What its like in one of the unhealthiest counties in one of the unhealthiest states

[shootingstar]

Having spent my high school years in Alabama where ketchup was considered a vegetable in the school lunches -- I'm not even making that up -- I can tell you that the thinking there is that soda is mostly water, so it counts as water, and if it's sweetened with Splenda instead of sugar, it's considered the healthy choice.

Booze: ditto -- mostly water.

Cigarettes: from tobacco leaves...it's a vegetable, too. Besides, they look so darn cool.

Jeez. Nutritonal food illiteracy is amazing.

I met a 70 yr. old woman 15 yrs. ago who rarely ate any veggies her whole life, even though she had a heart problem. She was raised in a rural area on Cape Breton Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia. I remember her friend, my partner's mother who was around 82 at that time: she was politely disgusted with her younger friend's diet but knew it was pointless to convince her to eat her veggies.

[Trek420]

Jeez. Nutritonal food illiteracy is amazing.

Yep, it sure is Personally I'm not sure if it's illiteracy (never learned to read) or dementia (once upon a time we all knew what to eat. We just forgot under the deluge of fast food ads)

But back to customers: You know those systems where you're resetting a password it gives you a couple choices of security questions: What was your high school mascot, who was your childhood heroine, if you were stranded on an island what book would you need and .... what is your favorite restaurant?

If I had $20 for everyone whose answer to that last one is MacDonalds I would be retired on an island right now. "Wrong! MacD's is NOT a restaurant, it's barely food. I'm locking you out of your account, that's just plain wrong."

[KnottedYet]

I loooooooove McDonald's fries and hashbrowns. You gonna lock me out of the house?

[Trek420]

No way!

[Velocivixen]

I've lived in Oregon (Willamette Valley) my whole life and now live near Portland. If you've ever watched the show Portlandia (IFC), there's a skit where these very down to earth patrons are in a restaurant and they are asking about the chicken on the menu. They're asking where the chicken was raised, how old it was, it's environment....finally the waitress excuses herself and returns with the chicken's lifetime dossier! The couple still can't decide, so they leave the restaurant and take a trip to the farm where the chicken(local of course, and hormone/antibiotic free of course - organic) was raised (like a commune). Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that many here are into local sustainability, growing your own, community gardens, farmer's markets, vegan/vegetarian options, etc. Of course not everyone eats like that, but it's a stereotype that I sort of like.

[Trek420]

Before the Portlandia chicken (I love that episode), before Rocky the Range chicken, Petaluma was the egg capital of the world. I grew up on a farm there:

http://www.archive.org/details/Petaluma1932