats crabby and antsy, lumbering to have kilocalories added to body at every course, and exiting out patting bellies and burping.  And in a curious stroke of hotel planning, at the exit everyone had to trundle right past the hotel’s fitness center, situated behind full length windows across the causeway of the restaurant.  Large glass fronted lonely treadmills and ellipticals, resistance machines were noticeably dusty and the free-weights looked rusty – this was a microcosm in the battle for fat.  Super-size portions at every restaurant, candy and chocolate at every checkout counter begging for that impulse buy, and portions becoming so outsized that eating a foot-long sandwich becomes the “healthier” choice; salad and yogurt choices placed alongside those Super-sizers, gyms hanging bright banners advertising discounted memberships at every corner, bookstores with shelves and shelves of fad diets.   In that battle of good and evil, good always wins, as in what feels good going down the hatch. 
         This meatloaf is really good but I can’t finish it.  Xander had already long cleaned his plate.     
         The rest of dinner was blur of vacation tales to Disney World and grandma’s house in Arizona, and of cleavage, both in a pert female and saggy boy variety.
         Dessert?  Pass for me.  I doubt I will be hungry again until late afternoon tomorrow.  Xander begged for and got a chocolate sundae with the works.   
         Yes, the dinner check, the official end to dinner out.  The dinner check is also a time for reflection, to think about the cost of the evening.  Encased in a faux-leather sheath, it is a chronicling of the events of the last hour -- appetizers, drinks, main courses, desserts.  How much did it cost to become full?  How many rounds of food did it take to be full?  After all this, am I even full?   The number next to the food item is the final dollar calculation of providing all this consumption: finding suitable land, buying the land, clearing the land, tilling the land, planting the land, fertilizing the land, watering and watering and watering, harvesting,