Dietary Just So Stories

I was a husky boy. I realized that when they steered Mother to a particular section of blue jeans at Silver’s Mens and Boys Wear where the clothes were labeled “Husky.” They used to have stores like that, with real owners who lived in town, not on Manhattan’s Upper East Side or Bentonville, AR.

Whenever a movie theater (or anything else, but celluloid had a certain combustible je ne sais quoi that memorably forshadowed what awaited movie-goers in the hereafter) burned downtown, Silver’s would have a Fire Sale, though Mother insisted the only smoke damage was from the cigars the owner (I thought his name was Ben, but I think I’ve got the name confused with another haberdasher) smoked in the back room.

Now I’m an obese man, often categorized as “morbidly” obese. Now there‘s a label that should get your attention – insofar as fat is voluntary, which isn’t very far. The appropriate testimonial tone at this point would be “I’ve tried every diet ever invented,” but that wouldn’t be true. Some of them were just too bogus.

This time I’ve found the ticket, though. Yup. You betcha. I can imagine following it forever,  and it seems to have some benefit beyond a downward slope on the weight graph. I’ll tell you all about it 50 pounds from now, when I’m just husky again. Better yet, I’ll link to the book. (You knew there was a book, didn’t you?)

But it occurred to me yesterday that all the diets I’ve panned, and all that I’ve tried, have a common element: a Just So Story to explain that this diet is how humans are supposed to eat, and that ignoring it is How the Modern Man Got His Fat.

They’re not altogether mutually contradictory, but the omissions and shifting emphases are comical in juxtaposition. We’re assured in one book that cave men ate meat almost exclusively because, well, they were cave men, and too busy watching ESPN to grow grain. (Sad side effect: No craft-brewed beer.) Our evolution hasn’t caught up with all this grain stuff, so it makes us sick. Another book, though, assures us that our serf ancestors (Ah, yes! There’s something to aspire too: the radiant good health of the Bubonic era!) couldn’t afford meat, and ate mostly plants. Our evolution hasn’t caught up with all this meat stuff, so it makes us sick.

Evolution is so powerful a scientific theory that there’s no conceivable set of biological facts it can’t seamlessly explain.

Going back 40 years, to Francis Moore Lappé, we were assured that there’s a really crappy conversion rate turning grain into animal protein, and that we should just eat the grain ourselves (sad side effect: what will our cars eat if we greedily eat the raw material of ethanol?) and we’ll live happily ever after – along with the other billions of the earth, not coincidentally. The supersecret plan I’m on now echoes that line. (Yes, it leans vegan.)

But I’ve read my Joel Salatin, so I know a stunning secret: cows can eat grass, from untillable terrain, and grass-fed beef is far healthier than foie gras or other products from animals confined and fed a “scientific” diet to produce lots and lots of luscious fat. (Special dietary bonus of grass-fed beef: it’s so tough and tasteless, unless cooked painstakingly, that you’ll eat less of it!)

So anyway, I’m off on another dietary adventure. And now that I’m on blood pressure again, I can do all things addito salis grano. Don’t touch that dial.

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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.