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Blame culture UK

13:28 / 28.09.04

Just posting my current favorite rant of the day. It seems that the PC police have been having a go at the most sacred of foodstuffs chocolate. How dare they!!! i hear you scream and yes i know it is evil. So here is the latest idea...

Removing King Size chocolate bars from sale because they cause obesity!!!

Arrgh! NO!!! What is happening to this country of mine. So here is how i see it.

1) If people want to eat a large amount of chocolate in one go and they can't purchase a 'king size' bar they will not be foiled. I know what i would do - buy two bars and eat them both in one go.

2) We can't go down the route of blaming a faceless corporation for our own lack of self control. (if i go into a McDonalds etc i have the willpower not to order the XXXL meal but just a good old fashioned standard meal)

3) ITS ALL ABOUT MODERATION. Now i like sugar and fatty foods but i dont eat them all the time and i don't sit on my arse all day and i have no problem keeping my weight at 10 1/2 st.

So one last time i'm pleading to the universal mind we can't go down the route of blaming a faceless corporation for our own lack of self control. Its not health for the psyche.

PS. Apologies to anyone who suffers from obesity in a clinical manner (some of this rant is not aimed at you)

Thank you for listening and have a pleasant evening

13:32 / 28.09.04

Dude it's bad enough reading Littlejohn in the paper but on Barbelith?

What's going on??

13:36 / 28.09.04

I don't really understand what this has to do with 'PC police', whoever they may be, but as I understood it the company making these bars was voluntarily removing them from sale, presumably because they cause embarrassing bad publicity... you can still buy large bars of chocolate (including, as you point out, two bars to eat in one go) so I'm not really sure why you're agitated about this. If you're really bothered write to the company and complain.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:45 / 28.09.04

Indeed. Surely it would only show the dread hand of the PC Police if they had been renamed "Monarch-sized" or "Undeserving hereditary oppressor-sized"...

That would indeed be political correctness gone absolutely corn-nut ballbag mad. But it hasn't happened. What you see here is good old-fashioned capitalism, in this case PR and marketing.

13:50 / 28.09.04

What's going on??

I blame the parents.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:54 / 28.09.04

Dear sjhrbr,

I am unfamiliar with the term "PC police". Could you please explain to me what it means?

Thanks,

Arms House (Arms House)

14:00 / 28.09.04

1) If people want to eat a large amount of chocolate in one go and they can't purchase a 'king size' bar they will not be foiled. I know what i would do - buy two bars and eat them both in one go.

Actually, this doesn't happen. Study after study after study confirms that larger portion sizes means people eat more. This is the whole logic behind supersizing.

14:08 / 28.09.04

See, I'm thinking that maybe we've been misled all this time and PC Police is actually one single member of the constabulary.

Little Johnny Police's eventual choice of career was inevitable, if a little unimaginative. His extreme left-wing actions - trampling over our basic human rights by forcing us to eat genetically modified straight bananas, making the use of the word 'black' illegal, preventing parents from giving their kids a well-deserved kick in the mouth when they won't stop crying, and so on - are the result of much schoolyard teasing over his name.

Tryphena Absent

14:13 / 28.09.04

Better to have three chocolate bars anyway. King size bars never taste as good.

14:17 / 28.09.04

Actually, this doesn't happen. Study after study after study confirms that larger portion sizes means people eat more. This is the whole logic behind supersizing.

Of course, because they still only have the guilt of buying and eating ONE stinking candybar.

Yet, it still costs more than the regs.

Win/Win ?

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:28 / 28.09.04

I know it's rotten and wrong of me, but I really want to know how tall sjhrbr is now. I have this vision of a 3ft-high, 10.5 stone man waving a wobbly fist...

Tryphena Absent

14:39 / 28.09.04

Also this sounds like an opportunity to get rid of a product that doesn't sell that well in the UK. I mean, does anyone else get this slight feeling that king size bars are a bit... lame? Why would we need more than one size of chocolate bar when shops could stock a larger variety without? And what a good excuse obesity would be- no shame for the company, a good, respectable image. If I wanted to get rid of a small seller I'd use obesity to cover sales figures.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:21 / 28.09.04

There was a particularly offensive piece about this in the Mirror the other day, which said something along the lines of "to burn off the calories from a King Size Mars Bar you'd have to do three-and-a-half hours of IRONING."

17:32 / 28.09.04

According to Is it veggie?, king size twix isn't vegetarian, where as twin size and tea-break size are. Getting rid of king size twix could possibly make the question of whether twix is vegetarian or not easier.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:34 / 28.09.04

Surely the logical way to make Twix bigger would be to just bung another stick in... Thrix, maybe?
I didn't know the big one wasn't veggie... thanks for the info.

ONLY NICE THINGS

17:39 / 28.09.04

Hang on - so they make Twix bigger by injecting it with *mince*.

See, that's just *wrong*.

17:42 / 28.09.04

To burn off the calories from a King Size Mars Bar you'd have to do three-and-a-half hours of IRONING.

Why did I visualise someone ironing a Mars Bar? And then licking the chocolate and malty fondant covered iron? And then being admitted to a burns ward, murmuring 'Ith wath worth it!'

18:53 / 28.09.04

I thought it was three-and-a-half hours of irony.

19:06 / 28.09.04

Mmmm. The ironing is delicious...

15:28 / 29.09.04

Hang on - so they make Twix bigger by injecting it with *mince*.

See, that's just *wrong*.

How can you say that's wrong? That's *brilliant*. I look forward to the Bacon Topic.

15:43 / 29.09.04

Y'see, I would fully support this decision, if it wasn't for the fact that, before getting rid of the king-size Mars Bar, they hadn't already made the normal size Mars Bar smaller.

That pisses me off.

16:16 / 29.09.04

A king size Mars is too big, anyway. A normal one is just large enough so that by the end of it, you're thinking "if there was any more of this I'd feel sick, but there isn't, phew". And you're okay.

You get near the end of a king size Mars and you're thinking "all this caramel's getting a bit much" (and remember - lower surface area to volume ratio means more caramel, less chocolate) and you realise that there's still an inch left. So you chew onwards and finish off the last bit, because it would be bad not to, right? think of all the starving children in Africa, and it feels like you've coated your insides with syrup and lard, like when you ate a whole box of Miniature Heroes at Easter. You've spoilt any happiness you might have got from a smaller Mars, just because you were a greedy pig.

And you've got CJD to worry about too.

21:05 / 29.09.04

Of all the sinister, erosive aspects of blame culture one could broach, I think the withdrawal of supersized Mars bars is perhaps one of the least odious.