I always feel the need to shower after eating KFC. After pulling away from what appears to be a bullet-proof drive-thru window, I continue the rest of the way to the writing lab with my newborn one-piece chicken breast meal, snug as a bug in the passenger seat beside me. Against my better judgment, I decided on the quick fix of a meal that only a fast food restaurant could offer. What better, I thought, on one of my days off from calorie-counting, and when a long night of studying has rendered me too exhausted for grocery shopping, to go pick myself up a nice piece of fried chicken before work. I have earned it. Only, I haven’t. When has anyone really earned the right to intoxicate her body with the hormone-ridden remnants of a baby chicken and a chalky lukewarm biscuit with an accompaniment of suspiciously titled condiments which evoke the word “truthiness”: Honey Sauce. Buttery Spread. They send a message which is slightly disturbing, a message which says: “Honey—but not quite!” As I eat the meal in the quiet rightness of my workspace, I am surprised by a penetrating anxiety. Where to look? There is no T.V. to distract me. I feel certain that I will find something distasteful lurking in my styrofoam KFC tray if I pay it too much attention: a cockroach burrowing headfirst into my mashed potatoes, a hair stretched out languidly beneath the fried breast. I call to memory the nausea-inducing pictures of a whole chicken head, deep fried and found in the McDonald’s Happy Meal of some unsuspecting six-year-old. KFC may not exactly be McDonald’s, but still—how am I eating this? Why am I eating this?
As much as I love our heroine Bridget Jones, I do not want to be her. I was acutely aware of this reality, standing on a scale nearly three years ago after returning from a family wedding. I had had a recent epiphany about how fat Americans in general were and how we ate like 5,000 more calories daily than we actually needed, and we were killing ourselves with processed foods and refined sugars. I was on a mission for nutrition and armed with cardboard food. Nutrition, I thought, is a key to spiritual and bodily harmony! Right, check. Easier said than done. I worked during the peak of this gung-ho mentality as an Outback Steakhouse hostess, staring down and consequently lusting after horribly fattening foods for six and seven hours at a time, so let’s just be honest: When I wasn’t salivating on the host stand or getting hot flashes from ridiculous ‘entitled’ customers who felt they were being personally snubbed by John Outback Jr. himself because they had to go around to the side door (which they always called “the back door” in the most pejorative way) if they refused to pay the five dollar membership fee required in dry counties, I was sending angsty text messages to omeone about my real food fantasies.
For example: “Brittney. All I want are some damned cheese fries drenched in melty cheese/grease and bacon or a chocolate tower cake with raspberry, for the love of God. Can a woman find no relief from Kashi hell!” I finally caved by allowing myself to ‘vacation’ from small portions and healthy food while at the lake for a couple of days with some girlfriends. After all, I had earned it. Unfortunately for me, this meant eating my body weight in junk foods in a sort of panic for forty-eight hours straight. It was like watching that episode of Baywatch on repeat (you know, that one where one of the chicks spins into a crazy bulimic-girl binge frenzy and overdoses on food)—only I didn’t do myself the favor of throwing up afterwards. Needless to say, I spent the majority of the trip in a state of health equilibrium funk and general discomfort. So, much like a cheating husband, I realized the error of my ways, and how eating whatever I want whenever I want will not bring me fulfillment, and got back on the healthy eating track when I got home. The only bad thing was that I stayed at home approximately two days before leaving on another trip with the fam for a wedding in Ft. Smith. This, in my mind, again pardoned me from normal healthy eating. Free booze, free sausage balls, uncomfortably attractive third cousins whom I rarely see and thus have no cousinly feelings towards, and chocolate dipped strawberries made for a comically depressing reception of Arkansan lethargic debauchery. (I like to joke that my life is like a B grade indie film, but then I think I’d be giving myself too much credit.) Fast forward through giant Sunrise Sampler breakfast at Cracker Barrel and to stepping on the scale. WHAT? I had gained six pounds in a matter of days. Deep breath, this is