The Old Coot knows the cause of the obesity epidemic

I hate TV commercials. Most people do. We feel abused by the networks. Just when a show gets close to the climax, the ads come fast and furious. THEY know they have us by the short hairs; we won’t leave, so they take advantage and bombard us with promises of perpetual youth, good health, clean clothes and two burgers for two bucks. 

But, that’s not the half of it. If you grew up with TV, like us old coots did, you’d know that TV shows: I love Lucy, The Honeymooners and the like, filled a 30-minute time slot with 27 minutes of show and only 3 minutes of commercials. Today’s sit-coms provide 20 to 22 minutes of drama and 8 to 10 minutes of half-truths and outright lies that pass for commercial messages. 

Yet, (and here is where I go off the tracks as usual) life without commercials would be bleak. People who watch TV via streaming and TiVo-ing (is that an official word yet?) know what I’m getting at. Without commercial breaks, you can’t get anything done. Can’t pull the clothes out of the washer and shove them in the dryer. Can’t open the back door and let the dog out. Can’t add a single word to the daily crossword puzzle. Can’t work through that stack of bills that need to be paid. We’ve adapted our routines and scheduled much of our lives around commercial breaks.

We’ve also fitted our eating habits to the ebb and flow of commercials. Unfortunately, like Pavlov’s dog, who salivated at the sound of a bell, we do the same at the break in a TV show, and shuffle off to the kitchen to slide a bag of popcorn into the microwave and grab a can of soda out of the fridge. Closing the refrigerator door reminds us of the tub of butter pecan ice cream in the freezer. We make a mental note to get working on that during the next break. 

It all started, this TV driven eating cycle, with the introduction of TV trays and TV dinners when my generation was growing up. The function of the kitchen moved to the living room; its name was eventually changed to the family room. As the length of the ads increased, so did the width of our rear ends. Want something to blame the obesity epidemic in the country on, then you might as well start with the proliferation of TV commercials. A phenomenon with which we have a love hate relationship.  

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