Reply #126: Have you ever worked an 80 hour week? [View All]

[wickerwoman]

I have. I remember coming home from 16 hour shifts (which were really 18 hour shifts when you added commuting time) and being too tired to watch television. I would stare at the wall until I fell asleep. And I didn't have children. I did laundry recreationally. As I said before, the nearest grocery store was a forty minute walk each way. Factor in shopping time and each trip to the store was four hours. When you're getting four or five hours sleep a night, that's four hours that ain't gonna happen week after week after week. And the food at that store was filthy. I found spiders and caterpillars in the vegetables. I picked up a package of fish once and my hand touched a cockroach. I picked up a jar of peanut butter and saw, perfectly defined in the dust on the lid, a trail of rat tracks. Who is going to put up with that shit when they can get a hoagie from the deli or a $7 pizza? It's bully for you that you're in a situation where you can buy reasonably sanitary produce and get it home. Not everybody is in that situation. And a little more humility would be a lot more flattering on you.

You implied that Asians are thin because they are hard-working and cook for themselves and Americans are fat because they are lazy and addicted to convenienve. I think you're dead wrong. As I said before, Chinese people, no matter where they live, have quick and easy access to vegetables. I'll bet the average Chinese person eats fast food twice as often as Americans do. It's just that their fast food happens to be healthier than ours. And most Chinese companies provide two nutritionally balanced meals for free every work day so they only really have to worry about breakfast on work days. If American companies offered free nutrionally balanced cooked meals for their workers what do you think would happen to obesity rates in America?

I gained 50 pounds when I was poor and working 80 hours a week. I lost 50 pounds without dieting as soon as I got a middle-class income. What was that again about no link between income and weight?