Buffet; or Why Danny Can't Overeat

So I recently went to the Golden Corral location in Marysville.

Needless to say I was somewhat horrified and even a little disgusted. Not because of the Golden Corral chain, mind. They provided excellent service and given the high volume of customers at the time, I can find no fault in their food outside of the fact that it is a buffet.

In my opinion, the food was bland, overcooked, drowned in fat, and grossly over salted. The patrons, bless their hard-working hearts, were for the most part grossly overweight or too young to have put on the pounds yet.

I felt traumatized by the experience because sometimes, less is more, and the culture that I've cultivated around myself here in Bellingham is not particularly one of excess. As a college student in the United States, it's by no means poor, but it's not overindulgence, not gluttony.

When we first sat down, I felt markedly out of place for immediately making a beeline for the salad. There was no line. I was the only person getting food from the salad section for at least ten minutes. I could have been happy with simple spring greens and a little fruit and nuts and cheese and a few small pieces of chicken breast meat. That was just enough to constitute a satisfying, if small, meal.

Buffets are the epitome of Americana in that they promote a lifestyle of too much the same way Wal-Mart does. They target themselves at the lower classes, promoting "low prices" while gunning for profits. They're effective at this in that they can create appeal, and in ways there's often no choice or no alternative.

I'm blessed to be in a situation where I have options and to have the education to see the larger systems at work. They make me uncomfortable.