Food stuff

* At long last, the American Heart Association is telling people to cut out the sugar from their diet. There are pro and anti-fat camps, pro and anti-endurance exercise camps, and so on, but there is no pro-sugar camp in nutrition. Yet how often do they actually speak up about how necessary it is to minimize sugar intake if you want your body to look and work as it should? They're recommending no more than 6 teaspoons a day for women and 8 for men. When your blood sugar is normal, you have 1 teaspoon in your body -- but I guess telling people it's OK to consume triple the level sugar found in your blood twice a day is better than letting them drink a 12-oz soda that has 8 teaspoons.

I have between 2.5 and 3 teaspoons throughout the whole day (about 7 to 9 g from raspberries and another 5 g from a tomato), and I get by just fine. Some clueless nutritionist wrote into the WSJ saying how unrealistic the guidelines were -- it wouldn't even allow you to have a slice of cake at a party. Well, you aren't going to attend those every day, are you? In real life, you're eating one -- or five -- slices of cake while watching TV, not as part of a special celebration. As foreign as it may seem to nutritionists, you will have to tell your customers not to stuff cake in their face every day, let alone down it with a grande caramel java chip Frappuccino.

* Speaking of cutting out the sugar, what can you expect from hospital food these days? How about:

Jell-O molds and soggy sandwiches are out; crusted trout and fresh-baked scones are in. Hospitals are installing pizza ovens, sushi stations and salad bars featuring organic produce.

Fresh-baked scones are sugar bombs, and all that dough from the pizza will turn into sugar after it goes through your stomach. But I'm sure someone who's too sick to leave the hospital will appreciate all the inflammation and hunger that sugars bring. The queers who they have in charge of hospital food need to provide patients with lots of vitamins A and D, to boost their immune system and maintain the function of their epithelial cells, like those lining the respiratory and digestive tracts, as well as the skin. Obviously this means focusing mostly on animal products, as no plants contain either vitamin. (Sick people could always chew through 100 pounds of spinach, and might convert enough of the beta carotene into vitamin A -- but they'd probably rather take it easy than pretend they're a damned cow.)

These image-conscious chefs wouldn't even have to compromise their treasured coolness -- just serve the patients pate or liverwurst, hard-boiled eggs, full-fat cheese (since vitamins A and D are fat-soluble), and some strawberries. Civilized and healthy. It'll cost a little more, but whatever, just have the doctors cancel a round or two of golf each day, and you're all set.

By the way, in the hospital chef competition, they had strict limits placed on the calories, fat, and sodium of their meals -- but not on sugar. So, 600 calories worth of low-fat cookies would've been acceptable fare for people confined to hospital beds.

* Speaking of liver, you often here people nowadays describe organ meats as something that only the most destitute would eat. (I guess that's why they can only get rid of foie gras at soup kitchens.) For a reminder of reality, here's what starving peasants really eat: "cereal, rice, canned tomatoes and other basics."

* Last, Americans are going to get fatter and more irritable in the coming years as snacking becomes even more prevalent, especially in the morning. "Snacking" of course doesn't refer to having a small serving of ham, cheese, olives, and almonds, with a glass of water. This would fill you up for several hours and leave you feeling nice in the meantime. "Snacking" really means a bagel with jelly, a glass of fruit juice or soda, a cereal bar, and something else with jelly on it.

This will spike your blood sugar, send it crashing soon after, and leave you eaten inside by hunger for the rest of the day. You'd better not go out in public too much during this time, since your on-edge, overly irritable behavior is likely to get you punched in the face. Remember that people with very low cholesterol -- and you know who those people are -- not only have higher depression and thus suicide rates, but higher homicide victimization rates too. If you're constantly in a snappy mood, it's only a matter of time before you step on the wrong man's dick, and then you're dead meat.

Since going on a low-carb diet, I've never felt the need to snack -- just the opposite. I do just fine on two meals a day -- granted, they are very rich, filling meals -- and perhaps a mini-meal in the evening. Even if someone offers me a sweet, I feel no temptation, unless it's a really good chocolate. Salty snacks are even less appealing -- if I want salt and fat, I'll get it the chewy tasty way by eating cured meat.