Today we cycled 7 klms into the lovely lake village of Annecy... bicycle track all the way around one of the prettiest lakes we've seen. Today is nearing the end of the school holidays in the peak holiday month... families were at the lakeside in large numbers... sunning themselves... swimming... and canoeing. The traffic on the bike track was heavy... most of the cyclists having the latest version of bike with minimum speed limits of 100 kph... the bikes were so light and so highly geared that they overtook us without putting a foot on the pedal... or so it seemed. Even pre-teens had the latest gear... being overtaken by a 5-year-old doesn't do the ego much good. Also, lots of post-60's seniors were out setting their own PB times... we kept tightly to the right of the track... making sure our presence on the track didn't stand in the way of a PB. We were regularly overtaken by in-line roller skaters... they achieved speeds of 20 kph on the flat... most impressive. We showed our lack of biking experience... Joye said that at one point, she was overtaken by a jogger!
We couldn't hire chains to secure the bikes... so had to stay with them while exploring the town. We found a charming restaurant on a canal off the lake... for some lunch. One item on the menu stood out... the plate labelled "Fat Bastard"... checking its engredients, you could see it had been accurately labelled... Double beef and Bacon... Green Salad... Hash brown potatoes... Two toasts with Replachon Cheese... Topped with fried egg. Beyond doubt, regular consumption of that volume of carbs would turn you into a Fat Bastard. People ordered the plate in spite of the hazard warning... the green salad component was neatly separated so that eaters could conveniently push it aside to focus on the carbs and the fats.
A health-conscious government could learn a lot from this restaurant. How about compulsory labelling 'Fat Bastard' on every supermarket or restaurant item that contained an unhealthy amount of carbohydrates... 'Obese Bastard' on each product containing an unhealthy serving of sugar... 'Stupid Bastard' on every packet of cigarettes. Imagine going into McDonald's and ordering a Fat Bastard Quarter Pounder and one Obese Bastard Smoothy Shake. That should fix our population's growing obesity problem. Save a lot of small print labelling requirements.
(I should have consulted with my daughter and son-in-law before expressing uneducated opinions on food. They have done considerable research and are helping a large number of relatives and friends find smart dietary solutions.)
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