Tibs Wilderness

As I made mention in my post yesterday, I went to Warrnambool with my father.

This trip involves what is a tradition with the McDonald family, that's right, we went to McDonalds (we don't have one in Portland). It's cheap, it's easy, it's effective.

So while waiting for the meal (see, it's a restaurant now, they deliver to you, but this is another rant) I noticed a kid exit the bathroom with his mother, she was holding antibacterial soap stuff and told him to hold out his hands. The kid had clearly wet hands, indicating he'd already washed them. This was before their meal.

Just my luck, that particular family sat next to me. Four kids and their mother. I was talking to my father about how all this antibacterial soap parents are forcing their kids to use will compromise their immune system which will lead to health problems in the future. I hoped I was talking just loud enough that she would overhear me. Clearly she didn't.

As they were about to leave, she made all four kids apply this soap stuff, and then told one off for touching a chair saying "you'll get germs", and had him wash his hands again. In her defence, touching a chair in a McDonalds restaurant will probably lead to a sickness of some kind to anyone who doesn't have a developed immune system, but still.

This kind of event is all to common in Australia. The current health boom is resulting in many things. Alcohol taxes (premixed drinks were in the case prices for a six pack, this worsened the problem, as it was now cheaper to buy the bottle of spirits and the soft-drink, leading to unmeasured drinks. Way to go genius'), cigarette taxes (americans pay five odd dollars, we pay upwards of eight for local brands and upwards of ten for imported for a standard pack of 20, at least in rural Australia) and a now proposed junk food tax (I'm so glad I didn't vote for this guy).

This is all after they force government schools to remove anything with sugar. This happened the year after I graduated (YES). If it had happened while I was in school, I wouldn't have been able to function. Without caffeinated sugar water of some kind, I'd fall asleep in class in no time. And this removal wasn't just from the canteens, kids actually aren't allowed to bring junk food to school (or anything that has nuts in it). The secondary college I went to, rebelled by instead adding a coffee machine (that does tea and hot chocolate) outside the year 7 locker room. That school was fantastic, it really was.

So we're sending our next generation backwards in the evolutionary scale, because we're wiping out their immune system, and we're making everything that makes life just that little bit fun incredibly expensive.

(You voted for Rudd, didn't you Jp? You too Crispy? Though I'm pretty sure Dark View voted for The Hulk.)