Everything that is wrong with America in Gummy Bear form

I love gummy bears.  I adore them.  They might even come close to being my favorite food.  I consider myself to be something of a gummy bear connoisseur.  (The best gummy bears, hands down, are Target's generic brand...in case you were wondering.)  Because of my diet, I don't really have the room in my calorie count to eat them...which is fine, honestly.  I can make sacrifices; that's a huge part of what I'm doing here.

Obviously gummy bears aren't the greatest for you, but America isn't the only country that has them.  In fact, Haribo, the first company to make gummy bears, originated near Bonn, Germany. (Oh hey, this is relevant to BOTH parts of my blog and I didn't even try. See? This is why I love gummy bears so much.) And since we're talking about it, I just remembered that I have a picture that is relevant to this post:

Me with actual German Haribo Gummy Bears.  

My older sister got them for me when she was an au pair in Germany.

Also, just FYI: The German word for gummy bear is "das Gummibärchen"

But back to the actual point...

You can eat just about anything, gummy bears included, in a reasonable and (sort of) healthy way.  If you eat ten gummy bears as a snack, you'll be fine.  If you eat an entire one pound package of gummy bears in one sitting?  Well...therein lies the problem.

I think it's very reasonable to say that most Americans (myself included, until recently) don't pay one ounce of attention to what they're putting in their bodies.  For instance, if you asked most Americans how many Pop-Tarts are in one serving, they wouldn't believe you when you told them that it's only one.  ("But they're packaged in twos!  Why would they package them together if it's one per serving?!" Yeah, don't ask me.  I don't get it either.)  That's why this is so disturbing to me:

I used the picture with the hands so that you can have something to compare the size to.

Here are the specs on this bad boy (taken directly from the website):

• Dimensions: 9.5" x 5.5" x 3.5"
• Equivalent to 1400 regular-size gummy bears
• Weighs approximately 5 pounds
• 6,120 calories! (My comment: Because this is definitely something we should be excited about!)
• Hand-made in the USA with domestic ingredients
• Gluten-free
• One year shelf life

That is approximately 183 cubic inches (about 3000 cubic centimeters for the metric system users who are reading this) of gummy-heart-attack-waiting-to-happen.  It's 51 servings.  I can easily see it happening, though - as soon as someone gets one of these, that person just digging in without paying attention to the fact that based on calories for the average person, it's the equivalent of a little more than three days' meals.  Obviously, next to no one is going to finish this thing in one sitting, but I doubt most of the people who are buying it will eat it over a reasonable amount of time.  (I consider reasonable to be a maximum of  one or two servings per day depending on the person - so eating the whole thing over the course of approximately one to two months at a minimum.)

I do have to admit that a lot of this is speaking from experience because before I decided to make these changes to my lifestyle, I would have ordered it and I probably would have finished it a lot more quickly than I would now find reasonable.  It's a little embarrassing to admit, but the important thing is that I wouldn't do it now.

There's this mindset in America that if it's bigger, it has to be better, which is clearly evidenced by this five pound gummy bear.  But it's the same across the board!  Whether it's portions of food or TVs or houses or...well, you get the picture.  But at some point, it has to stop.  Bigger isn't always better and when it comes to food, it almost never is - and everything has a breaking point.  Even water can harm or kill you if you drink too much.

I guess my point is that moderation is key.  No one needs a five pound gummy bear or a 75" television or a 4000 square foot (~372 square meter) house for two people.  That's not to say you shouldn't splurge every once in awhile.  Like I said in my post about my date night, it's okay if you spoil yourself on occasion.  It just becomes a problem when it happens 3 days a week.

In other news, after this post, even if the apple shrivels up and dies tomorrow I'm pretty sure Johannes never has to apologize to America for being judgmental.  We kind of deserve all the judging we get.  And now I'm off to go work out, because I'm 90% sure I just gained 3 pounds and a clogged artery from looking at the picture of the gummy bear.

Tschüss!