Everything at TacoBell has E. Coli

I'm currently listening to an NPR report about the recent E. Coli scare at Taco Bell. Apparently, Taco Bell wants to assure customers that eating at Taco Bell (including the "food" they shoot out of a cauking gun) is indeed safe. I find this laughable, not leastly because, every time I've eaten at Taco Bell in the last year, it's made me sick to my stomach, e. coli or no. I consider it a symptom of growing older that I can no longer stomach junk food like I used to. I suppose I should consider it a luxury that I have the time and resources to avoid it.

This begs the question, in my opinion, why do bajillions of people still eat this food every day? Frankly speaking, it is nasty sub-food. Are they just really used to feeling like poo? Has human chemistry adapted to process more toxins since I was born? Are people really so busy they can't afford not to eat this convenient food? I think that at least two of these theses is correct, namely, that people are very used to feeling like poo. I ate alot of junk food while working an office job last year and, though I gained some weight and got kind of depressed, I got used to it. So many other elements of modern life are culpable for the dull shitty feeling I associate with an overconsumption of sugar, fat, and empty calories, that the connection is hardly obvious in the course of daily life if one is not looking for it. Furthermore, I also think that people are indeed, too busy to nourish themselves properly.

I recently enjoyed a stint of semi-employment between jobs. What a miracle! At the end of the week I had succeeded in cooking dinner a couple of times, doing the laundry, even sweeping the floor and watering the plants, and I wasn't, at the moment I thought of this, unconscious because I was so tired from a week's work. Comments on division of labor and sexism aside, there was a time, say 40 or 50 years ago, when women stayed home, not simply because men didn't want to compete in the labor market with them, but also because it was recognized that the work of a healthy life occured, at least by half, in the home. How was a family going to eat and stay healthy if there was not someone there, making a home? How, indeed? The scary fact, for me, is that I probably will not be able to afford my health-inducing semi-employment once I actually start a family.

I'm not here to lament self-righteously about the sorry state of the world, however. I'm here to come up with solutions. So I propose, among other thrift-strategies, an increased consumption of beans. They're the cheapest food I can think of, easing the semi-employment squeeze; a slow-cooker can take care of them while you slave away to pay the bills; and best of all, they're fully cooked, reducing your chances of contracting e.coli.