Americans

STFU Fridays: Food Nazis

September 14, 2012 — 29 Comments

Do you have a Food Nazi in your life? You know those people. I have quite a few.

They have to qualify everything with “fat-free” “non-fat” “organic” “with a hint of” blah blah blah. Shut the fuck up. After a while you start qualifying your food like that too just from being around these arrogant and pompous assholes. The other day I made these miniature pumpkin pie things with my kick ass fat-free pumpkin pie recipe. I posted a photo to Instragram with a long description of all the healthful and unique qualities these stupid little fuckers had. Afterwards, I hated myself more than the morning after that one night in Cabo I just can’t – for the life of me – remember…

Some of them have the stupidest food beliefs, and they shove them down your throat every time they have an opportunity. You faithful blog followers that have been around a while remember that time Hello Kitty Toaster (my sister in law) got into an argument with me over her belief that vegetables are bad for you. It started because I “checked in” on Facebook at Subway and she replied “sandwiches = fat fat and more fat ass!” Really bitch?

Well it’s time for these people to get smacked in the face with Shut the Fuck Up Fridays. And my friend Shut the Fuck Up Burger came to help.

“I’m a …arian”

Vegetarians. Vegans. Pescatarians. Meat-lovers. Whenever people identify themselves as a particular “…arian” (in my experience) they are usually pretty arrogant in their attitude towards food. One of the biggest criticisms of vegetarians and vegans in particular is that they are constantly taking an air of superiority when in the presence of a certain meat they don’t eat.

I don’t mean you shouldn’t identify yourself. I just mean don’t be a dick about it. I don’t care what you are. Just don’t try and make me it.

But it goes beyond that – I’ve had so many experiences with these people trying to shove their food agenda down my throat. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been to family parties and been forced to eat a side of peas only, simply because everything else contained red meat, and the family member made it a point of informing me that they had no respect for the fact that red meat makes me sick to my stomach. Once they told me I should just suffer through it. Another person in recent memory is one of my husband’s friends, who is basically one of those vegetarians that also doesn’t believe in wasting food. So he dumpster dives. If you want to pick food out of raw garbage and eat it, that’s your choice; but you go too far when you pull bread out of a trash can and try to bully me into eating it.

Shut the Fuck Up Burger wants to say something to you “I’m a …arian”s:

Food Conspiracists

These people really roast my ass. What got me started on this little Food Nazi bit this morning was an article I read about how unhealthy fat-free milk is. I drink about three glasses of fat-free milk a day, which is the recommended amount for prevention of osteoporosis (runs in my family), so I obviously clicked to read it when a friend posted it on Facebook. I was then confronted with a stream of bullshit, misinformation, and blatantly false claims. The author actually had the balls to suggest – in more than one place of the article – that saturated fats and cholesterol do not contribute to heart disease. Fucking absurd.

If you don’t want to eat genetically modified foods, fine. Don’t tell third-world children that they have to go without their genetically modified rice though, because if they do they will probably die of rickets. If you believe that all-fats are better than no fats, great. Don’t tell people that may have a different health situation that they’re going to perish prematurely, for reasons you cannot even justify with science. If you want to live a no-fats lifestyle, good for you! But shut your big fucking, whorish mouth when others choose to go with something that may turn into “fat, fat, and more fat ass.” If you want to go all-organic and local, cool. Don’t tell people that haven’t the money for healthier, local and organic options though that they’re wrong or going to die of some pesticide-related illness for just buying what they can to survive. Instead of forcing your uneducated beliefs on others, why not promote better education and independent research, since that is where the real problem lies?

For myself, I believe in eating a moderation of anything. I don’t believe in subscribing to sensationalized conspiracy theories that have absolutely no basis in science or fact. Sometimes I buy organic. Other times I buy processed (Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, duh!). I always buy organic meats. I will never stop buying (genetically modified) on the vine tomatoes, because they’re the fucking best.

Shut the Fuck Up Burger wants to join me in saying something to these cracked out, uneducated Food Conspiracists:

People That Get Sexual With Their Food

I love kale. That said, kale shakes taste like barf to me. Kale chips taste like I’m licking grass outside the innards of my husband’s rotting asshole. Same goes for a host of other things: brussel sprouts, wheat grass, onions, asiago cheese, etc.

