Why So Big?

The tartist and I found ourselves with a warm croissant each and five minutes to spare which we used to good effect, pondering why a lot of people in recent years want everything they imbibe to be as large as possible. This may be in part due to businesses [especially the chains] 'upselling', where the word small has been completely erased from their lexicon. How often have we found ourselves in a high street café ordering a cappuccino to be posed the question "would you like medium, large or behemoth?" Actually in reality a few of them prefer the term 'grande' and when the term grande is applied to a cup of coffee you will inevitably find yourself holding something resembling a soup tureen, with at least two handles, containing about half a gallon of liquid. Now this to us seems to have very little to recommend it except from the retailer's point of view. Predictably the next question from your enthusiastic server is "would sir like a muffin with that?" [upselling again]. Having tried one or two of these chemically enhanced chocolate puffballs I'm inclined to reply "no sir would not like one of your effing muffins, thank you". At the end of our visit having queued up school dinner style, been up sold and pestered we're left with a feeling of disappointment and emptiness. Just don't get us started on panninis...more about those in a future post.

What I suppose we're finding it hard to grasp is, why in these times of rampant obesity are we opting to eat and drink ever bigger portions of ever decreasing quality? Why do we seem to opt for 'olympian' breakfasts, 'gut busters' and dishes that are 'mega' and 'giant' in favour food that is 'delicious' and 'nourishing', small but 'perfect'.