In one of the most innovative and enterprising moves to stop the obesity endemic in its tracks ever made by a nanny state, a prescient quango known as the Foods Standards Agency (FSA) has advised/warned chocolate manufacturers to keep the size of their chocolate bars down.
Hapless confectioners have been told that chocolate will be regulated as follows:
Chocolate ‘snacks’: (eg. Mars bar): At present, Slough’s main contribution to the universe, has a mass of 58g. Chocolate tycoons have been given a mere 3 years to reduce this to 50g.
Chocolate ‘bars’: (eg. Dairy Milk and Yorkie) These must be reduced to 40g or less.
It is to my deep regret that no restrictions on advertising chocolate have been suggested. As a doctor and psychotherapist, I have long been appalled by the blatant misuse of Freudian psychoanalytic theory to sell chocolate to the young by inundating them with pictures of attractive young models of either gender consuming both chocolate bars and chocolate snacks in none too subtle images of fellatio! With rampant hormones and their unconscious minds manipulated by evil chocolatiers promising sexual bliss but delivering obesity, what chance do our young have in this world?
Manufacturers of ‘fizzy drinks’ are to be hit even harder. Any drink containing sugar should be reduced from 330ml to 250 by as early as 2015! This should save at least 4739.6 lives over a 37 year period according to unofficial calculations.
It is rumoured that computers have calculated that these changes will reduce obesity by 19.29% thus saving 66755.34 lives over the next 50 years. Deaths due to chocoholic smokers compensating on oral gratification by choosing to smoke more and eat less chocolate have apparently not been figured in to the FSA’s computations.
A spokesman for the hamburger industry, already hard hit by the ban on supersizing, said there is absolutely no truth in the rumour that a quarter pounder will need to be downsized to a three sixteenth pounder by the year 2016. He admitted however that the FSA has absolute power in such matters and that cattle ranchers in Brazil have been warned that the demand for meat in the coming decade could be reduced significantly. Meat prices are presently high but the noble FSA, with the best intentions for the public of course, could well put an abrupt halt to the present bull market in beef. Time to sell beef stocks then? Don’t ask me for financial advice. Doctors are well known for doing their boots on the stock market.
Doc,
Will the price be lowered, too…to give people a financial break as well….just as badly needed as less body, nowadays?
(I would personally buy 2 chocolates, instead of one….MORE profits for them, more dopamine for me!).
Ruth, The Dopamined ChocHog.
In fact what is usually called ‘chocolate’ in the UK is more accurately defined by the term confectionary, as it consists predominantly of refined sugars, trans fats and stabilising chemicals, with a small smattering of actual cacao
Stefan, thanks a lot for that. I’ll now refer to what I thought was chocolate as ‘chocolate’. I’m pretty sure that in the USA, there is probably even less chocolate in ‘chocolate’ but I do apologise to my fans in Belgium and Switzerland where I believe chocolate is still available.
Ruth, you make a very good point. Of course the price cannot go down! Where on earth do you think the money comes from to fund: 1.The august quangos that carry out these scientific studies that prove obesity is the fault of the manufacturers of chocolate because the size of their chocolate bars is too big. 2.The intense advertising/marketing campaign that will be needed to convince even a brain-dead consumer that when it comes to ‘chocolate’ small is beautiful.
I think I’ll stay with obesity for a while. The FSA has galvanised me into rethinking this important issue. I thought obesity was usually the fault of the obese person. I now think that I’m wrong and that the blame lies elsewhere. All will be revealed in my next post.
Doc,
Really look forward to your take on obesity. How, exactly, do you professional Provocative Therapists achieve such rapid, durable results with obese patients?
Why did they stop with chocolates? Big Macs could be smaller (and charge the same, of course). Also, smoking often curtails appetite, so perhaps more smoking should be encouraged. What will it be….longer/stronger cigarettes for a disproportionately higher price? There are many other potentially confusing questions, e.g., will beer be sold (at the same or higher prices) in smaller containers? Where does it all stop, Doc?
I have made my decision…..before I buy 2-packs of smaller chocolates (in the USA, these are usually bought for infants, in bulk) I’m going to increase my cigarette consumption. On balance this should make me a better insurance risk since there is nothing I can find about any proposed sale of shorter cigarettes because regular ones are more dangerous…and I trust all the media. Smoking is hardly dangerous. I know non-smokers who have died prematurely.
The dangers of precipitate weight loss still scare me so much that I resort to ‘stress eating’ whenever I think about it. I’m not going to change a thing unless you can provoke it….ahahahahahahahahahahah!
10 stone and counting,
Ruth.
Ruth, Patience Patience… All will be revealed very soon. As a provocative therapist, the only way an obese person can avoid losing weight is to cancel his/her session with me and go to McDonalds instead. I point out all the advantages of this (going to McDonalds) has many advantages over coming to see someone like me. First of all it’s MUCH cheaper which is of the utmost importance these days. Second of all, you almost always see people there that are even fatter than you are – which is very good for the morale. I tell all my obese patients to go there instead of coming back to see me, but they don’t listen to my advice! How they can compare the exquisite sensation of cold chocolate pouring down their throats to wash a Big Mac to listening to me is beyond medical science. In today’s post I mention evidence to show that the war in Afghanistan may be being lost because of obesity.