Whats eating you?

In this age of trying to legislate everything, I am surprised that someone has not decided that we can’t be trusted with food and tell us what to eat.

The electronic age has finally created a way for all those assholes to bring us into line and thin us right up. I call it the Dietcard. You have to have a card for every member of the family and on that card is all the dietary information on that individual. He/ she is not allowed to purchase things that are bad for them or not on their diet or things that they don’t like to eat.

Whoever does the shopping would only be ably to buy food for people whose cards they have in their possession. A lost card means they loose all eating privileges until that card is replaced or found. (“Don’t piss off your sister or she will eat your Dietcard again.”)

If Johnny is diabetic, he is not allowed to buy more sugar than he is allowed. Since Jane is overweight, she can’t but any food that will let her actually enjoy eating.

With everyone legislated to eat better, the weightloss companies would be put out of business. No more exercise mania, and weightloss pills advertised day and night. No annoying bright and shiny people on the small screen yelling how their particular device will let me trim down, get healthy, and find love.

The government could keep track of consumption and use food more efficiently, growing what is needed and saving the soil for rapeseed and soy. Waste of food would be eliminated. Landfills would be saved the smell and space of rotting leftovers.

Refrigerators would be far easier to clean with far less space taken up by leftovers and partial portions. They could also become smaller and better looking, perhaps adding TVs and DVD players for entertainment in the kitchen. We could all spend the evenings in the kitchen again, staring at the fridge and bonding in a family way.

Restaurants would be forced to sell healthy food, and fast food would have to change. With all food purchases linked to the Dietcard system, anything that could go into your mouth would be monitored.

This would actually be less complicate than the credit cards system, with one database instead of competing companies. (And who would want to steal your eating habits from the database?)

Alcohol would be added, making responsible drinking easier and drunk driving nearly impossible. (“I’m sorry, Sir, But your Dietcard says you are over your limit.”) If you were driving drunk, you would have to gotten alcohol illegally, making your arrest far more serious.

This concept would create a black market for food. I see black market food vendors selling bacon and Oreos from the back of unmarked vans in seedy neighborhoods in the inner city.

The drug trade would be diminished because we would all begin looking at food as an addiction that needs to be monitored by the government. People would remember the Twinkie with romantic fondness.

A small shrine to snack food could be placed in small towns in the Midwest, making us remember the days of unrestrained eating and popcorn.

“When I was yer age, boy, we could eat all we wanted and some people were FAT.”
“Don’t scare the boy, MizfiT.”

With the Dietcard, we would all be bright, shiny, happy people like those we see on TV and want to throw heavy things at. We would all be thin, full of energy, and ready to greet every day with a smile and healthy eating habits.

The more I think about it, the more I don’t like it. I think there is a place for grumpy, disaffected people in our world. I think heart disease is part of the natural order and death is inevitable. I think that the closer we come to a ‘perfect world’ the further we get from what it is to be human.

Please join me in thinking the Dietcard is a really bad idea.