Editorial: Being male is bad for your health

Is Colonel Sanders really a stumbling block on the male road to health? Photo / File

Queuing in KFC's Hastings drive-thru last night it dawned, again, I shouldn't be doing this.

The guilt was quickly trumped by the aroma from a brown paper bag passed through the driver's window. The windscreen fogged, rendering the interior a glorious spice-infused car-sauna.

God bless the late Colonel Harland David Sanders and his endless coop of fowls.

Minutes later, drumsticks stripped to the bone, seasoning left indelibly on the palate, endorphins released courtesy the chilli and fat coating the tongue, I was reminded this was the final day of Men's Health Week - bang in the middle of "Junk Free June".

Truth be told that realisation came in the drive-thru. (There was a car behind me so I couldn't reverse out).

Maybe next year then.

Being male, as we're reminded ad nauseam, is bad for your health.

Hence the boffins behind Men's Health Week who in the past five days urged us to take their online health test. Subsequently there's been much swapping of scores in the media and the workplace.

Thus, another instance of where wellness has become the new boast. Or, as another writer recently claimed, wellness has emerged as the new status symbol.

Doubtful?

Check out the more urbane cafes and spot the designer sportswear. I'm not talking about the patrons who bike to the cafe, but those who arrive with neither visible sign of having exercised, nor the intent to do so after downing a cappuccino and bookend piece of mud cake.

Nike, Under Armour, Skins, KooGa and Adidas are today's cafe couture. Active is the new black.

Maybe that's why us blokes find the health imperative a tough pill to swallow. 'Tis a noble cause, but we detest fashion as much as we detest heading to the GP. That's why our better halves dress us and make our doctor's appointments.

And let's not dismiss the other obstacle, namely the portly Colonel Sanders, hardly the picture of health, presenting somewhat like a blond Rolf Harris, forever beckoning with his cursed chicken.

But is he really a stumbling block on the male road to health?

Here's a man whose assemblage of spices won over the world, the man who apparently ate copious amounts of his secretive product - until his death at age 90.

Not a bad innings for a chap who no doubt would have returned a shocking result, had he completed this week's health test.