C
alling all cops! There is a new, super-easy way
to defeat criminals: Simply set up fast food
shops near all major banks. Getaway cars will
be unable to proceed past them.
For millennia, people have been divided into two
camps: those controlled by their heads and those who
follow the dictates of their hearts. But this generation?
We’re controlled by our stomachs.
Here’s the evidence: A criminal was speeding down a
road in the US state of Indiana at 144 kilometres an hour.
Police could not catch up with the villain.
Then the bad guy saw a fast food shop. He skidded
to a halt, parked the car and lined up at the counter for a
massive hit of calories and cholesterol. I’m not making this
up. Police arrested him and laid down a range of charges,
including fleeing from officers and having lamentably bad
taste in food.
Constant cravings
These days, we’re all slaves to our cravings, writes
father-of-three
Nury Vittachi
.
inexplicable craving for a rice lunch box meal that my dog
would have turned her nose up at, and she eats live bugs.
Most shockingly, a mildly famous animal rights activist
of my acquaintance admitted that she had recently dined
at McDonald’s. I said: “I thought you would only enter a
McDonald’s with the sole purpose of smashing it up as a
symbol of imperialist capitalist meat-eater-ism.”
She replied: “Normally, yes. But I had a craving for
French fries and ketchup. And French fries are vegan, if
you think about it.” She told me not to print her name,
scared that members of the vegan society would not
approve. “They’d eat me alive,” she said, interestingly.
Magazines say you can reset your cravings by eating
something at the same time every day for ten days. For
example, say chocolate bars are your favourite snack. You
make yourself eat an apple at 3pm every day, and by the
11
th day, your body will be craving that 3pm apple. I tried
it. Now I crave apples and chocolate bars every day.
A doctor friend told me that cravings aren’t always
bad. They come when our bodies cry out for specific things,
which may be: 1) health foods, 2) fast foods, or 3) items of
inedible inorganic matter (I realise that sections two and
three overlap a great deal). She said pregnant women are
the best-known examples of people who get powerful urges
to put odd things into their mouths.
A quick survey of people at the bar one night on this
subject produced a large crop of bizarre tales. One guy
knew a woman named Julia who ate a box of tissues.
Another woman ate chalk and talcum powder. A third
ate cheese and ice cream sandwiches. A fourth drank salt
water. A fifth put Miracle Whip on her salad. A sixth ate
laundry soap. A seventh ate gravel. And most horrible of
all, an eighth ate fast food every day for months.
If her child ever grows up to be a robber, he’ll be in
trouble if there’s a burger shop near the bank.
Nury Vittachi writes a regular humour column at
www.mrjam.org
.
For millennia, people have
been divided into two camps:
those controlled by their
heads and those who follow
the dictates of their hearts.
But this generation? We’re
controlled by our stomachs.
The same day I read that, a reader emailed me a story
about a petty thief in Taiwan who committed a pointless
crime because he had an insatiable craving for cheap jail
food. “I cannot forget police department boxed lunches,” he
told reporters as he was happily led away. I’ve encountered
similar stories several times, and they are never about haute
cuisine, but always about fast food or canteen nosh.
Indeed, your columnist has encountered the same thing
himself. The week before writing this, I was inexorably
drawn to a famously ghastly canteen after getting an
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