Vergeuden - To Squander

It’s far too easy to squander what you have before you realise how lucky you really were to have it in the first place. While this is true of most of life’s supposed key constituents - love, money and respect to name a few - such topics are far too serious to form the central theme for this, theoretically a humorous and light-hearted piece. So instead, I’ll tackle something far closer to people’s hearts: their hearts. In a country where now, as in the USA, over a third of the population is overweight, individuals squander their health like there’s no tomorrow. And for many there won’t be. We all know the main causes, namely over-eating, too much cheap, fatty food, not enough exercise and so on - they’ve been hammered into us a million times by patronising government officials and annoying TV chefs - but the right people aren’t taking note and as a result we‘re fatter than ever. If our leaders really want to lessen the NHS burden all the blobbies cause, they should start offering obese people physical and monetary rewards for losing weight. Lose a stone, you get a comically apt DVD - Big Momma‘s House or The Nutty Professor would do. Lose another, you get some sort of small electronic device that, as an incentive to keep shedding the pounds, chubby fingers have difficulty operating. Lose five stones and you win a small crystal statuette of Scottish snooker legend Steven Hendry. A ten stone loss and you actually get to meet Steven Hendry. Of course, this ought to work both ways and a penalty should be enforced on those who gain weight. Gain a stone and you get a finger broken. Put on another and you’re thrown into a ring of playground bullies all taunting you with offensive anti-fat chants. Gain five stones and you’ll be forced to take a small crystal statuette of English snooker legend Steve Davis. A ten stone gain and you’ll actually have to meet and hang out with Steve Davis. If that doesn’t begin to sort out our nation’s health problems, I’ll eat my hat. Which incidentally has next to no sugars or trans-fats, or in fact anything except cotton, and the blood, sweat and tears of those hard-working children somewhere in South-East Asia.