07-066
Nutrition Terrorism and How It Got That
Way
For longer than
anyone dares remember, dietitians, nutritionists, and neighbors coping badly
with retirement have been terrorizing ordinary citizens about eating right.
"Weren't
those pitted okra clumps I left on your back porch stairs yesterday delicious?"
you'll likely be asked as you leave for work, if you're lucky enough to live
next door to a nutrition terrorist, as I do. (I hadn't the heart to tell her
that I'd mistaken her gift for a bag of mulch.)
"Yes, thank
you, Miss Gruntlocke. We've never tasted better," I replied with a wave
and a smile, quickening my pace in the opposite direction, my car deliberately
parked several houses away. "Well, must run. Our tub of organic beets is
in. . . ."
Although I dared
not look in her direction, I could feel Miss Gruntlocke rising from her compost
pile. "There's no better source of uncongealed cadmium than poached okra
clumps, you know," she declared as she straightened herself. I'd broken
into a lope early enough that I was arguably out of earshot before she lifted
herself onto tiptoes to shout her Follow-Up Question: "You did
poach them, DIDN'T YOU?"
Only a few short
decades ago it was still considered not merely safe, but even desirable to dine
on food you enjoyed. Many of life's problems evaporated with wholesome, simple
meals that included steak tartare and bananas Foster. No one needed nutrition
charts to savor pretzels dipped in spam or sides of beef charred on backyard
grills.
In those days,
avoiding nutrition terrorists was a piece of cake. Yet we were free to mingle
if we wanted to. Obviously I'd have thought twice before bringing a dietitian
home to mother. But nutritionists of all stripes could, with the proper
permits, gather on the periphery of Fourth of July picnics, if they promised to
keep their picketing civil and pick up their granola litter afterwards.
Relations between them and us normal eaters were so good, in fact, that during
protest breaks they gratefully accepted the Fudgsicles we slipped them through
the barbed wire.
So how is it
that we cower before nutrition terrorists now?
As usual,
whenever anything takes a turn for the worse, it's almost certainly due to a
corporate-government (or government-corporate, depending on your politics)
program. To awe their subjects and sell advertising space, program managers,
like latter-day Egyptians, erected giant food pyramids. The colorful designs of
"nutritious" foods they bore naturally attracted roving bands of
homeless dietitians, who then became squatters. To save money on groceries,
they lived on carrot juice and chard. Soon malnutrition made them delirious and
irascible, and their speech turned to gibberish:
"Here chard
serving." [bows deeply]
[offended]
"Trans fathead!"
[cooing] "But
low sodium percent. . . ."
"High
monounsaturated cumquat calorie. Blech."
When the
pyramids began to go condo, social workers quietly relocated the dietitians to
the suburbs. There, properly medicated, many led more or less productive lives.
If, that is,
they could still poach the odd clump of pitted okra.