Competition Trick Eating

Breakfast buffets are awesome. There are mounds of sausages, bacon and scrambled eggs waiting to be piled high onto a plate. There is all you can eat and drink a literal cornucopia of breakfast goodness. I recently went to a morning buffet and after paying went immediately to the custom omelet line. Standing there I watched as the egg chef hurriedly folded each omelet before passing it to the next waiting customer. I casually turned to make small talk with the gentleman behind me when I noticed he was so large he could barely breathe. He coughed and snored as he stood there sweating profusely while holding on to the very thing that was killing him…his plate. Upon seeing this I stepped out of line. I know I must have seemed crazy but I put my plate down and looked around the restaurant. The dining room honestly looked like a pasture full of grazing animals. The only small people I saw were the waitresses, waiters filling empty glasses and cleaning the bar. The rest of the small people were walking outside of the restaurant. I grabbed one high fiber muffin, drank two cups of coffee with Splenda and paid my bill. I actually smiled as I walked out of there.

Buffets have to be the epitome of food waste and oral hedonism where chair after chair of super morbidly obese people sit and consume massive calories until they wobble away. There is nothing wrong with having a variety of foods to choose from but something has to be said or done about competition trick eating. Buffets should actually come with a health warning on the door that reads,

"Caution the contents of this establishment will cause obesity; diabetes; hypertension and heart failure consume at your own risk!"

I believe we as a people are so quick to throw up a red flag for such things as: smoking, drinking, illicit drug usage, promiscuous sexual behavior and sex toys. We forget that consuming mass quantities (sorry Coneheads) causes just as much damage to the body as a gunshot wound. Yet as still, there are buffets all over the place creating one stroke victim at a time.

I know my beloved South is full of delicious foods that have fed families for generations. Our older generations talk of drawing water from wells, feeding hogs, chopping wood, walking to school and church, as well as filling barns with hay. They practically did not have enough time to sit still to gain weight. They were active people who associated being overweight with being lazy and greedy. They had to have a large meal in order to survive. But when you put these items on a hot bar with a sneeze guard and then ring the slop bell, things quickly get out of hand. Remove the heavy labor and you are left with double chins, diabetes, and dimply butt cheeks. And people so big they snore when they are awake.

~VALE~