Fat Is Good! Say, Woody Allen Was A Genius! by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #359 | @MDWorld
March 24, 2014 Mike Gold 4 Comments
This is only going to surprise the self-righteous, elitist food fascist know-it-alls. The rest of us just can’t be surprised by dietary revelations anymore.
According to The New York Times, the authoritative voice of the elite, a team of international scientists tells us that they have found no evidence that eating saturated fat increased heart attacks and other cardiac events.
Saturated fats are the ones that we’ve been told will kill us unless we switch to a vegan diet. They’re the type found in meat, butter and cheese. Animals, in other words. This was the result of “a large and exhaustive new analysis,” but, evidently, there have been a whole lot of studies that have come to this conclusion. These scientists point the fickle finger of fate in the direction of carbohydrates and sugars.
Personally, I’m not so certain about all those chemical additives. Some are probably fine. Others might make us look like we swim with the Simpsons’ fish. But I do know this: without them, we can only feed about two billion people (source: Alan Weisman, author of Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope For A Future On Earth?). We’ve got over seven billion right now. So taking them out of our food supply will likely kill an unbelievable number of people.
This stuff isn’t as simple as the health nuts make it look. It does not come down to “good” and “bad.”
Mind you, none of these people are suggesting you eat like an uncontrollable idiot (full disclosure: I am an uncontrollable idiot). Ernie Kovacs was brilliant, but his motto “Nothing In Moderation” probably was excessive. Which shows you his gift for humor. Then again, he died in a car crash and not at a restaurant.
Woody Allen made fun of all this in Sleeper, one of his last funny movies. I know quoting Allen is declassee these days, but if you’re capable of understanding satire you’ll see he got the point decades ago, long before we were engulfed in tidal waves of contradictory but fashionable studies.
The fact is, the food fascists just pull this stuff out of their asses. Eggs are bad. No, wait, eggs are good. Chocolate is bad. Well, dark chocolate is good but sugar is bad. Go know. Bread helps build bodies eight ways – or is it twelve? But bread is starch, bread is carbs, and that stuff will kill you. Avoiding fried food kept the 2,000 Year Old Man alive for close to 2,100 years, but now we know its the oils we use make the difference, not the act of frying.
In moderation.
You know what does cause heart attacks?
Stress. The effervescent know-it-alls who tell you how to live do not disseminate knowledge or truth, they play ping-pong with science. They are the flat-Earthers, the anti-evolutionaries of the left. You frightfully skinny little Nazis should just get yourself a sandwich.
And, yes, I am coming over to eat your pets.
Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com and on iNetRadio, www.iNetRadio.com as part of “Hit Oldies” every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week – check www.getthepointradio.com above for times and on-demand streaming information. Gold also joins MDW’s Marc Alan Fishman, Martha Thomases and Michael Davis as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com where he pontificates on matters of four-color.
R. Maheras
March 24, 2014 - 7:33 am
I eat more than I need to for an old guy with a desk job, but I try and make up for it by staying active, and walking a lot. When the weather is nice, I even walk home from work — which for my current job, is about 4.5 miles.
But I think you are right about stress. All other things equal (genes, habits, etc.), I think stress is probably 800-pound gorilla in the room when it comes to risk factors.
Neil C.
March 24, 2014 - 9:34 am
Well, I get stressed out from work and other things, yet my blood pressure has been in the normal range my whole life (even though I usually sleep no more than six hours). I figure it’s because my mom had high blood pressure and my dad had low that it evened out.
Rick Oliver
March 24, 2014 - 11:20 am
I eat when I’m hungry.
I drink when I’m dry.
And if I get lucky,
I’ll live ’til I die.
And while it may not be fashionable to quote Woody Allen anymore, Sleeper does have one of my favorite Allen lines: “If I had been in therapy all this time, I’d almost be cured by now!”
Reg
March 24, 2014 - 9:42 pm
Ummm…not so fast there, Uncle Mikey…just a couple of rebuttal points for your consideration.
Mind you, the following data points are from 2003…so just multiply by a factor or two to bring them up to 2014 rates.
