Vae -- New Year's Resolutions

[sythyry]

The translator tells me that it is just past First Day this year in your world, and that each First Day is the day to make resolutions, and today is the day to break them.  And what resolution that you made on First Day will you break first?  And how do you prefer to break them -- use you hammers, or with a celebration as of the throwing off of shackles, or with a furtive and a sneaky air, or some other way?

Comments

[foomf.livejournal.com]

It's complicated.

In the past, in an arid and hot part of one of our countries, there was a tradition of making homes and churches using baked or dried bricks of mud and straw, that would be painted over with a different mud (stucco). There was a particular architecture to these. A bell cast from iron (not as hard to come by in our world) was often hung from a steeple atop a chapel or shrine, not only in the churches but in the ranches, where workers could hear the bell and come in for their meals.

The Taco is a particular snack originally made with a kind of coarse corn flour cooked on a flat heated stone, folded around ground seasoned meat mixed with crisp leafy vegetable and sometimes cheese.

The name Taco Bell comes from the bell, and from the Taco, by the following curious and bizarre thing.

When I was a young monster, there was a surge in businesses that took a particular regional cuisine, created a standard, easily mass-fabricated version, gave it a clever name, and rented the right to use a the recipes, name, and marketing for the business. To make sure they got things "right" they would have to buy the food supplies from the owner (franchiser) of the name, and train their workers with the franchiser's trainers.

This resulted in a great deal of reliable but uncreative food outlets, and has had both good and bad effects. The food created and sold through these venues can be just as nutritious and beneficial as any other food, but they set people to testing what foods people would buy more of, and this resulted in an increase in the amounts of sugar and fat, at the expense of protein and other beneficial food components. It's possible to buy meals containing four to five times the amount of food energy that one person needs, but in one serving.

People who eat this way tend to become fat and unhealthy, due to a complicated feedback mechanism in our bodies.
As a result, we end up with a concept that all of these places (which produce food quickly, hence "fast food") are terribly unhealthy places to eat.

Actually Taco Bell, if one avoids their more bizarre recipes and focuses on their simpler fare, is one of the healthiest of such places to eat. But their more indulgent recipes are very tasty and very tempting, hence the Blue Fox being cautious.