‘ This week and the weeks preceding it have been wrought with scientific findings and government taxes zeroing in on the dangers of some of young America’s favorite guilty pleasures such as soda, candy and energy drinks. And in the midst of this most depressing of economic depressions, the irony of comfort foods being demonized runs as deep as the espresso drinks soaking into the stomach linings of college students everywhere, who are left wondering what’s next on the list to be scowled upon by the higher-ups. Pillows? Cheese? Ringtones?
But these are warnings that should be heeded, heralded by people who know better. For example, 50 years ago when the entire world smoked cigarettes and looked fantastic doing it, no one had any inkling of the carcinogenic havoc those little guys would wreak on each of their respective lungs. Now, that generation of tracheotomized know-betterers is keeping an eye out for its younger prot’eacute;g’eacute;s, by writing off anything that is isn’t borne of tree or svelte animal, and some things that are.
But what some may call a massive overcompensation for the overconsumption of the baby boomer generation ‘- a moral desire to take some responsibility for, say, slicing a HoHo-sized hole in the Ozone layer, decimating any chance at healthy foreign policy and, yes, dramatically increasing the average waistline of the average American by the time they all turned 45 ‘- smart young Americans see as a maternal step in the right direction. After all, if they don’t tell their children not to drink coffee because it’ll unequivocally disrupt first heart rhythm, then sleeping rhythm and then the social rhythm of the entire human race, who will? And if the government doesn’t impose a tax on Mountain Dew and Pepsi to slap the chubby wrists that reach for bottles of it in gas stations nationwide every day, who will? Actual mothers? Those same mothers who haplessly fed their infants breast milk? Hasn’t anyone seen the study that links breast milk regimens to the development of brains capable of independent thought?
Frankly, there are dangers lurking around every corner. The difference between the college-aged Americans who harbor nasty affinities and their elders who form legislation and scientific studies based upon them is that the latter has the life experience to predict those affinities’ likelihoods to evolve into life-threatening dangers, while the former do not. Younger Americans should wipe the carbonated, chocolate-enrobed wool from their over caffeinated eyes and realize the service being done for them by their grandparents in the government and in the research labs ‘- these are the people who have paranoia down to a science, and they’ve been doing the overindulged, overweight and over-stimulated thing for a lot longer than the millennial generation has. But please, don’t let the fear get to you too much ‘- it’ll keep you up at night, and getting any less than eight hours of sleep nightly can kill you. ‘ ‘ ‘
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