But not for what you think you should be ashamed for.
”I’ve struggled with weight all my life, and probably always will. But I was on my most recent book tour I was shocked by the number of overweight families,” he says. “People would come up to me and say, ‘Oh, we love the Food Network.’ Well, no (expletive); did you eat the TV? There’s only four of you and you can’t ride in an elevator together. I’ll probably make fat people angry, but we need, as a culture, to be ashamed. It’s not “… healthy.” http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/09/10/food-star-alton-brown-talks-sustainability/
You’ll probably make fat people angry? To quote you verbatim: Well, no shit!
You make your money by selling FOOD to people, fat and skinny alike. You don’t care who pays for your books or watches your TV programs because it adds to your fortune, a fortune people like me, FAT people like me, are contributing to. And then you have the audacity to say in an interview, “Did you eat the TV?”
You HYPOCRITE! You have the unmitigated gall to verbally humiliate fat people, the people who pay your salary, both directly and indirectly?
You don’t like yourself when you are fat? Fine. Do something about it. But to make your money on people like me and then to publically ridicule us?
Yeah, your bosses will be getting a letter from me. And hopefully, from a LOT of fat people. This isn’t the first time you’ve talked smack about fat people. At least the other time you seemed to be polite about it (from what I heard, not having seen the interview itself, I can’t attest to that from first hand knowledge). But now?
You are on my shit list. And no, the expletive isn’t deleted.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Food, outrage
I agree with you that it is very offensive, but, in reality, if he’s all nice and everything people might just not even realize what he was saying. Let’s compare this to Simon Cowell. Simon is painfully truthful, as this comment made by Alton Brown was. On American Idol, usually the comments Simon makes really lets people know if they are good singers or not, and most of the time they listen. Alton wants these “obese” people to know that they really do need to start eating healthier. Being overweight is just not healthy. Although I do think that his rude remark was uncalled for and shoul have been kept to himself.
This is not truthful. Saying, “Did you eat the TV” is just downright hurtful, and continues a belief in stereotypes that are not true.
The fact that Alton Brown is a marketer of the concept of food, that he’s making very good money off of the people he obviously dispises, makes it so much worse in my opinion.
First of all, “obese” people do not all stuff their faces and eat donuts and McDonald’s all day every day. With as much marketing as is directed at us to tell us how bad we are for being fat, do you really think there is a fat person in the world who doesn’t know what society thinks is “healthy” eating?
And being overweight is no less healthy than being skinny. There’s a notebook I have that illistrates the point: on the cover it has one of those “happy bunnies” (the type you see in places like Hot Topic) in a sweat soaked wifebeater, with a sweatband on it’s head, and a puddle of sweat under it. The caption reads: Exersize hard. Eat right. Die anyways.
The truth is, we are all going to die. The so-called “fat” diseases don’t affect only fat people. Diabetes, cancer, hypertension, heart attacks, strokes, high cholesterol, and more affect SKINNY/NORMAL weight people and fat people alike. Skinny/normal weight people die as often (and maybe more often if you believe some of the new studies coming out) from heart attacks and strokes as fat people do. So there goes the theory that being fat = being unhealthy.
For more information, I would direct you to the links on the sidebar, especially Junkfood Science. This is a blog run by a nurse, debunking most of the studies that come out by showing how they pull bait and switch tactics. She talks about how the so-called science that they (the studies) are feeding you are rigged, and she does it in a very scientific way.
And I would also direct you to Shapely Prose, especially this article: http://kateharding.net/but-dont-you-realize-fat-is-unhealthy/ She says much better than I about how fat=/=unhealthy.