Something that annoys me to no end is when people go on and on about how much they love [insert random food that tastes like puke on a platter to me]. If you really love it, fine. But stop spitting in the face of the rest of the universe that may think it tastes like a pile of puke. Everyone has different tastes; and what is with our obsession with talking about our food now, anyway? Is this what our lives really center around? The other day, one of my friends posted a Facebook status “if asiago cheese were a person, I’d marry it and have a bunch of cheese babies.” That’s funny, because the last time I tried asiago cheese I actually vomited from the taste, which your fucking Facebook status just reminded me of.

My favorite foods come in a variety. I love carrots, bananas, and dried peas. I eat edamame like a pig, licking the salt off my fingers and groaning and shit. I would die if I couldn’t eat asparagus at least twice a week. Ham sandwiches hit the spot, and (of course) my favorite dinner is either soba or a taco with rice and salsa (goddamn, do I love the salsa). I also like pretzels and string cheese, and have absolutely no self control when it comes to onion dip. But you don’t see me posting on Facebook and Twitter, or talking on the phone and shit, about how much I wish my food choices were a person so I could dry hump them to next Tuesday.

I get it. We have reached an age when we are having sensuous love affairs with our food. Tons of people get all horny over their food, and their appropriately seasoned dishes – I see it all the time.

To them: please stop. It makes me want to puke sometimes and never eat another thing again. Shut the Fuck Up Burger has just enough strength to muster up one more thing to say … and he wants to finish this edition of Shut the Fuck Up Fridays with something for you guys:

Hello my name is … and I will be giving you bad service today.

June 11, 2011 — Leave a comment

This is Jacques.  He is your stereotypical rude, French waiter.  He is the thing people think of when they hear about France.  “No I will never go to France, the waiters are rude,” my father always used to say.  The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, an history and culture completely unlike our own – but a rude waiter?  That is the deal breaker.  No France!

Here is the irony, though.  The irony is that the waiters in France are not actually rude.  Nor are the ones in Italy, or most of the European countries.  Same goes for Asia.  I have had many friends go on vacation to different parts of Asia, only to come back and report that the service in the restaurants was horrible.  “They didn’t even spell their name upside down with a crayon on the paper table cloth!”  But what my father, my friends, and the hoards of people that have created the stereotype of the bad table service in other countries have done is overlook something  quite obvious:  cultural differences.

America seems to be a wholly unique culture in the sense of the dining experience.  At some point, Americans grew to expect things like pithy introductions and witty banter in between entries (in France, this would be considered invading the customer’s personal space).  At some point, Americans thought that it was standard practice for your waiter to sit down at the table with you when they took your order, leaning in just close enough to smell the beer that had been downed on lunch break in an effort to deal with such a miserable job (in Japan, this is unheard of).  Somewhere along the line, Americans decided that it was a necessity to tip, and tip well (in China it is an insult).  And in the most ultimate of idiosyncratic American eating out expectations, somehow we decided we wanted to be treated as though – even though we have just met – a true friendship is being formed between waiter and waited (in Italy this would be grounds for termination).  Nowhere but here do customers expect such an explicit show of affection between strangers that happen to intersect long enough for a grilled cheese sandwich and a Diet Coke.

The caveat, though, is this:  while I do not necessarily care (or even want) to be treated like my waiter or waitress is my best friend when I order my salad; and I most certainly could do without the invasion of my personal space when taking my order, if an employee of a restaurant I am eating at knows that this type of behavior is expected of them and does not do it, I take pause.  Okay, that’s not really true – I don’t take pause if there is just an absence of those annoying and uniquely American dinner-time behaviors.  When I do take pause, though, is when I get the face that Jacques up there is making.  “You don’t want pinto beans on your salad because you are allergic?!” “NO MEAT?!” “Wait, so all you want to drink is water?”  I have gotten that face – that I’m-so-above-you-and-your-annoying-order-and-while-I’m-at-it-you-had-better-be-grateful-that-I-did-you-the-favor-of-allowing-you-to-eat-in-this-establishment-despite-the-fact-that-I-have-single-handedly-chased-away-all-of-the-other-customers-and-we-need-your-$15.40-bill-to-stay-open face (whew-that was a long one).  Since I hate cooking and find myself cooped up in the house all day, every day, we eat out a lot.  On average I get this face once every third or fourth time.  And, in fact, I got it tonight when I said that I was allergic to pinto beans, so please keep them off my salad.

Lesson of the day for those of you in food service out there:  while Americans most certainly need to get their heads out of their asses and stop expecting you to replace them (their heads) with your lips, you also don’t need to give them fodder to create a true stereotype of the rude American waiters like they have created for those poor other countries who just want to do their jobs like everyone else.