Conclusions

“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.”

Sylvia Plath

Thursday

The school year is done.

Shell has another day. Leadership stuff.

Wednesday was the last day for students.

We had a party at lunch and I witnessed and impressive display of consumption.

Bad food in excess spread over morning tea and lunch.

One student completed a staggering amount.

By my count, over the two gorgings, seven large doughnuts, eight slices of pizza, two bags of chips and at least two cupcakes.

As I walked past her plate, with all the empty pizza crusts, one doughnut in her hand half eaten and a pile of four more on her plate;

‘that is a ridiculous amount of food, you can’t possibly eat that much’

At which point I was reprimanded by another teacher for my insensitivity.

“And he, like many jaded people, had few pleasures left in life save good food and drink.”

Honoré de Balzac

I stepped back and allowed her to try the gentle approach.

In the end, the student devoured the remaining doughnuts, and despite the gentle persuasion returned for not one, but two bags of chips.

I appreciate my approach was insensitive, and my next step was to simply take the food away from the girl, but I am not sure if the potential emotional damage of my callous comments is more or less damaging than the sensitive technique that produced her excessive eating.

Of course, it is not her fault… or so I am told.

“Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest.”

Michael Pollan

A few weeks ago I reached my goal weight of under 100kg. Not a bad effort over 4 months coming down from 107kg.

Today I am 98.5kg give or take.

I look forward to undoing all this work over the next month.

Tomorrow we head for Budapest, and I plan to eat and drink my way through the continent.

The hypocrisy of me lecturing a ten year old about their eating is not lost on me.

“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.”

Noam Chomsky