All-You-Can-Eat-Disease

There was talk on the news this morning about the high levels of mercury found in tuna, as of late. It was being blamed on power plants and a couple of other sources. I say you can find a lot of undesirable things in your food without looking that hard. Let me elaborate.

When I was a kid, my parents took my sister and I to one of those all-you-can-eat-buffets. I recall being shocked at the behaviour of most of the patrons. Some of them would pick the food straight out of the pans (like chicken legs) and start eating it without going back to the table. I thought, God, how hungry do you have to be that you can't wait until you get back to your table to eat? Almost every food pan that you came across, you'd discover the serving tongs to be completely submerged in the food. Handle and all. I was disgusted by that. But worse than that, would be looking over at the ice cream dispenser and seeing kid after kid stepping up to it and sucking ice cream directly from the yellow-ish, saliva covered dispenser nozzle.

They reminded me of skuzzy little calves sucking mightily from their cow mother's crusty teats.

At the Golden Corral, you routinely see people dropping the handles of tongs in food pans. Plus, they'll use one big spoon from the gravy pan to dip into the spaghetti sauce. Many customers come in wearing sweatpants or pajamas and slippers in the middle of the day to show they don't care how they appear. I guess that kind of attire proves useful when you're gorging on your fifth plate and don't desire the exercise of having to adjust your belt.

My friend, Gerk, told me how he went to Frisch's for the breakfast buffet and saw this rather rotund woman scooping up heaps of sausage links on her plate. He said it had been her fourth or fifth trip up to the bar for her sausage gathering that morning. Anyway, the portly woman turned around, wagging her metal sausage picking tong and commenced to jabber with the friend next to her in line. Suddenly, she accidentally jammed the metal tong into the light fixture above the bar. Immediately, she was electrocuted and she flipped the plate of sausage links into the air. Everyone stood back, unsure exactly what had just transpired. The electrified woman yelled, "Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!" before someone could ask if she was alright. After she hit the floor, other customers could, at last, grab a few links for themselves. And yes, for those of you who care, she eventually made it to her feet. Fully recuperated, she went back for more sausage, later.

My cousin, a host/manager of a casino boat buffet, had an unexpected surprise one evening when he began receiving complaints from other customers. It seems they were having difficulty eating their food. A large family at a certain table were causing trouble. He went back to the room in the corner of the dining area to visit the ill-behaved customers. His jaw dropped the moment he saw them. Father, mother, sisters and brothers were all cheerfully gorging on their taters n' gravy and whatnot while allowing half of their pre-chewed food to fall out onto themselves, their plates and the table. My cousin finally asked, "Is every alright?"

More munching and slobbering ensued before the father of this charming troop nodded his ten gallon head, allowing more half-eaten gobbledy-gook to drip off his chin. The wife and the rest of the kids were covered in a variety of sauces and chunks as they also nodded.

My cousin couldn't ask them to leave. Or so he thought. Instead, he made up a little tale explaining how the casino buffet needed their table for a bigger family and asked if they could move. He politely asked a second time, not sure if they heard him over the noises their mouths were making. The father held up a greasy finger, before saying, "Fine". That one word response was muffled, however, because a blob of mushy meatloaf squeezins was trying to escape from his pie hole.

In the end, the family was escorted to a more secluded room, in an area with many walls.

At one time, my wife worked at a famous named steak restaurant where the cooks or servers, if they dropped steaks on the floors, would routinely pick the steak up and place it back on the plate and serve it to the customer.

A friend of mine told me the account of a couple of disgruntled employees at another famous named restaurant. They were angry at their supervisor. They were going to make him pay for some transgression against them. But it seems to me the patrons of this eatery paid, as well. Towards the end of the second shift, when all the employees were cleaning up and taking the food away from the buffet bar, an item was discovered at the bottom of the vegetable soup pot. The eyes of the employees discovering this item certainly must have widened at the sight of a used maxi pad stuck on the bottom of this soup pot. In retrospect, I suppose you really couldn't call it vegetable soup, could you, if there were some type of meat in it also?

In summary, I'd like to point out that there can be no debate that the United States has the highest (or one of the highest) rates of obesity in the entire world. You need to look no further than the local all-you-can-gorge-on-buffet ( a.k.a. human hog trough) or down the street or, maybe, in front of the mirror.

And please, could you not drop the tong handle in the chicken gravy! Damn it.