Couch Potatoes

Though the impact of the freshman fifteen is not always visible, it's really a ubiquitous presence. Everywhere you look, you see people making diet choices. People choosing to get a salad instead of a burger for lunch, choosing not to get ice cream for the 3rd time that day, or going for a turkey burger instead of a hamburger. Most students are ever-conscious of this legend, and try their best to avoid it. However, from what I've seen, the sole culprit of the freshman fifteen is not food.

The freshman fifteen
Is not caused by poor diet,
But by laziness

First semester, I never really noticed that people were lazy. I walk absolutely everywhere, and so I personally get a good amount of exercise. However, yesterday I overheard a girl complaining to her friend about walking down the stairs. The conversation went something like this:

"Ughhh, why are we taking the stairs? Why don't we wait for the elevator?"
"Because it's not there yet. This will be faster."
"But we're on the third floor!"

Keep in mind, this is going downstairs. Now, I don't know about you, but to me at least, 2 flights of stairs is practically nothing, and definitely not worth complaining about. The same type of scenario applies to the bus system. I will pass people waiting at a bus stop for the bus, and get to where I'm going before the bus even passes me. If it was always faster, I wouldn't be so fast to criticize them, but the fact of the matter is that it is not always faster (though it is always fatter).

And so, to return to my original point- though food plays some part in the freshman fifteen, the real underlying cause is laziness. People just can't bear to move their butts in order to get somewhere, and elevators and buses have become the bane of healthiness.

So Evil, and yet so Innocent

Well, it's another Monday. In order to stay positive, I will now discuss something that incredibly positive. Girl Scout Cookies!

Now is that time of year. Little girls are out on Ho Plaza, selling their cookies to college students while students quarter-card and yell "Come to The Hangovers Fall Tonic XXX!" Needless to say, I expect that some of those little girls had part of their innocence taken away when they asked "what's a hangover?"

So here all of these adorable scouts are, selling boxes upon boxes of delicious cookies. How can you say no? Well, for me, it's easy. I live by this simple haiku:

If they can't pronounce
The ingredients in their
Products, don't buy them.


Seriously, have you looked at the packaging on the boxes? I doubt any health-concerned parent or scoutmaster would let these children eat the cookies. So why exactly are they allowed to sell them?

Here are the first four ingredients in "Samoas," one of the most popular cookie varieties:

Sugar, vegetable oil (palm, partially hydrogenated palm kernel, soybean and/or cottonseed with TBHQ to preserve freshness), enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate [vitamin B1], riboflavin [vitamin B2], folic acid), corn syrup

A rather long list, for just four ingredients, if I'm not mistaken. Especially considering that half of those ingredients are sugar, and the sugar content is greater than the flour, which is generally considered to be the backbone of any pastry. Also, notice the fact that the second ingredient is "partially hydrogenated," meaning that it contains trans fat- an ingredient linked to cancer, coronary heart disease, infertility, diabetes, Alzheimer's, liver dysfunction, and many many other fun-filled diseases. And yet they market the cookies as being "trans fat free!" I think they may have forgotten the comma that makes it "trans fat, free!" which would still be false advertising, because they are not, in fact, free.

How is that then? Well it's simple- they reduced the size of cookies and the serving size so as to bring the amount of trans fat per serving under 0.5 grams, and therefore are not required to list it on the boxes.

At the same time, there is plenty of other fat and sugar to be worried about. Oh, and preservatives. And all of the greed and corrupt thought that goes into them, but they don't advertise that.

So here's my question for the Girl Scout organization: Why do you let innocent little girls sell such devilish food? Because it makes money? Because it's a longstanding tradition that's been around since 1917 (and I'm sure they had all of these ingredients in it back then)?

Well let me just say: These girls would be better employed selling "natural" or "organic" cookies for more money, or even quarter-carding for The Hangovers. How could someone ever resist coming to a great acappella concert when it's advertised by a little girl? And one that is unlikely to have any adverse effects on their health, at that.