Remember When Buffet Chains Were All the Rage?
The gluttonous habits that turned us into one of the most obese nations in the world have also turned us into one of the dumbest
They were all the rage in the 1980s. Every state in the country had a national chain representative like Sizzler, Ponderosa Steakhouse, Old Country Buffet, or regional ones trying to make it big. The love for buffets was so strong that it makes me think that the habits formed then, overeating to the point of getting sick, led us to the willingness of so many Americans to be manipulated by right-wing media.
The buffets were popular in central New Jersey, where I grew up, but there was no craze. We went, and it was a fun evening that left you sick afterward because you ate too much. I wouldn’t experience the frenzied craze around the overflowing buffets until I visited my grandparents in the mountains of western Pennsylvania. There was a local buffet similar to Sizzler, but for my life, I cannot recall its name — Hogg’s or something like that.
My grandfather, a successful and well-respected farmer from the Dempseytown-Titusville area of Pennsylvania, was less enthusiastic than my God-fearing, Methodist grandmother. Pop would have one overflowing plate of food, a dessert, and a coffee — done. Our…
