Rodney Ohebsion

Don't Eat That

When you're at a supermarket and you see something like bagels right across from donuts, do you ever wonder what bagels think of donuts? It's probably like the way President Obama looks at his brother. His brother calls him up and says, "Barack--how's it going? I heard you became President. What country? ... Oh--the United States? That's a good one. Yeah, things are going well for me, too. I am Nigerian prince now, with sprinkles and glazing--and if you help me transfer $10 million to your country, I'll give you a $1 million commission." And Barack says, "Listen to me. I'm President of the United States. I don't care if we're half brothers, and we're both circular and made of flour. I sit in a $250,000 chair, I have a red phone, and I'm smeared with cream cheese. I'm not loaded with sugar and oil, and dunked in a 59 cent cup of coffee."

Have you seen the Food Network show where some San Franciscan guy named Ethan just brags about what he eats? "I just fixed myself a sandwich of kundalini kale, soyless tofu, tofuless soy, dairy-free goat cheese, goatless cheese-free, and two non-slices of slice-free quinoa bread--all on a non-plated plateless plate-free plate, which is on an upside down tree-free bamboo table, in an adobe building built on land owned by 100% organic, soy-free, gluten-free Nativeless Native Americans. And before I eat my sandwich, I'm gonna stare at it, smell it, sing to it, take it on a raw, vegan walk around the table, and tell it how Fox News is a bunch of lies." One of my favorite episodes is the one where Ethan goes to McDonald's, and orders "a reusable rainbow fanny pack containing one organic llama-cheese-vegiburger, with a side of couscous, and a grande acai juice."

One time, I ate a nutritional weight loss bar while reading the ingredients on its wrapper: peanuts, sugar, milk, oil, and flavoring. One bar, $2. That's weight loss magic. You pay $2, you get 2 cents worth of ingredients, and abra cadabra--you weigh $1.98 less. So I ate a case of them. And instead of checking my scale, I checked my bank balance. "This is the best diet ever! I've already lost $198."

Some people prefer paying $2 a bar to reading a 300 page, $30 diet book that says something like, "First calculate your Ideal Metabolic Target Neoprotein Jammy Jam Limit Rate. Take your height in inches, divide it by your weight in pounds, and divide that by your birthday in centimeters. The number you're left with is completely meaningless. OK. Here's the diet. If you like Charlie Sheen more than Emilio Estevez, eat two pounds of duck liver two times a day on weekdays, unlimited calling on weekends. But if you like Emilio Estevez more than Charlie Sheen, go to Netflix and watch The Mighty Ducks 2. The End. I'm a genius. Aren't you glad you paid $30 for this book?"

The books are ridiculous--and the magazines are worse. You're at a newsstand, and 50 magazines are trying to hook you in with their bait. "We found the one diet that really makes you lose weight. There's only one. This is it. It's in this issue. I now pronounce you diet and wife. You may buy our magazine, and start losing weight." Then the next issue of that magazine comes out--and guess what? There's a new diet on the cover. Woman's World has put out 1254 issues--and each issue refuses to aknowledge the existence of the previous one. None of them say, "If you want to lose weight, read our last issue. This discussion is over. From now on, we're gonna write articles about bedspreads and Geroge Clooney."

How come any time you so much as think about dieting or nutrition, the world sends a hundred experts your way--and each of those experts points you in an entirely different direction? "I'm the world renowned Dr. Smith of Harvard University. And according to my research, you should eat a lot of A, and a little B. Otherwise, you'll gain a hundred pounds in two months, and then drop dead on Christmas Eve." "I'm Dr. Jones--head of nutrition at Yale University. And I have a thousand pages worth of gold standard studies proving that you should not eat A in a house, you should not eat B with a mouse. What you really need to do is eat a spoonful of C, in the most delightful way. Otherwise, you'll end up in diabetic coma on Groundhog's Day." "Nonsense. Don't listen to Dr. Dumbass Smith and Dr. Jackass Jones talking about A, B, and C. Look at my before picture. And look at me now. I lost 150 pounds, by eating a rooty tooty stack of LNOP. Also, I'm endorsed by the trifecta of Oprah, Gandhi, and Angelina Jolie."

After hearing so much stuff about dieting, you're able to come up with twenty reasons why you shouldn't eat what's on your plate. "I can't eat that. It has too much fat, carbs, and salt. Its flour is white. It's against gay rights. It'll elevate my triglycerides, it'll modulate my rhinocerides, it'll make my gut get supersized, it'll give me double thunder thighs. It's not right for my blood type, it doesn't connect to my iPhone, it doesn't match my doorknob, it doesn't get along with my mother. It smells like teen spirit, it looks like Gene Shalit, it sounds like Vladimir Putin, it contains soy and gluten. It's hiding a voice recorder, it's toilet is out of order, it isn't certified organic, and it really doesn't trust Hispanics. Yeah. I have twenty reasons why I won't eat this slice of pizza. But I hardly even care that my fiancee is overweight, addicted to drugs, unwilling to hug, materialistic, imperialistic, unenergetic, and anti-Semitic. I'll marry that son of a bitch Russell--but I don't want to get near Papa John or Little Caesar."

What about that bestselling diet book that tells you to eat right for your blood type? When you hear about that, you picture a team of 170 IQ, Harvard educated scientists, pouring through 5,000 pages of data in order to figure out which foods match which blood type. Now here's what really happened. Some lunatic slapped himself in the face, soaked in a bathtub full of Hawaiian Punch, smoked some crack, and said, "OK. The blood type diet. Apples, type A, oranges, type B, mangos, type O." If you followed his book's scientifically idiotic advice and you didn't lose weight, you should sue him. Just make sure you use a lawyer that's right for his blood type. Get a type A lawyer to file a type A lawsuit against a son of A bitch.

When a skinny person looks at a fat person, he usually thinks that all a fat person needs to do is flick a switch, and he'll be able to eat less, lose weight, and keep that weight off. That's why sometimes a skinny person gives a fat person advice like, "You know how you eat food and then eat more food? I was just thinking--maybe instead of eating more food, you should eat less food. That's my brilliant advice to you. It's my genius solution to your obesity. You obviously have a normal appetite, and you eat too much because you're an idiot. So I had to step in, and tell you to flick a switch, so you'll eat less."

Did you know that when a woman fills out a form to renew her drivers license, the people working at the DMV make an in-her-dreams adjustment? "She weighs 120 pounds? In her dreams! Let's switch the first two digits, and put down 210."

These days, thinness is glamorous. Too glamorous. A few days ago, I was outside of a bar with a friend of mine who's lost 100 pounds over the last year and a half. She got into some sort of heated argument with another woman--and at one point, the other woman got so mad, that she told my friend, "Go fuck yourself, you skinny bitch!" Then my friend's face lit up. And she said, "Do you mean it? Do you really think I'm a skinny bitch?" The other woman was like, "Uh--what are you talking about, you freaking lunatic?" And my friend replied, "I'm a skinny lunatic. Don't forget the skinny part."