“© 2003 American Society for Clinical Nutrition
The amount of grains fed to US livestock is sufficient to feed about 840 million people who follow a plant-based diet. Yeaaah…that’s a lot of people.
The livestock population on average outweighs the US human population by about 5 times. ”
Not to mention the environmental and medical impact and costs that the over consumption of said products places upon the system.
And regarding stress (which I definitely agree is an important factor) with regards to being a causative factor for the high rate of cardiovascular disease in the US, you seemed to have overlooked the matter of Japanese life expectancy and the relationship of diet. The stress levels of the average Japanese citizen makes us look like cradled & breast fed babies in comparison. Yet their rate for CHD is almost 1/5 than that of the US. What’s a major factor in the difference?
Yep.
R. Maheras
March 25, 2014 - 7:14 am
Some vegans like to think they are changing the evolutionary process of humans, and fancy that by eating only plants they are creating some superior, more civilized race.
But the fact is, vegans don’t live longer, and their brains aren’t any more developed, than us poor omnivorous slobs. In fact, according to current scientific theory, the reason we eat meat is because it is a far more efficient way for our much larger brains to get the calories needed to operate effectively.
While there are a few conflicting findings in studies about the issue, from everything I’ve read, it seems to me that if an omnivore human eats meat in moderation (especially if they emphasize poultry and fish rather than red meat), is not obese, and gets regular exercise, they will actually be healthier overall than their vegan counterpart.
Vegans are notorious for having deficiencies in B-12, calcium, zinc, iron and Omega 3, so they have to go out of their way to compensate for them.
Omnivores, on he other hand, have many more natural options.
So, while I don’t mind eating a kale and nut salad or soyburger on occasion, there’s nothing like a good buffalo burger or spicy chicken sandwich.
Rick Oliver
March 25, 2014 - 9:48 am
Health and ethical issues aside, the prevailing methods used to raise meat animals for human consumption are not sustainable.
Mike Gold
March 25, 2014 - 10:03 am
Russ, I can’t wrap my head around kale. It does not appear to have originated on Earth.
Vegans have their problems — and heaven forbid you should encounter a vegan driving a Prius. So do omnivores. The biggest problem with these arguments, and I’m including Reg’s comments above, is that the biggest determining factor is the gene pool from whence you came. My great uncle, 35 years dead, died at 91 (give or take). During his life in America he consumed a traditional Ashkenazi diet, except for the cigars. He ate regularly at Katz’ Deli before WWI. Simply reading his typical weekly menu would kill off a gaggle of vegans. My parents followed a somewhat similar diet, probably with a lot less chicken fat, and they lived to 90 and 97 respectively. My aunt just died a few months short of 100.
This does not mean I can eat a pound of brisket a day (anymore), and the Gods and Goddesses of Irony dictate that I’ll probably croak sometime between the day I’m eligible for social security and the day their first check clears. But I will not die obsessed with the issue of whether I’d eaten enough kale.
Martha Thomases
March 25, 2014 - 10:42 am
Okay, I admit it. I like kale. I like a lot of dark, bitter greens, especially when they are sautéed with garlic and olive oil. But I also like raw kale.
Sue me.
I like dense carbs, and left to my own devices, I eat very little meat, and probably not enough protein. But if you try to take away my cheese, we’ll have a fight on our hands.
Eat what makes you feel good, not only while you’re eating it but all day. Accept that what works for you might not work for anyone else, and vice versa.
Rick Oliver
March 25, 2014 - 11:05 am
Kale was created by Satan to make us think vegetables taste horrible. Just to make sure, he also created lima beans and brussel sprouts.
My father-in-law lived on a diet of red meat, pork, and potatoes. No veggies. No fish. No chicken. He lived to be 96.
People with a genetic disposition to high LDL levels can improve their odds by eating low-fat diets.
Mike Gold
March 25, 2014 - 11:15 am
To be fair, my maternal grandfather died in his 30s.
Of course, he was hit by a truck…
Rene
March 25, 2014 - 11:22 am
Brazilian states have their own culture and cuisine. My mother’s family comes from Minas Gerais, where the cuisine has a LOT of pork. Yes, pork, the least healthy meat of them all, according to common knowledge.
