Super size it - what in the heck is going on with GINORMOUS serving sizes

So before you say that is not a word, “GINORMOUS” has won a legitimate place in the 2007 copyright update of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.

The other day Bride and I were out and about and on the way home she asked about stopping at the a drive through. I pulled into the drive through by our house and she ordered a breakfast burrito combo. The voice on the other end of the speaker asked if we would like to upsize the Sprite Zero for free, I asked “why not” to which she relied “I can’t think of any reason not to” which I thought was a pretty witty comeback. So we get up to the window and there she stands with the drink, it was huge. So for no additional cost I was able to upsize to the 44 ounce drink, a cold drink that is damn near a quart and half. I take the cup and just start laughing, I ask her if she sees how crazy this 44oz cup actually is. She laughs and we have a moment, I can tell she understands exactly what I meant. It was funny. What has happened that we can even buy a 44-ounce drink that is not in a bottle and designed to be shared with others? One of the things that crossed my mind was, I wonder if I know anyone who could drink 44 ounces of anything, let alone a soda, in one setting. Bride was unable to drink it all and she worked on it most of the day.

That got me to pondering, and clarity was coming to me, I was beginning to understand why the CDC was reporting (using 2003-2004 data) that 34% of Americans are overweight and 32% of all Americans are obese. So 66% of us stuff to much food in our faces and enjoy 44 ounce drinks. Those are staggering numbers when you think about it, 66% of us are just fatties. I guess that Australians are a lot like Americans because the numbers there is 62%, 62% of the entire population of Australia is overweight or obese. After not much research it was revealed to me that only 24% of the folks in Japan fall into that same category. It was not a surprise to find that Ethiopia has the lowest percentage of overweight folks and in fact, over 44% of children there are underweight. If we examine this problem from the evolutionary perspective we realize that we humans did not evolve as sedentary mammals, it was not until we reached the top of the food chain that we were no longer running for our very lives. After we became the dominant mammals we still worked our butts off, plowing the field, hunting for food, building our homes and so on. It was not really until the beginning of the industrial revolution that things started to slow down. Now that we are firmly entrenched in the automobile-centric world we do not even have to get out of our cars to get the 44 ounce drink, we travel around in air conditioned comfort from our air conditioned home to the air conditioned office where we sit at the desks and perform work that requires little or no exertion. I found a stat that said men average 81 minutes behind the wheel of an automobile, and women average 64 minutes a day, I still suspect that data was flawed or biased and therefore I question the statistic.

When we couple our choice to continue our evolutionary sedentariness with the availability and our affinity for certain tastes we can begin to understand why we are all getting so fat. We like sweet things, to our prehistoric ancestors sweet meant fruits and nutritious and nonpoisonous foods, not Twinkies, not giant candy bars and not 44 ounce drinks. Throughout human history, our desires for sweets and fats are not terribly different from today, there are a few differences though. We ate non processed foods and sweets were natural and fats were used for energy. As little as a century ago we were more active people, we exercised all the time, often it was not called exercise it was called daily life and it was by necessity, no need for a gym membership. Town and urban centers were designed and built for foot travel, we lived in smaller groups and our longer travel was by actual horsepower. Children would walk to school, not uphill both ways in the snow like us though. They also played outdoors until darkness fell, no street lights in those days. In fact in 1900, most Americans lived in rural communities and worked at hard labor in fields such as agriculture or mining.

Why do we ignore the risks of being overweight or obese? There is a truckload of medical evidence that being overweight or obese substantially raises a person’s risk of developing diseases and illnesses. Bad things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Type II diabetes, heart disease and stroke, gallbladder disease, arthritis, sleep disturbances and breathing problems, as well as endometrial, breast, prostate and colon cancers. The numbers are staggering, men with a body mass index of at least 40 have 18 times the prevalence of Type II diabetes and 21 times the prevalence of gallbladder disease as do normal-weight men. Women with BMIs of at least 40 have 13 times the prevalence of Type II diabetes and five times the prevalence of gall-bladder disease as do normal-weight women. More than 75 percent of hypertension cases can be directly attributable to excess weight. Among patients with obstructive sleep apnea, up to 70 percent are obese. Socially, overweight and obese people also can suffer from stigmatization, discrimination and low self-esteem as well.

We are not living in the time of Peter Paul Ruben, he was the 17th century painter who coined the term, “Rubenesque,” while painting full-figured women. I for one reached fat boy status some time ago, I only realized it myself 26 weeks ago when I decided I was going to have to do something about it. There we no more 44 ounce anything’s in my life anymore except the 48 ounce bag of carrots I nibbled on for an entire week. I am over ½ way to my goal of 63 pounds, no fancy pill or program for me – I just place less stuff into my mouth and ya know what, I am averaging about 1.5 pounds a week. Anyway the next time you are faced with a 44 ounce drink, a super sized fries a one pound candy bar or any of the other guttenous goodies that are everywhere remember, it is not the jeans that make your butt look big, it is your big butt that makes your butt not only look but be big.