Hey, I will have three veggie whoppers, one large non-GM french fries, one locally grown side of onion rings, a pesticide free cherry pie, a fair-trade chocolate sundae and an extra- large diet soy milk.
Santa Cruz Sentinel reports:
A first-time local survey released this week suggests county residents continue to eat too much and fail to shed the extra pounds -- despite the region's reputation for fitness and a growing national spotlight on obesity and its health effects.
One of every two people in Santa Cruz County is overweight or obese, according to the survey on body mass that debuts in the 2007 United Way-sponsored Community Assessment Project. In past years, as documented back to 2001 in the statewide California Health Interview Survey, the number of overweight residents in Santa Cruz County has similarly hovered around 50 percent
For a people who take pride in eating veggie, organic and local, Santa Cruzans are fatter per capita than those in your average meat eating, GM consuming, fast food scarfing American city.
The local government has banned smoking, curbed dancing and drinking, won't allow anybody to have fun unless there is a massive police presence on the streets and draconian ordinances on the books, and banned house parties, so there really is nothing left except to eat.
The city council considered a fat tax to fund another local shelter to house out of town fat homeless people here on holiday, but felt that they could only tax people so much before they begin to riot.
Fight the Flab!, a corporate chain that promotes health eating and exercise, considered investing million of dollars in the Santa Cruz economy. In the initial planning stages, it found its presence wasn't welcomed by local activists.
A local Nimby group Save the Fat fought against it.
"We don't want a chain that promotes good health, hard work and exercise in our neighborhood. Why can't we have another taqueria? This town doesn't have enough taquerias!," said George Wideload, President of Save the Fat.
Miquel Illegalitas of Gordos Sin Fronteras agreed.
"Fight the Flab! is a racist chain. It refuses to employ illegal immigrants. Santa Cruz needs more taquerias to employ more illegals from Mexico. Besides, we Mexicans love our women to be grotesquely obese and wear tight clothing. Muy caliente. We won't have Fight the Flab! insulting our culture. Vive la Mexico!"
A local feminist group, Dykes for Donuts, also came out in support of obesity.
"When American women are healthy and svelte, they become attractive, and that promotes their objectification by men. We support the right of American women to be obese. We want their clothes to fit poorly and have fat oozing out of their pants. We want them to look like slobs. We want grease running down their triple chins. Fight the Flab! is just another racist, sexist classist white man's corporation that wants to oppress women and people of color.
A local anti-war group, Keep the Fat, End the War, will have a sit-in in front of McHenry Library at UCSC to teach students how Fight the Flab! is just another corporate beneficiary of the Republican Party's war policies.
"It conspires to take the food out of our mouthes and give it to Halliburton so it can feed US mercenaries in Iraq and profit from the Bush war machine," said Adam Petchouli, spokesman of KFEW.
His brother in arms, Josh Lardstein, an Environmental Studies major at Kresge College, says that good health and exercise are bad for the environment.
"Everytime you breathe, you admit carbon dioxide," he said, perched from a tree in a parking lot that is commonly known as Elfland at UCSC, "and that contributes to global warming."
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