Thanksgiving Dinner at a Resort Spa, No Thanks!!!
Thanksgiving Day Dinner at a Resort Spa.
Seeking a lovely and healthy meal at a spa…what could be better than that? Actually, everything. I looked up a well know ‘Resort and Spa’ to schedule Turkey Day Dinner with my wife; well the menu is the total opposite of a healthy menu. Now, spoiler alert, wife and I are Vegan ( whole food, plant based, no oil). Okay, I realize that I’m barking up the wrong tree….these type of Resort Spas actually focus on breaking away from the tightening wires of society and reducing your stress (well, until you get the bill anyway), which I am all for. But the FOOD? I’ll bet the presentation looks fantastic, smells great, and the taste is …oh, so good, so much good stuff here, there, and oh…and that too. But is this FOOD….. healthy?
There were 57 items on the Turkey Day menu of which 55 were totally unhealthy!!! So are these dinners healthy? ……..the answer is a resounding NO. Here we have a Spa Thanksgiving Day Dinner Menu without any real food —-certainly none that would be considered ‘Healthy’ by the huge majority of dietitians, health oriented physicians—treating physicians are those who do not practice modern day nutrition–, and the increasing number of people who are following the lifestyle guidelines, in which the new guidelines are based on whole foods that are plant based. Of the approximately 57 ‘food items offered’ there would only be two items for the healthy eater: the “montage of fruit” and the ‘salad greens’.
Thanksgiving meals are prepared in such a way that it looks good, smells good, tastes good, and it’s terrible for you! It’s full of saturated fats, sugars and salts. You see, that’s the stuff that we couldn’t get enough of a few thousand years ago (or so) but now, there is so much food around that we are becoming a new species, the new ‘Homo jabba’ (think Star Wars here). We are a species that grew up not having enough to eat and now we are eating everything in sight! That ain’t good. We’re getting sicker, dying earlier, and we are really unhealthy….what’s wrong with this picture? It’s the FOOD!!!
Even the menu is designed to stimulate us to entice our desires to eat —-for example: “Pumpkin Spice French Toast with Warm Maple Syrup and Applewood Smoked Bacon”. The French Toast has Pumpkin Spice (tasty) with Warm Syrup…didn’t everyone have warm maple syrup? And not just Bacon, and not just Smoked Bacon,,,,,it’s Applewood Smoked Bacon!!! Really? Bacon is considered to cause cancer, smoking food is considered to cause cancer; my guess is that you could smoke bacon with penicillin and it would still cause cancer. The food being presented this Turkey Day across the nation is not based on your health; it’s based on profit. And BTW, the SAD (Standard American Diet) along with alcohol are the two leading causes of the ‘Deadliest Time of the Year which is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to Jan 4. Death rates are higher at this time of year. The holidays are a time of eating and drinking promoting the increased rates of death and dying. Heart attacks and drunk driving are the two primary culprits for our increased death rate over the Holidays.
So here we are, a population of people with the DNA of Starving Souls being given huge amounts of Franken-Foods that 1. have no nutritional value and 2. are toxic to the human body. In the last 50 years our standard diet is nothing more than a combination of sugar loaded saturated fats with added salts; this is the diet that has spread across the world, it’s called the “Standard American Diet” (SAD). It’s to die for.
Thanksgiving is a time to give Thanks to the food that has kept us alive; the foods that are full of the nutrients that are needed by us to survive. Is your Thanksgiving Dinner going to keep you alive? Or is this the time to visit your local ER with that newly developed Heart Attack? You should also know that your odds with your first Heart Attack is 50/50. That means that 50% of first heart attacks end up dead….the other 50% may or may not become a cardiac cripple…limited physical exertion such as shortness of breath, limited walking, etc. The odds are against us if we continue to eat this Standard American Diet and Thanksgiving Dinner is the proverbial icing on the cake; it’s to die for.
Stay healthy, Vegan Doc
P.S. ::: Now I agree that children are not the primary customer at this Spa but they did have a children’s menu…here it is with my comment:
Children’s Buffet
Creamy Macaroni & Cheese, Hot Dog Pups, Chicken Tenders,
Tater Tots, Cookies and Brownies
To feed a child any of the above items, from a health standpoint, is child abuse. These foods are devoid of nutrients and are full of fats, sugars and salts; they promote multiple diseases such as Type 2 Diabetes, Hypertension, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity (yes, obesity is a disease). Vegan Doc 10/28/19
