Fitness a la Cart
I'm sure you're aware by now that we British are getting fatter - an unhealthy diet and too little exercise means we're following you into the extra extra large society.
Well, this has started a real scare over here with a view that something has to be done and done quickly. So everyone in this country joins a gym ... and then doesn't go ... a complete waste of time. But now help is at hand.
One of our biggest supermarket chains has just unveiled the world's first keep-fit shopping cart. That's right, a fitness cart.
It looks pretty much like any ordinary shopping cart until you try and use the thing to get your weekly groceries. The makers have fitted a gear wheel, much like you find on those exercise bikes.
The idea is that as you set the level of resistance to anything between one and ten and then push the cart round the aisles, hunting down the special offers and the two for ones, a basic weekly shop should burn off a hundred and sixty calories. Of course if you're a masochist, you'll set it to the strongest resistance and hurtle past the pizzas and the ice creams at speed... the makers reckon that you could lose as much as 300 calories every time.
The supermarket claims that using this machine of pure torture once a week is the equivalent of a twenty minute swim, or a thirty minute jog. But wait a minute - who wants to be seen at the supermarket, heaving and sweating, panting and glazed in sweat, pushing your toilet tissue and pulp-free orange juice to the checkout? Nobody's going to notice that gear wheel, they're just going to assume you're so unfit that you can't even get a shopping cart in line.
On the other hand, if they fitted a sign to the thing, something along the lines of "potential athlete for the Athens Olympics in training" to the cart, you might get a bit of sympathy… and you could quite easily sneak a tub or two of Ben and Jerry's under the broccoli and the fat-free milk. Eat your heart out, Richard Simmons -- I'm going to my local corner store from now on. They don't care what shape I'm in, they're just pleased to see my Visa card.
By Simon Bates