The overall shittiness of contemporary American parenting never ceases to amaze me.

A medical journal with the spelling bee nightmare of a name Psychoneuroendocrinolgy (actually not so bad if you sound it out) has published a study conducted by the University of Illinois linking a high-fat diet to ADHD and learning disabilities in mice, and therefore children.

The basic science of it is that a steady diet of cheeseburgers and donuts affects dopamine metabolism, which leads to anxiety and a whole bunch of other problems. And this isn’t an issue that develops over time, either. At least with the mice, it started happening almost immediately. Within a week, they were burrowing and running on their wheels a lot more, but they refused to go out and explore open spaces and couldn’t figure out how to get through a maze. Translated into kid behavior, that means when their not sitting on their fat asses on the couch, they’re bouncing off the walls. They also won’t leave the house, and even if they did, they probably couldn’t find their way back home.

Okay, I’m going to rant about this a little. When I was a kid (which wasn’t that long ago), we liked video games and Doritos, too. We also liked riding our bikes and playing football. We loved eating at McDonald’s, but our parents wouldn’t let us do it every single damn day. It was treated as a reward we got for eating our vegetables most other nights. Kids who were fat, kids who had learning disabilities and kids who had to be medicated out of their hyperactivity existed, but they were rare. Now, it seems like they’re all over the freaking place. Why don’t all you parents out there make those fat little bastards get up and do something every once in a while? The results of this study—which essentially boil down to “fatty foods are bad for you”—are not news. If they found that these problems were caused by something like, I don’t know, sunshine and exercise, then that would be worth talking about. But if you’re stupid enough to allow your kid to eat crap all the time, you deserve to have to deal with an overweight little psycho. Your kid, however, deserves better. Set some goddamn limits every once in a while, okay? It’s your responsibility to shape your child’s mind and behavior. I don’t care how freethinking you believe you are, you can’t let your kids make their own choices. They will choose wrong most of the time, and they won’t learn from their mistakes until it’s too late.

But say you have no interest in having a genuinely intelligent, physically fit and socially well-adjusted child. Say you’d be content with just the appearance of that. Well, there’s good news! Because the study found that giving the mice a good old-fashioned dose of Ritalin made their learning and memory problems go away. Of course, getting them off the high-fat diet did the same thing, but most of you out there are probably more interested in the pharmaceutical solution, right? Look, I’ve seen what Ritalin does to kids. I’ve even tried it myself. And yes, while it might make you sit down and pay attention, it also makes you incredibly boring and saps you of your creativity.

Okay, maybe I’m being a little hard on you parents, but you need to hear this kind of shit every once in a while. Get outraged and prove me wrong. Otherwise, in twenty years, America is going to be run by a bunch of fat, drugged-out zombies. Then we won’t be able to defend ourselves, China’s going to take over and it’ll be all your fault.