“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
Dean Wormer in the movie Animal House

I’ve been fat most of my life but rarely drunk. Stupid is in the eye of the beholder. 

It is obvious that some people who run fast food restaurants think fat people are stupid. More and more people are trying the Atkins diet and other low carbohydrate diets and fast food restaurants are trying to cash in the craze.

Some restaurants make a real effort. They develop or modify menu items that fit into low carbohydrate diets and try to develop choices for people following those programs.

Others are a little more annoying. Rather than develop some new menu items, they proudly advertise that they will serve their sandwiches without the bread to accommodate their dieting customers.

They assume that fat people are too stupid to take the meat off the bread themselves or so weak willed that they will immediately gobble up any bread they can get their hands on. They don’t charge less for “sandwiches” without the bread, even though the restaurant in making more money off the dieter. Also, it takes away the opportunity for the dieter to give the bread to a hungry person or starving bird, who might appreciate the gesture.

Some of my friends have done very well on Atkins and low carbohydrate diets. I have not. I have also not had success with Weight Watchers, Optifast, Diet Center, the Metabolic Diet, the Zone or any other program that has come along. I’ve been through Dr. James Anderson’s program at the University of Kentucky three times. He is one of the finest people I have ever known and his staff is knowledgeable, caring and dedicated. I still lose the weight and then gain it back.

One thing I have gained from a all of my programs is a tremendous knowledge of what foods have lots of calories and carbohydrates. I could easily teach for any of the aforementioned weight loss programs expect having an instructor who is 100 pounds overweight would not be a good marketing idea.

Since I know what is healthy and what is not, I get irritated when foods that are high calorie, high carbohydrate and high fat try to pass themselves off as being good for you. My favorite was the KFC advertisements that say their chicken is better for you than eating a Burger King Whopper.

I suspect there is nothing worse for you than eating a Whopper. It is high fat, high carbohydrate, high calorie but tastes extremely good. Eating pure lard or a pound of sugar might be healthier than downing a Whopper.

It is very annoying and probably deceitful for KFC to advertise that their stuff has some kind of health value. They don’t compare their menu to a vegetarian co op. The only way they can possibly market their food as healthy is by comparing to the Whopper.

It is like telling someone who is an alcoholic that switching from drinking pure grain alcohol to just drinking vodka is a good move for them. It is still going to make them drunk.

Speaking of being drunk, suddenly all of the beer companies have starting pushing the low carbohydrate qualities of their products too. They make it seem like knocking back a 12 pack is downright healthy.

My childhood neighborhood had a number of hard drinking men who developed what was called beer bellies. I have one myself expect mine came from fast food and soft drinks. From watching the beer commercials, it looks like my switching from soft drinks to beer will cause me to be a slim, muscle bound guy and have super models ripping those clothes off when they see me.

The men in my neighborhood drank lot of beer but looked lousy and no one ever took their clothes off around them. Not even their wives.

I guess they were drinking the wrong brand.

Some of them might have been considered fat, drunk and stupid but one thing I feel pretty sure of.

They never would have eaten fried chicken or a Whopper and thought they were eating health food.