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Class Trip

Jerry Farrell

Good morning children and welcome to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Fast Food Control Unit. My name is John and I'll be leading you on a tour of the facility. Please follow me.

Built back in the year 2005, the CDC's Fast Food Control unit was created as part of a United States Government initiative to combat childhood obesity. The unit is manned by some of our most experienced disease control experts and is dedicated to the study and eradication of the most dangerous foods ever consumed by human beings.

First, here on the right is... Please don't touch the glass, young man. Now kids, I know you're excited, but I'll need all of you to stay behind the orange safety line like your teacher told you earlier. Thank you.

Now, what the gentlemen in the antiviral suits behind the glass are examining is something called a McNugget. Highly popular in the late 20th century and early 21st, it's made of de-feathered chicken, fried in superheated animal fat, and it's the last known sample of a food that took the lives of an estimated 3.2 million children between the ages of 4 and 12 in the year 2002 alone. At the height of its popularity, the McNugget had enslaved 9 in 10 American kids with its televised promises of innocent fun, easy smiles, and the resolution of family conflict. In reality, the consumption of McNuggets had led to such profound health problems that kids just like you were dying in waves.

There's no need to cry, young lady... No, Ronald McDonald will not be coming after you and your pet chicken. That madman was taken out in the year 2007 by a team of Army Rangers after he ignored one too many U.N. resolutions. He's just the bogeyman now. Right kids? That's right. There's no need to worry about Ronald McDonald. You can go home and ask your parents and check your closets. Let's move on now.

Our next team over here on the left is working with a food introduced to America in the 1990s by a restaurant chain called Taco Bell. What they're examining is something called a Gordita Supreme. Comprised of a lethal combination of ground cow meat, black beans, melted cheese, and various spices, the Gordita Supreme is widely expected to have wiped out an entire West Texas town in the year 2008. On your way in today you may have noticed the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a firefighter trying to extricate a grotesquely fattened boy from a Taco Bell emergency exit after a government raid. I might add that in 2010, just before I retired from active duty on the rapid response team, I parachuted into a similarly gruesome scene at a Columbus, Ohio burger rave. I'm proud to say we liberated dozens of kids just about your age who were binging on outlawed cow meat and cheese sandwiches known as Whoppers. It's a day I'll never forget.

Moving on, this is our pizza study sub-unit where Larry, Anne and Jennifer... Go ahead and wave back, kids. What the team is working with is a highly addictive and particularly devastating strain of stuffed crust pizza, a product created by a restaurant chain called Pizza Hut in the early 1990s.  Regular pizza--a pie-shaped concoction of dough, mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce--had been served for decades before the evil forces at Pizza Hut decided that kids just like you weren't nearly as fat as they could be. So they hatched a plan to inject the pie crust with even more of the thick cheese that was already responsible for the unimaginably fat state of nearly 95% of American children. The great majority of these pies were consumed in the home, as parents and kids alike could pick up a landline telephone and request a delivery of this food that had become their virtual master. In response, drivers of gasoline-powered cars would bring this cheesy death to the door in 30 minutes or less. Then, in a most sinister fashion, the delivery driver would entice the family with a free appetizer of something called cheesy bread, which when immersed in a tomato-based dipping sauce basically made it just more pizza. Bottom line: kids just like yourselves were devouring pizza before their pizza which was stuffed with pizza. To make matters worse, they would then drink 48 ounces or more of a sugar-laced, artificially colored, carbonated water called soda pop or another beverage called Gatorade that came in a wide array of colors and promised spectacular athletic achievement--an astounding claim given that these poor, fat, defenseless victims could barely move. Thankfully, beverages like these were taken out as secondary targets in our government's highly successful and ongoing War on Pizza.

Well, you're all looking rather pale and walked-out, so I'll wrap up the tour with a quick cautionary tale. Back in 2006, a family of five was found dead on the front lawn of their Binghamton, New York home after wrestling a box of additional cheesy bread from a delivery driver and gorging until their carotid arteries exploded on the spot. I hope you'll remember that fact if a friend someday says he "knows how to get his hands on some mozzarella."

Thank you for your attention, kids. Enjoy your lunch at Carrot Land.

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