Fast Food

 This will be one of several posts on this topic.

Unlike a lot of a diabetics, I don't have a sweet tooth, not really. I do enjoy certain types of candy (most anything with peanut butter in it) and I love buttercream frosting on a cake, but aside from that most of the "bad" food that I eat comes from The Clown, The King, or The Adopted Girl. By those I mean, of course, McDonald's, Burger King & Wendy's. Every once in a while, when I was in the mood for a really shitty pizza, The Noid (aka, Domino's) would get involved.

Annie and I have cookies and candy (non-peanut butter variety) in the cabinets for the granddaughters and I really just leave 'em alone. It's not a big deal for me at all. 

But fast food... Oh, what a seductive siren song they have sung to me over the years! There's just something about tucking into a greasy fast food cheeseburger that has spoken to my soul for, well, decades. 

That's only one part of the equation, though.

Taken in moderation, say once every two months, a shitty fast food hamburger can be an interesting, even amusing diversion. (That's all gone for me now; fast food to my diet is like bourbon to an alcoholic: No-no forever.) In case I'm not making it clear, I didn't just eat fast food, I abused it. Some of what I'm about to write might upset some people; reader discretion is advised. 

I have been known to order two Big Macs, a Double Quarter Pounder with cheese and a regular Quarter Pounder with cheese...in the same meal. With a large fries, and a large chocolate shake. The combination of raw calories and grams of sugar and carbohydrates...it's no wonder my pancreas gave up the ghost. To be fair to me, that was a semi-rare order. Maybe once every four or five months. But the "regular" order wasn't much better: At least two hamburgers and a large fries. 

Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip Dilbert posits that overweight people don't just like food, they experience it on a different level than the rest of the population. To nutshell it, his idea is that they taste it "more" or something like that. That our visceral experience with food is the same that a person using meth or crack cocaine for the first time feels, and that we're constantly chasing that "high." 

My wife, an avid hater of fast food, has asked me at least a few dozen times if I really do like the taste of fast food. If it is a good culinary experience. As much as McDonald's corporate strives to make every single McD's restaurant's food exactly the same so a Big Mac in NYC tastes the same as one in Peoria, the truth is it varies by store. In my experience, about 2 or 3 out of 10 times I ordered from McD's, the experience was exquisite: A truly well-cooked, greasy, fatty cheeseburger that pushed all my buttons. 

Buttons that to a certain extent, McDonalds installed. It's a well-known fact that the corporate kitchen's at Clown HQ have worked for literally decades to make their food...well, addictive. There's sugar added to the buns, to the meat, to the Mac sauce. Sugar is incredibly addictive -- trust me, I know. And trust me again, I know all about addiction, true chemical addiction. 

For over 20 years, I dipped Skoal Long Cut Wintergreen. I started in college when playing baseball, and when I was 37 years old I did the second-best thing for myself I've ever done: I quit Skoal cold-turkey. November 17, 2005 was my last dip. The first 30 days were hell, and the following 60 weren't much better, but I am proud to say that I kicked the habit. I haven't had any tobacco in any form for almost 20 years and I will say that I am very proud of that fact. 

 I don't necessarily disagree with Mr. Adams idea on why fat people are fat. I don't completely agree, either. As we all know, it's much more complicated than that. No one needs tobacco, or crack, or meth, or alcohol. Everyone needs food. 

What frustrates me is that our food has been screwed with. Not just fast food, which has been scientifically engineered to be addictive, but our day-to-day food, too. They tell newly-diagnosed diabetics to avoid processed food. The more natural the food, the better it is for us. The whole "Farm to Table" movement is part and parcel of this -- the less interference in the food you eat, the healthier it is. That makes absolute sense. The companies that provide us food have committed all sorts of crimes in the name of profitability (replacing cane sugar in soda with high-fructose corn syrup, to name one glaring example) and God only knows what else.

Not to get on too high of a horse, but I am proud to say that for years Annie and I have not purchased "food," but instead...ingredients. We cook fresh food for almost every single meal. Every once in a while we'll pop a frozen appetizer from Trader Joe's into the oven when watching the Oscars or a football championship game -- but day to day, week after week, one of us will cook dinner from fresh ingredients. (In the future, I'll share some of our recipes that keep my blood sugar hovering in the green zone...)

 It was the other meal where fast food crept into my life.

And a large part of it was the "fast" part of it. Before my recent dietary changes, my favorite type of food in the world was a sandwich. Like the Lawrence Sanders character NYPD Detective Edward X. Delaney in the Deadly Sin novels, I could eat sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

My personal favorite sammy is a roast beef on a hard roll, extra mayo, red onion, salt and pepper, granulated garlic and celery salt. I used to order them with double meat, but only if it was Boar's Head.

But making two sandwiches every day for lunch took too much time! So, I'd order in. I will say that I used to run out for my McD's. The advent of DoorDash and it's ilk is probably what killed off my pancreas for good. 

From 2009 to about 2019, I owned my own business and spent most of every day in my truck roving Sonoma County, going from one appointment to another for my small technical support company. Drive-thru became both a lifeline when I was too tired (or lazy, to be honest) to make a "healthy" lunch. 

But, just as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you..." What once was a treat quickly becomes a habit...then a crutch.

I haven't had fast food since December 6, 2022. The way I feel right now, right at this moment, writing this post, I never, ever want to have it again in my life. I'll write more on this part of the topic later, but: I have found so many delicious diabetic-friendly foods since December 7 (yes, the irony of that date is not lost on me...) that to go back, to fall into that pit, that morass again.... 

Let's put it this way: I want to go to my granddaughter's weddings. And if I eat fast food again, I risk everything. Everything.

In case anyone was curious, the single best thing I've done for my life, obviously, is marrying Annie.