I was at the mall the other night. No, much to contrary opinion, I was NOT satisfying a retail therapy urge, I was instead taking my two teenage daughters to purchase every possible item of clothing that they had outgrown. Changing of the seasons and all that....that time of year where they pull out the shorts, tank tops, swimsuits, flip flops and realize that most of the items they wore last year are sadly a size too small and require replacement. It used to be that Annika could wear Kirsten’s hand-me-downs. No such luck this year. While Annika is a few inches shorter than Kirsten, they are for all practical purposes the same size. My Visa company will thank me this month. In the interest of fairness, I probably should ask Josh if he has any urgent wardrobe needs as well. Being a man now, he often fails to REALLY see that the clothing he is pulling from the back of the closets and bottom of the drawers may have seen its better day.
I digress. When we were at the mall, we walked past that iconic culinary establishment, ‘Old Country Buffet’. It was Saturday Steak Night, and there was a long line forming in the mall wing outside of Target. Apparently, several patrons were in the mood for fine dining that night. They could hardly wait to get in there to the warming lights where a pimple-faced teenager wearing a white chef’s hat and holding a carving knife and meat fork was excitedly waiting to carve a hunk of sirloin, gristle and fat included, for their choking/tasting pleasure. The girls and I laughed as we walked past the line. Then, I’m not sure which one said it first, but one said ‘ I really like eating there’ and the other quickly agreed. It got me thinking, what is it about human nature where the ‘all you can eat’ buffet can be so enticing?
Our family has had dinner O-N-C-E at Old Country Buffet. The kids were younger, I think it was probably a night that we had taken them to the mall to have their pictures taken and we were waiting the hour for the pics to be developed. Dean and I are not big ‘all you can eat’ people, as we don’t like to leave the dinner table in a state which requires unbuttoning our top pants button and popping an antacid. The kids, however, think that walking in and viewing every possible food imaginable is exciting. We gave in to this excitement once. We vowed never again.
The rate of obesity in our country has greatly increased in the last 20 years. The last estimates wagered that 49 of our 50 states had obesity rates of AT LEAST 20%. Thirty-two of those 49 states had rates of AT LEAST 25% with 6 of those states (Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, West Virginia, South Carolina and Tennessee) weighing in at equal to or over 30% of their population being obese. I was wondering what constitutes someone being obese–statistically, you are obese if your body mass index (or BMI) is 30 or over. For instance, someone who is 5'6 and weighs 185 pounds (or more) would be considered obese. If you have ever stood in the check-out line at WalMart, or in the line at Old Country Buffet, you have most likely rubbed elbows with several who exceed the 30 BMI. threshold. But honestly, is it because of our dependence and excitement at the notion of ‘all you can eat’ deals and establishments?
So back to my initial question, what is so tantalizing about an all-you-can eat buffet? When I was in college, a dorm-mate of mine and I would often head to Skipper’s Seafood. Skippers had a wonderful all-you-can-eat special for $7.99, drink included. My friend would always take a large handbag and was known to shove food into a plastic bag that she had stashed in her handbag. Upon returning to the dorm, she would label the bag and stash it in the floor’s refrigerator. And no, contrary to what you may think, my friend was S-K-I-N-N-Y. She didn’t think so, but she was. There was something about being able to have the gal behind the Skipper’s counter keep refilling the plastic basket lined in checkered paper that was satisfying.
I think it is the same at restaurants that include ‘Buffet’ in their name. Walking into an establishment, paying a set fee and then wandering between the warming and cooling bars, plastic tray in hand, ready to load and re-load white ironstone plates with a tantalizing array of tasty tidbits can bring even the most health conscious to their knees in anticipation. I’m here to tell you that nothing good can come from scarfing multiple plates of deep fried shrimp, garlic mashed potatoes, or even piling your plate high with fixings from the salad bar that include hard boiled eggs, bacon bits, shredded cheese and huge dollops of ranch dressing–don’t forget the ranch dressing, mmmmmmmm. When I have partaken in this glutenous activity, I have felt something like Violet in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ when she ate the grape gum and had to be rolled out to be juiced. It’s was a miserable feeling.
Recently our state has enacted laws that encourage restaurants posting the nutritional information for each menu item. I wonder if this policy will have an effect on the buffet-type restaurants. Something tells me that the majority of patrons to such establishments aren’t going to care. It’s sad really. Didn’t their mothers ever tell them about the starving kids in China? Those starving children would FREAK if they saw a buffet, especially the one at ‘Wonderful Buffet’, our most recent entry into the local buffet restaurant market. That being said, I still really miss Izzy’s, a pizza buffet place. Sadly, the restaurant closed in our town and the location was remodeled and re-opened as a ‘Love Zone’. Uh-huh, I seriously can’t make that up.
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