Dietary Guidelines

Have you ever noticed that poor people tend to be overweight?  Ever wonder why that is?  Have you priced fresh fruits and vegetables lately??  Even the price of milk and eggs has been whacko, and meat?  Ha!  If one has any family at all to feed, one needs to get the best nutritional value for the dollar.  Even food pantries hand out stuff that will fill the belly but generally not fresh fruits and veggies because they are perishable.  There should be no question about why poor people are heavy.  They eat what they can afford, and the cheapest foods are the highest in carbohydrates and fats.  Truth.

This week, some government entity came out with new dietary guidelines for the masses to chew on.  I waited with baited breath to hear the news.  They are now discouraging added sugars...and, of course, sodium.  That will ENcourage food companies to change their recipes, AGAIN, to make their products even more unpalatable than before.  It is a proven fact that human beings, from birth, are drawn to foods that are slightly sweet or slightly salty.  I figure it happens that way for a reason.  Salt enhances the flavor of food.  Sugar takes away our cravings.  Take those away?  What's next??

I'm 68-years-old.  I've experienced all of the dietary guidelines to date...all of the buzz words du jour.  Some of them are words I'd never heard before, nor cared about:  cholesterol, gluten, lactose, GMO, high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, anti-oxidants, blah, blah.  Giving up (or taking in) any of those just makes the simple fact of eating so complicated that I envy people who only eat to live.  The vast majority of us live to eat!  Once upon a time, restaurants had, as part of their low-cal dietary offerings, cottage cheese with fruit.  When I was in the hospital after my heart attack, I was denied cottage cheese because of the sodium content.  Whaaaat??

I reject the dietary guidelines, within reason.  I came from a farm family that grew its own vegetables and relished the harvest while preserving the surplus.  We brushed the dirt off the veggies or fruits we were picking and ate them on the spot.  We cooked breakfast in bacon grease.  The very best pie crusts were made with lard.  Dollops of real butter were placed on top of foods to be served.  Did all of this contribute to my heart attack?  Maybe.  I don't know.  But my grandmother lived to age 83; my grandfather made it to 89; my father died at 76 (with a family history of dead parents and siblings by age 59).

It bothers me that the medical world can't seem to make up its collective mind about things.  Once upon a time, women were put on hormone replacements at menopause, to protect their hearts.  MANY years later, it came out that hormone replacement therapy contributed to early death for other reasons.  Eggs became the bad boys of the diet world because of the high cholesterol content.  Now they are saying that eggs aren't that bad...and that cholesterol isn't as important as other blood fats.  Once upon a time, a diet of fish for protein was touted as the way to save the heart--but now fish is so contaminated that the recommendation for fish meals has been reduced.

Enough!  Unless I am living in an area that is horribly contaminated, or the food industry is more negligent than even I could imagine, I'm eating what I want.  If I die before what could be considered expected for me, you may blame my life's choices.  ('Tis so for all of us.)  At least I'll die happy!   All my cardiologist says by way of dietary advice is:  Eat less; move more.  I'm good with that!