Yet, people there live to be 80 or 90, despite eating pork several days a week. My grandma lived past 80.
So, it never made sense to me the opinion that one single factor can account for cardiac disease. I think that is wishful thinking. People want easy answers so they can guard against a heart attack.
Mike Gold
March 25, 2014 - 11:24 am
Indeed, Rene.
And I’m quite partial to Brazilian beef, at least as served up here. I’ve been to excellent places in New York, Chicago and San Diego — the latter a legendary meal for about 15 people, at which MOTU consumed several tons of bacon, as wrapped around sundry cuts of beef. Ah, good times!
R. Maheras
March 25, 2014 - 12:41 pm
I actually eat kale once or twice month, but I wouldn’t eat it raw. I shred it and put it in mushroom soup or tomato soup, which offsets its bland taste.
I also love brussel sprouts and broccoli (both of which I hated as a kid), and I eat lima beans periodically because my wife loves them.
Both my daughters went through a “I’m-a-terrible-human-for-eating-meat-so-I’m-going-to-become-a-vegetarian” phase that I’ve no doubt was fueled by liberal propaganda, but it didn’t last. I don’t know how many meat industry horror stories I had to endure in the process, but what they didn’t know is I’d heard them all before, and that Sinclair’s “The Jungle” was required reading in high school. I still catch flak for eating those evil “cancer-causing” hotdogs on occasion, but you know what? There’s nothing like a good Chicago-style Ballpark Frank. Speaking of frank(ly), frankly I’m happy as shit I lasted this long, and I look upon every new day as a gift. So if I want to eat some Little Smokies with barbeque sauce, than dammit, that’s what I’m gonna do.
Martha Thomases
March 26, 2014 - 6:24 am
If I may quote one of the more prominent (and readable) of the so-called “food fascists” in this op-ed piece today (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/opinion/bittman-butter-is-back.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0):
“Rather, let’s try once again to pause and think for a moment about how it makes sense for us to eat, and in whose interest it is for us to eat hyperprocessed junk.”
Read the whole thing. It’s very smart.
Mike Gold
March 26, 2014 - 7:27 am
The corporate drug pushers who pollute our food supply is a whole ‘nother matter. I wouldn’t trust those bastards with a cactus in the desert. And, as you know (because I’ve texted you photos of grass-fed beef cuts from the Fairway supermarket; this is what Anthony Weiner should have done), I prefer grass-fed to chemical-laden. Screw health; I prefer it for taste. “Eat less meat but eat better meat” just might replace “Ubi Est Mea” on the Mike Gold commemorative penny.
But, as I noted above in my reference to Alan Weisman’s Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope For A Future On Earth, if we were to stop the chemical warfare deployed upon our food sources we couldn’t support the majority of the people currently on this planet. Now, being an American I can always revert to our patriotic “Ubi Est Mea” mode, but my friends at AmeriCares (locally headquartered) would be out of a gig.
R. Maheras
March 26, 2014 - 12:39 pm
There’s nothing wrong with eating less meat. After all, does anyone really need to eat a five-patty super-deluxe, bacon-stuffed mega-monster hamburger? I never do.
I may eat a quarter-pound, and occasionally, a half-pound burger, but the triple- and quad-burgers — or larger? no way.
And even though we can afford to eat out probably every night, we don’t. I cook at least five-six nights a week. And when I cook a roast, like I did last night, that’s at least three meals — depending on the size of the cut of meat.
Rene
March 26, 2014 - 1:49 pm
Vegetarianism never caught in Brazil as a political statement. If I had to guess, I’d say that is because political vegetarianism (as opposed to religious vegetarianism) is a rich country’s issue.
When a poor family only dreams of being able to afford to eat meat in every meal, vegetarianism can’t gain a lot of traction as an issue of the political left.
Mike Gold
March 26, 2014 - 1:55 pm
That’s an extremely important point, Rene. Critical. One that many Americans just can’t understand.
Sort of like anorexia. I’m not quibbling about the reality of the disease; it’s just a concern of those wealthy enough to be anorexic. If you’re scrounging around for food, the idea of turning your nose up at meat, or puking the food out so you don’t digest it, is ridiculous.