auradis

“America’s Unhealthiest Meals,” my mother read off her laptop screen. Ever since our cable broke, she has resorted to perusing the ABC News website for her daily dinnertime news fix. Engrossed, she read parts of the article to me and Larry.

“Deep-fried macaroni and cheese, quesadilla burger, and mega-sized deep dish sundae,” she said, skewering the pronunciation of quesadilla. “Is macaroni and cheese normally deep-fried?” she asked.
“No,” I responded. “Stupid Americans just love to deep-fry anything.”
“Hey, deep-fried stuff is delicious,” Larry interjected.
“Like I said…”

I rolled my eyes as mother continued reading aloud. Really, ABC News? What health magazine has not already covered the country’s most fattening meals, when you’re just now jumping on that bandwagon? OMG AMERICANS EAT LOTS OF CALORIES WHAT A SHOCKER!!111! This is no longer news; it’s a fact of life that can no longer be reported on creatively. Subjecting yourself to a 6,000 calorie meal for the sake of journalism? You really didn’t need researchers from the University of Maryland to tell you that it will corrupt your diet and arteries [also, wtf is a quesadilla burger?].

“The article says that ‘the USDA recommends that adults our age eat roughly 2,000 calories per day,’ but your friend XZ told us that for our size, we should be eating around 1,500 calories,” mother told me.

I absolutely hate being told information that I already know as if I don’t already know it. This is one of the things that annoyed me the most when XZ went on a food-deprivation-and-hyper-exercise diet a month ago. As she became deeply entrenched in her new obsession, her enthusiasm for calorie counting could not be contained, and she lectured anybody who came within hearing distance, from me to my mother to anybody who would listen, really.

I gave her my attention the first time just to hear out what she had planned for herself, but it was all information that I knew already. I mean, I took advanced health class in high school because I’ve always had a keen interest in nutrition [I even chose dietitian for my career project in 8th grade], and I only stopped reading nutrition & exercise blogs because I felt like I already knew all the practical information I needed.

When XZ came at my mother with her “a pound of fat is 3500 calories and 2000 a day is too much” knowledge, my mother saw fit to recite it back to me whenever she thought it relevant. Not only did I despise the attitude of self-loathing and incessant caloric calculations that XZ was inspiring and aspiring to, I really did not appreciate my mother treating me as if I didn’t know anything. Really, the interactions we usually have leave me feeling unhappy enough; I will not be made out to be a blundering idiot in this area as well.