Bad food leads to unhealthy Oklahomans

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September 21, 2012

Bad food leads to unhealthy Oklahomans

Marjorie Anderson The Edmond Sun The Edmond Sun Fri Sep 21, 2012, 07:23 PM CDT

EDMOND — A plaque once hung in my kitchen above the stove. It read, “I have a Kitchen Only Because It Came With the House.” Friends laughed, but they quit when they realized it wasn’t a joke.

I wonder what happened to that plaque. Probably ended up in the dozens of give-away boxes I filled with pots and pans last spring. Remember that wildly extensive house cleaning and hauling-out madness I went through back then? Not that I care. I did keep the microwave and a toaster. Also the oven that I’m scared to allow to self-clean and the stove top, which the cleaning ladies dust twice a month. None of that would have fit in the cardboard boxes even if I hadn’t run out.

I’ve always been skinny. Growing up and beyond, my dad rarely greeted me by name. “Sister,” he’d say, “you’re losing weight.” I never did, but I didn’t gain, either. I like food well enough, but eating never rated high on my list of favorite things to do.

The food police who requisitioned California folks’ bottled milk off their front porches would have no quarrel with me. And those 15-ounce soft drinks that New York’s Mayor Bloomberg wants to ban? Doesn’t faze me in the least. I couldn’t handle even an 8-ounce can of carbonated anything. It fizzes up in my nose. Sorry if that’s too much information.

I can’t tell for sure from the obesity charts I found on the web, but it looks like Oklahoma rates somewhere between fifth and seventh on the national obesity scale. It’s the fast food, so they say. Greasy hamburgers and fries for the most part, and in multiples on a daily basis. Ha! The food police don’t know grease when they see it. Not unless they grew up in my time and place. Maybe not even then if their hometown didn’t have a Dollar-a-Dozen hamburger joint at the edge of town.

You and your pals loaded into a family car that whoever’s Dad had offered up for the occasion. No telling how many of us fit inside. Not a cell phone among us, and no TV or computer to sit in front of at home. We were walkers. We walked to and from school and church, to the town’s theater and throughout the countryside on Sunday afternoons.

But we drove to that Dollar-a-Dozen joint on a Saturday evening and knew we were about to be blessed when the aroma wafted in through the windows. We picked up a dozen or so of those greasy fried delicacies, each loaded with one big, fat round of onion on top of the juicy fried patty ... three thinly sliced sour pickles on top of that ... all of it encased between two toasted-in-grease buns spread with mustard. Makes me wish I hadn’t given my skillet away.

MARJORIE ANDERSON is an Edmond resident.

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