My Chinese Diet

It's been five days since I began experiencing symptoms of food poisoning, which presumably I got from the airplane food on the way from Beijing to Guiyang, since I didn't eat anything else the day I got sick.

When we arrived at our hotel in Guiyang to pass the one day layover, I was feeling fine. After a nice, long bath spent reading Best American Essays, 1886, I was ready for bed; sleep and my head's collision with the pillow nearly coincided. That evening's rest, however, was not so peaceful. My dreams were plagued with the sensation of nausea, which caused me to wake several times during the night, only to find that I was as queasy in sentience as in sleep. Finally I realized that I might feel and sleep better if I just allowed myself to vomit, so I ran to the bathroom where I knelt before the porcelain god to present my offering.

"Are you okay in there?" Danny asked as he heard me doing the dirty deed.

"...I feel really sick. But I think I'll be better after I throw up," I said between dry heaves.

"Well try to keep it down in there, will ya? Some of us are trying to get some sleep out here, and you're making alot of noise. Next time, be a little more considerate."

My initial symptoms included semi-digested, chunk-filled liquids erupting from both my mouth and my rectum. Now the puking has abated, thus ending my double-ended excretions and leaving me with only the joys of diarrhea. The era of JT's-head-over-the-toilet-bowl has come to an end. With so much free time on my hands, I'm trying to find other ways to entertain myself in lieu of involuntary regurgitation.

One of the new pastimes I've discovered is contemplating the disparity between American and Chinese obesity levels. Given the cuisine's heavy reliance on pan-frying, and all those calorie-laden sauces—not to mention carb-heavy staples such as steamed rice, fried rice, crisped rice, rice cakes, steamed buns, soup noodles, pan-fried noodles, wontons, and dumplings—the slender physique of the average Chinese is a bit mystifying. (Especially given the penchant of many descendants of the Middle Kingdom for eating; see Ben's blog as proof.)

Then it hit me: it's next to impossible to keep any weight on when half of one's caloric intake is being spewed out in vomit, and the other half is leaving as diarrhea. The secret to their shapely frames is food poisoning! Let me put this another way: we realized that we could harness the power of the bacterium responsible for botulism to get rid of wrinkles, right? Why not put our former enemies, botulinum and salmonella included, to work to help us shed a few unwanted pounds?

Since obesity is connected to so many other physical ailments, health-wise we'd be better off as a nation if we slimmed down and toned up a little. This conclusion led me to one of life's great ironies: rather than inviting a rash of diseases or a resurgence of the Plague, closing down the Department of Sanitation could actually have a salubrious effect on the lives of many Americans. As a people, we are too fat because we're too sanitary. If we dined on a proper diet of half-cooked pork served on dishes that have not been thoroughly washed, we'd be nice and slender, as are so many of the locals I pass here every day on the street.

As the number of overweight adults, adolescents, and youth rises—as does the cost of treating obesity-related diseases—now is a good time for us to weigh our priorities. We must examine whether all this cleanliness is really worth the exacting toll on our overall health. It's time to ask ourselves the tough questions. Are we willing to trade our clean streets free of rubbish and roaches for longer lifespans and smaller waistlines? Could we tolerate a little more diarrhea and vomiting if they came as a package deal with lower diabetes and heart disease rates? At the end of the day what's more important: sanitation or health?