Marketwatch has an interesting article, entitled 'This recession looks fat on you', subtitled 'Busting wallets and bursting waistlines'

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which reports that many of us are opting for "more affordable grab-and-go alternatives like chips, cookies, candy and now snack wraps and mini-burgers in between meals and often in lieu of a meal,"

Mintel, the market research firm, is tracking double-digit sales gains for salty snacks as well as popcorn and cheese snacks this year. Potato chip sales are up 22% this year compared with 2007 while tortilla chips sales are rising 18%.

"Snacks are less and less the hunger-soothing bridge between formal meals," said Kimberly Egan, chief executive of the Center for Culinary Development. "They have become valuable gastronomical events in their own right."

more and more consumers are eating at home. But here's the catch: Most are not actually making anything. They're microwaving frozen pizza or mixing pancake batter with water. They're bringing home fast food and serving it in pretty dishes as a meal. "Approximately 20% of all meals prepared in our homes from 1990 to 2007 involved the use of a microwave -- until last year when usage rose 10%," Mr. Balzer says. The time someone who cooked did so by slaving over the stove plunged to 33% this year compared with 53% in 1985.

Not surprising then are the rising rates of obesity and diabetes. The obesity rate climbed more than one percentage point to 26.4% in year-over-year comparisons in September, according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.

Diabetes rates climbed in tandem, up to 11.3% of American adults. That's about 26 million Americans. More disturbing, however, is the pattern. If the current trend continues, a whopping 15% of American adults -- or more than 37 million -- will be living with diabetes by the end of 2015, according to Gallup.

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My reaction to all this is, what are these Americans thinking? Is this any way to win a class war? Give yourself diabetes just as the government forces you to pay for your own private health insurance. (For when individuals are mandated to buy insurance, what is to prevent companies from stopping to provide their employees that insurance?).

When I was poor as a young man (brown) rice and beans were my staples, and it was nutritious and not very fattening. That is what much of the poor third world has lived on since the dawn of civilization. But the frankenfoods Americans heat up in their microwave ovens or grab and gobble right off the store racks are both disgusting and deleterious to health. As George Carlin would have said, 'Not too bright, folks'.

I think that much too much is made of the harm inherent in freezing food and then heating or even cooking it in a microwave. I don't think either is particularly destructive as compared to storing at above freezing temperatures and then boiling, broiling, baking, etc. the same food. I think there is more of a hint of nostalgia creeping in to the advice on what to avoid. The average diet TV dinner has about 240 to 350 total calories and not an undue percentage of either fat or sugar. Certainly, they are not usually very heavy on salt. What they aren't is terribly satisfying. That said, it is certainly possible to avoid weight gain with a diet heavy on the diet TV dinners - one per meal, three meals a day, though. Actually, there is little available in the way of diet breakfasts, but reasonably healthy cereals abound.

I don't think there's anything wrong with frozen meat, fish, or vegetables, and even TV dinners probably aren't that bad. However, they are mostly empty calories, and the article's main thrust was that Americans are pigging out on sweet, salty, and fat carbohydrate-based snacks. Cheeze Doritos, cheeseburgers, chocolates, candy...That doesn't seem like the clientele for diet TV dinners.

Unmentioned is that during scary economic times there is probably an instinctual urge to bulk up. If so, we Americans have been in crisis mode most of this decade.

People are not only strapped (a word the article uses to describe the financial problems people are having), they are also stressed. And there have been plenty of studies that show that when people are feeling very stressed out, they tend to turn to exactly those kind of 'comfort' foods that are unhealthy for them: chocolates, snacks, potato chips, and triple cheeseburgers with bacon.

I've been known to go on an occasional chocolate binge, myself. But then I'll go months without eating any chocolate. Perhaps my level of stress has something to do with it. I've never really stopped to think about it before. But, then, I am at most ten pounds overweight. If I lost fifteen pounds, I would be very slim.

One man's comfort food is another man's garbage. You know what an example of 'comfort food' to me might be? A bowl of split pea or minestrone soup...slowly simmering. These Americans are just grabbing and gobbling what's readily available. It's just fast calories. Unfortunately, fast calories are the least healthful calories. Then they sock it full of flavor enhancers, salt, fat, and sugar. It's partly culturally determined, but mostly just modern capitalism which gets the people to associate this food with comfort. When you stop to consider the long term effects on health, there's nothing comforting about this food.

Think I'll go home and fix some split pea soup! That sounds real good, and I haven't had that in a long time. Of course, I'll just open up a can of Campbell's Chunky Split Pea Soup, which is probably classifiable as 'garbage' by you and Sovereign. I just don't have the TIME to get all the ingredients and fix it from scratch. Love minestrone, too. I sometimes get minestrone soup instead of salad when I dine at the Olive Garden....which, again, is likely 'low-brow' Italian cuisine to the gourmets out there. [There is a teacher at this school who fancies himself a gourmet chef----but I have sampled his Italian 'cuisine', and can only say that I greatly prefer the Olive Garden.]

It is a rare occasion, and only on weekends, when I can find the time to whip up some good meal from scratch. I like doing that, but my 100-hour work week just doesn't leave time for the 'good things' in life. I do avoid most of the obvious junk foods. E.g., even when I do eat potato chips, it is the baked variety, which I think are quite a bit healthier than the deep-fried potato chips, which are still what most people buy. I tend to find those just kind of 'gross', nowadays---they are far too greasy.

I'm not familiar with Campbell's split pea soup, but my father, an ex-marine and no master of culinary arts, used to make it. You get some dry split peas, which are probably less than a dollar a pound, rinse them in water, put 'em in a pot with water and some cut up carrots and onions, and maybe a little bit of garlic, and simmer for a couple hours. They could be simmering away while you are grading your homework, and you'd have something to look forward to. All you'd need to do is get up every ten minutes or so and stir the pot to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom. Either than or use a pressure cooker. Basic cooking really isn't than much of a chore, and just think how much soup you get from a dollar!

I never got with baked potato chips; I think the oil contributes to the flavor. Agree that most chips are too greasy (and salty). I feel lousy after eating them, as I invarianbly eat too many. So as with chocolate, that's become a couple times a year indulgence.

When I was a Boy Scout summering at Philmont Scout Ranch (Leroy probably knows the place, near Cimmaron south of Raton Pass) the "Trail Boss" assigned to us taught me how to make coffee without a coffee pot: you make eggs first, breaking the shells carefully to get two nicely domed halves, and put the water and coffee in a pot and boil them for a while. Then you put the egg shells in the pot and stir. You remove the shells with the broken edge up (I think he used that handy tool that is used to cut, staple, and remove barbed wire) and, magically, the coffee (most of it any way) is in the egg shells. Armed with that knowledge of the way God must have wanted us to make coffee, I have always had an electric coffee maker and am reasonably pleased with the results - and I don't have to eat more eggs than I understand is good for me.