the Path of Better Shortcuts Puhreaches: Surviving Fast Food... literally

Surviving A Thousand Fast Food Meals Without Literally Dying

If one hundred people eat nothing but food from McDonald's for one hundred days, and another one hundred eat only Burger King for one hundred days, while a third group eats only KFC for one hundred days, and one hundred additional people eat nothing but food from Wendy's for one hundred days, and a fifth group of one hundred people eat at any fast food restaurant chain you care to mention, take a logical or extravagant guess at how many of them will be alive and well.

Based on all scientific and empirical evidence, along with a first-class documentary on the subject and at least twelve top-notch books on the subject, the correct answer is zero. Most will be dead, and the rest hospitalized. There's a slim chance that an occasional individual with sturdy constitution, who eats only salads and water from these so-called restaurants, might possibly be out of hospital, but hardly hale. In the interest of full disclosure, this might be a good time to mention that I love the taste of many of their foods, some of them qualifying as my own "comfort foods."

This is shared to make it clear that this is no typical situation of adversarial interests. Even knowing that Burger King adds chemicals to their hamburgers to make them taste more like hamburgers, that flame-broiled, charcoal tastefest is a powerful reminder of great teenage times, and therefore a tough temptation to resist, even after learning that they also add chemicals that exist only to interfere with the digestion process, which convinces your body you haven't had enough to eat and therefore makes us even more inclined to go buy an extra burger or two. These foods can be comforting, so the challenge springs right up in your face: guaranteed poison against guaranteed physical and emotional pleasure, provided the order comes as you ordered it.

Summarily, I recognize that fast foods cause rapid and undeniable damage to my body, and I do not want to give up what I consider to be mostly delicious foods that are affordable and pleasing. I also accept the premise that many thousands of people die every year as a direct result of fast foods, and that I wish to avoid being one of those people who die from fast food without having to be someone who completely gives up those fast foods. So, let's look at how we might survive a thousand fast-food meals without actually dying. Simultaneously, we get to pick up parallel (and therefore useful) facts and insights into living stronger for longer without giving up too much fun.

Again, to keep it scientific enough for the Path of Better Shortcuts to acknowledge it as a duplicable pattern, there is a definite acknowledgment of the occasional, actually rare human who could survive while focusing on the more guaranteed aspect of looking at four hundred people eating as they wish as long as they eat only from fast food for one hundred days. The life expectancy of all or nearly all of the four hundred is zero. How is it different than smoking?

Some people are heavily affected by smoking; others are not. It is only in the long run that larger statements can be made to qualify for the sometimes-challenging resolution of the Path of Better Shortcuts to stick to those patterns which are observable. Observable patterns are repeatable, and if you knew so much better there is no doubt that you could do so much better. So it's illogical, technically stupid to tell people that smoking an occasional cigarette is likely to or guaranteed to kill them. The statement is not true. The kind of statement you'll assimilate ala the Path of Better Shortcuts is more likely to be thus:

"Smoking one hundred thousand cigarettes is guaranteed to cause you at least one form of physical stress and reduction of one or more functions. Whether you smoke one hundred thousand cigarettes in the course of one year or twenty years or fifty years, one hundred thousand cigarettes are certain to cause you enough damage that something on you or in you is observable to you to be deficient."

Interesting note that a cigarette per day for forty years comes out to 14,400 cigarettes. How many smokers smoke "just" ten cigarettes per day? That's a hundred and forty-four thousand. Those who smoke twenty cigarettes per day consistently put away far more than hundreds of thousands cigarettes. With only ten puffs of a cigarette a pack per day equals millions of lungfuls of smoke. Sure, light me another, will you?

Relating the smoking to the food is scary because it feels good, as the chemicals that are added to all corporately-made foods pay testament to. Instead of thinking about fast-food over the vague description of "years and years," look at the math. That's the marking line between death by smoking and death by food.

If you eat at a fast food restaurant three hundred times out of three hundred meals, you're likely to die immediately. When you only eat fast food once for every ten or twenty healthier meals, it takes longer to kill you. If it weren't for so many people dying, it would be very funny. You can even stretch it out to a thousand meals without actually dying, although statistically you would not be a viable contender for any open slots on any given Olympic team, as long as it's just one out of ten or twenty meals.

Let's face it: in this life, unless you're really a glutton, you get 75 years of three meals per day if you're blessed or just plain lucky or hard-working. That's about seventy-five thousand meals over the course of your life. So take that as your formula. If you eat at a fast food restaurant just once for every twenty meals, which would come out to about once per week, you CAN survive even a thousand meals of fast food, by stretching it out over a seventy-five year period. Try not to get run over or take the wrong prescription. There might be some benefit to considering the words of America's very first "self-made" millionaire, the same guy who invented the lightning rod still used across the globe, and a few other neat inventions, such as bi-focal glasses. The inventions and wealth of Benjamin Franklin may impress some people. For those pursuing Longevity, however, one might note that he outlived most all of his friends and family, stating repeatedly that the less you eat, the longer you live. If you eat food with high nutrition, you're hungry less often.

You're not fat because you eat too much. You're fat because your body is not getting sufficient nutrition out of the food you're eating. When you eat enough to satisfy your cravings, it means the body is nourished. When your body is not getting enough out of what you're eating, it will demand more. Having fifteen thousand chemicals added to your foods without you knowing it is not unintentional. That's not an invented number. The U.S. Congress and the FDA have a list of fifteen thousand chemicals that food manufacturers are allowed to add to their products WITHOUT having to list them on the ingredients panel.

If I'm in business to make money, what could possibly cause you to think I won't add chemicals that specifically stop your body from digesting all the goodness from your food? Don't you get it? You'll have to buy more of my food. That's hardly in the realm of wacky conspiracy theories because there's no conspiracy about it: it's all as open as the list of fifteen thousand chemicals that can be added to your food without telling you. Just dial -1-877-762-8762 and ask to speak to your Congressman or Congresswoman. How likely is that they might lie to your face or phone?

You can indeed survive a thousand fast food meals. Considering what will be collected inside of your body, particularly the lower intestines, with pounds and pounds and pounds of undigested red meat and fecal material, why would you want to?

John Wayne willed his body to science, so when he died, they opened him up and found just over fifty-five pounds of nasty and assuredly unnecessary material inside of him. The vast majority of it was undigested red meat, because the body hasn't got a clue how to digest red meat. Since your body can only process a handful of grams of protein per day, isn't it wise to trade even some of that red meat for some fruits and vegetables? This way you don't need to give up such a pleasure-giving food; only adjust the amount you put into your favorite body.

Finally, if you start making it your business to have carrots, celery, or any other vegetables that you like or can tolerate, and you eat, say, a single stalk of celery or carrot or piece of lettuce, you not only provide your body with a bit of protection against the guaranteed damage of the fast food, you also improve your elimination process, your absorption of whatever nutrients DO exist in the fast food, and get some brain and immune boosting thrown in at no extra charge or effort. These are some ways to eat a thousand fast-food meals and not literally die in the process.

the Path of Better Shortcuts is useful less for your knowing than for your doing. Corporate sponsors buy 1.1 cups of staple food for starving people in return for our free clicks. So, when we click this food button and the one that pops open we save a human life... no charge to you. Can there be a more noble effort within the Path of Better Shortcuts ?   What goes around....