cake. Wait, no, bad, this is simple. Get back on track, and you’ll be fine. Fast forward again three years later and I still haven’t learned my lesson. My descent into Col. Sanders’ dark, dark world had all the subtleties of date rape and all the empty promises of a one night stand with a fifth of Jaeger as the lone bond between you. But sometimes being bad looks so good. Some people’s propensity for using KFC meals as comfort food to ease broken hearts or discontenting career paths or just general exhaustion seems so delicious and carefree. They sit there, watching Flavor of Love reruns, laughing, having a jolly old time, just eating their KFC and not worrying about calories or carcinogens. And it makes me think: Yes, yes. This is what I want. But, after all is said and done, I only feel…greasy. Normative tension appears to be not uncommon among KFCers. A quick Google search reveals that I am not the only one with chicken fetus on the brain. “I have heard that KFC burger patties are made of baby chickens!” writes one disgruntled message boarder. “Is this true? Apparently they crush everything including the chicklets legs, etc. I need closure on this as I want to get [KFC] food to eat soon.” “Chicklets” may not be a word, but it somehow encapsulates wholly the image of just the kind of poultry I imagine KFC slaughters. “Help Baby Chicks by Boycotting KFC” a petakids.com headline reads. The article notes that with spring just around the corner, loads of new fuzzy chicks will be hatching soon, ready to take on the world. “Although we like to think that these chicks are destined to a life full of happiness and sweetness,” this is merely a pipedream, says petakids.com. The article goes on to explain to the PETA kids that, in fact, tons of baby chicks will be slaughtered in such horrific ways that it would likely give them nightmares, were they to tell them. 850 million chicklets, to be precise. Petakids.com then provides the most heart-crumblingly adorable picture of a couple of chicks staring curiously at one another. They look like two Marshmallow Peeps straight out of the package. Don’t get me wrong, I have few moral qualms with eating meat. I am sufficiently convinced that human life is fundamentally more valuable than that of animals (apologies, Skinny Bitch). It’s just that unpredictable gut-reaction of repulsion at the thought of eating anything baby that sometimes gets in the way. (This coming from the girl who likes her steak bloody.)
Evidently, not everyone shares my gastrointestinal biases . A.J. Daulerio shares his sentiments on blacktable.com, writing: “Bottom line is, it doesn’t matter. KFC could smash their chickens’ beaks with aluminum baseball bats, cut off their heads with scissors and set their wings on fire, or just run an assembly line of screaming baby chickens through a grist mill, I will eat KFC until my arteries break off like old twigs from cholesterol consumption.” Delicate. Even with some opinions capable of making PETA advocates’ hair stand on end, couldn’t there at least exist a more unified voice of concern with issues that directly affect the health of the consumers themselves? After all, the health woes of mass produced fried chicken is no large mystery: antibiotics and hormones probably harmful to humans, and loads of trans fats definitely harmful to humans. But it would appear that consumers everywhere are answering back to my question and the cries of health experts and common sense with a hardy, “Not in America!” With the obesity rate at an all time high (30.5%), it looks like KFC isn’t going anywhere anytime soon—especially not away from the U.S. of A. It goes deeper than deep fried chicken flesh. Our need to self-destruct, over indulge, and eat our feelings is such a clichéd dilemma that I feel silly writing an article that shares a theme with so many episodes of Oprah. But I’m not really even talking about food. It’s the disconnect so many of us experience when we are putting things (various things, and not all edible) inside of our bodies that is indicative of a fundamental problem with…American culture, the world, human nature… just to name a few. It’s the residual need to get black-out drunk, the food-induced comatose state, the self-deprecating mantras, the indiscriminate sex. Whether or not you enjoy an occasional piece of fried chicken is neither here nor there.
Sources:
http://healthlink.mcw.edu/article/1031002183.html
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread. php?t=137426
http://www.petakids.com/boycottKFC.asp
http://www.blacktable.com/blacklist031021.htm
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