36 Minutes…and Counting

36 Minutes… and Counting

The older I get the more skeptical I get. I can’t help it. Once you’ve seen it all before, you’ve seen it all before and it gets harder for hooligans to pull the wool over your eyes. If you’re younger than sixty, you won’t get this, but, trust me you will. There are so many things going on in the world today… I sit here and roll my eyes. If I say “rolling my eyes” everyone knows what that means. It’s the universal sign of incredulity. I spend most of my time being incredulous. And I write this with an incredulous gasp.

How did the phrase, “rolling my eyes” come to mean what it does? How did “with a grain of salt” come to mean what it does?

The pandemic of 2020+, the crazy political scene, and several other things have caused me to stop watching the national news. Whatever happened to Huntley & Brinkley? Walter Cronkite? Whatever happened to the news? Anyway, I stick with my local news where I can actually get the news, and hear about lost puppies, firemen, and community picnics, and not somebody trying to tell me what to believe. Reminds me of the Rolling Stones song…

“When I’m watchin’ my TV and a man comes on and tells me
How white my shirts can be,
But, he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke
The same cigarettes as me…”

So, by now you’re wondering what the heck this screed is all about. Well, I’m getting to it. But I had to do a little foreshadowing. Because what I’m about to tell you comes from the deepest part of the well of things that make my eyes roll. 

The other day, I read a report, supposedly from a university study, that says for every hot dog I eat, I cut 36 minutes off my life. I mean really! Seriously, are people spending money studying this stuff? How do they know for every hot dog I eat I lose 36 minutes of life? Now they tell me when I’m old!

I have no idea how many hot dogs I’ve eaten in my life. I sure don’t eat many now, but when I was younger, I used to go to a lot of Cleveland Indians (now called the Cleveland Guardians) games. I can remember my grandfather and me sitting there in our box seats eating a lot of hot dogs. I bet I averaged three hot dogs a game. I’m not a “maths” wizard, but I know that thirty-six times three equals 108. That’s nearly two hours I chomped off my life every time I went to a baseball game. My grandfather was not trying to kill me – I’m sure of that. Seriously, I mean this stuff is goofy – my eyes are rolling.

They say for every serving of red meat I eat, I shorten my life by six minutes. For every chicken wing I eat, I lose three minutes, and washing it all down with an ice-cold soft drink costs me another twelve minutes of life. Add an order of fries to that? There go another eight minutes. And so on.

So, let’s see. A simple pauper meal of one hot dog, a serving of french fries, and a soft drink take – let me see:

Hot Dog 36 minutes
French Fries 8 minutes
Ice cold soft drink 12 minutes…

Takes me about ten minutes to eat it and costs me 56 minutes of my life. Yikes! That’s nearly an hour!

Who believes this stuff? How can I get government funding to do my own “study” so I can make stuff up? You know all these studies were done using taxpayer dollars and government grants.

Now… I present my unfunded study called…

Minutes you lose for foods that you chews

• Salty pickle (one): two minutes.
• Three Musketeers candy bar (one): three minutes
  
• Chocolate milk shake (12 ounces): sixteen minutes
  
• One slice of pepperoni pizza:  six minutes.
  
• Potato chips (one bag 😂 ): twenty minutes.
• Big Mac (one): twelve minutes (I’ll get sued by McDonald’s).
• Whopper (one): eleven minutes (I’ll get sued by Burger King)
  Wendy’s Triple: fifteen minutes. (I’ll get sued by Wendy’s)

You get the idea, right? You really can just make this stuff up! Who’s going to prove you wrong? Nobody.  Did you ever hear anyone say… “Poor Aunt Mable, she died sixty-seven thousand minutes early because she ate all those hot dogs. I told her to knock it off!”

Oh yes, let’s not forget the government-funded studies that tell you what foods can add minutes to your life – I’m serious here -I can hear you snickering.  For instance: A classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich (whatever that is) adds 33 minutes to our lives. I’m serious now, don’t snicker.

So, let me summarize. If you eat a hot dog and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich together, you only lose 3 minutes of your lifespan (advanced “maths” here … 36-33=3) and you’ve had a mighty fine eating experience and you can enjoy that hot dog knowing you’re only going to kick off three minutes sooner rather than thirty-six minutes sooner. Just think! A single serving of french fries takes eight minutes off your life, but add a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and you gain twenty-five minutes! The “maths” is simple. 33 minus 8=25.

And one more thing before we go eat.

Did you ever see the serving sizes on stuff? How about cereal? I just looked at a box of Cheerios. A “serving” is 1 cup. Try this experiment. Measure out one cup of Cheerios and put it in a cereal bowl. No one eats one-third of a bowl full of cereal. You fill the darn bowl up and pour milk on it, right? Not so fast… here’s what one cup of Cheerios in an ordinary cereal bowl looks like.

Go eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and add 33 minutes to your life. I’ve got my stopwatch ready. 

It’s no wonder that I am a cantankerous, skeptical, incredulous old coot.