Eat A Burger To Die 30 Minutes Sooner

— body language by Weddie Thiên  —​

​

You'd never light up at a quarter past noon,

You'd never puff smoke with your soup and your spoon!

You care for your health, and you swear that you do,

So here is a question I'm asking of you:

If smoking at lunch is a thing you'd not dare,

Why order the meat when the beans are right there?
 

So order the veggies, let the burrito be bean!

A burger's two cigarettes, smoked and unseen,

Each burger's a microlife, half hour thrown away,

Thirty minutes of living you take from your days!
 

A study of burdens, of sickness and death,

Says bacon and sausage can shorten your breath,

The hot dogs, the ham, and the lunch meat you slice,

May kill a hundred thousand a year. That's the price.

From heart disease mostly, from cancer as well,

From diabetes too, and there's more still to tell,

For millions of healthy good years, in the end,

Are lost from the lives of your neighbor and friend.

​

There's risks that arrive with a bang and a crash,

The skydiver's chute and the motorbike smash,

A micromort measures the odds when you fly,

One chance in a million you suddenly die.

But most of the risks that you're warned of are slow,

The smoking, the drinking, the eating, you know,

So here is a measure, a microlife, small:

Just a half hour of life down the drain, that's all.
 

Now why thirty minutes? The counting is neat:

A man of twenty-two, still light on his feet,

A woman of twenty-six, hale and alive,

Have fifty-seven years, more or less, to survive,

That's twenty thousand days when you tally the sum,

Five hundred thousand hours of all that's to come,

A million half hours! And now you can see

A microlife's one of that million. That's key.

One half hour subtracted, no less and no more,

One tick of the million once held in your store.
 

What costs you a microlife? Three simple things,

For a man who is thirty, and here's what it brings:

Two cigarettes smoked, and a microlife's gone,

Two pints of strong beer, and the same math goes on,

Or living each day at eleven pounds more,

That's one half hour trimmed, as I just said before.

So if you'd not smoke at the noon and the night,

Then eleven pounds extra should give you a fright!
 

So order the veggies, let the burrito be bean!

A burger's two cigarettes, smoked and unseen,

Each burger's a microlife, half hour thrown away,

Thirty minutes of living you take from your days!
 

But flip it around, for the ledger has sides,

And here's where the profit, the plus, yes, resides:

Five servings of veg and of fruit every day

Adds four years for men, so the averages say,

And three years for women, which, doubled and weighed,

Is twice the reward that a workout has paid.

Yet exercise still is a bargain, it's true:

Spend twenty short minutes, get sixty for you!

Two microlives back for the effort you gave,

A three-to-one payback, a deal you should crave,

Though push past a point and the extra gets thin,

The first twenty minutes are where you cash in.
 

Now processed meat's worse, and here's how it goes:

Take two of you, matched from your head to your toes,

The one eats fifty grams of the processed each day,

One sausage, three bacon strips, tucked right away,

The other eats none. And the gap? It's two years,

Two years with your grandkids, your spouse, and your peers,

Two years that you traded for salt and for smoke,

And two extra years to be mourned. That's no joke.
 

Or count it by day, if you'd rather: a slice,

Then two, of bologna or ham, oh so nice,

An hour a day is the toll that you pay,

And you said there weren't hours enough in your day!

Or think of effective age, climbing a bit:

Those fifty grams daily add two years to it,

Your odds for the year aren't the odds of your age,

They're those of a man two years on down the page.
 

Our guidelines should say what they've long said is best:

Eat low on the red and the processed, and rest

Your plate on the plants that are barely refined,

On fruits and on vegetables, most every kind,

On whole grains and nuts, and on legumes, so please,

Eat beans and eat chickpeas, eat lentils, split peas!
 

So order the veggies, let the burrito be bean!

A burger's two cigarettes, smoked and unseen,

Each burger's a microlife, half hour thrown away,

Thirty minutes of living you take from your days!