Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Health Food Nuts Can't be Serious!

THIS is how it's done on SuperBowl Sunday. If you prefer lentils and baby carrots - find a game of croquet!

Fans at Stadium Bar & Grill in Green Bay, Wisconsin on SuperBowl Sunday. Think they're chowing down on baby carrots? Think again!

A Tailgate at the Lambeau Field Parking lot, in Green Bay. These folks are wolfing down brats, burgers and wings - not lentils and baby carrots.







I had to stare with mouth agape as I glared at a tiny inset piece in the Weekend Financial Times. The piece with header, 'Pass the Carrots', featured a prediction by healthy eating advocate April Dembowsky (Dumbowksy?) that Super Bowl fans, instead of feasting on the usual Bratwursts, hot wings, Doritos, sliders and chips would instead be consuming "baby carrots and baked lentil crisps".

Are you effing kidding me? Check out the photos of those Packer fans at the Stadium Bar & Grill near Lambeau Field in Titletown, do you think they're munching baked lentil crisps and baby carrots? I have news for you: it's two pound brats, smothered in beer and brat mustard with sauerkraut and home fries. Want to know how any Packer fan would refer to someone that brought in baked lentil crisps and baby carrots? Well, I won't say, but let's just concede the portrayal wouldn't be flattering!

Dembowsky based her prediction on the much higher profile in advertising that healthier fare has received, and hence figured it would have translated into higher sales for the big game. No, it wouldn't and no it didn't. Brats, beer, hot wings, deep dish pizza and sliders (from fresh ground beef) held their usual high places in sales, as did the Doritos and thick Ranch dips including Nacho cheese spreads.

Obviously, Dembowsky is no football fan and hence doesn't have a remote clue what it's like to be part of a football party - especially for the SuperBowl, far less having attended an actual game which includes the standard tailgate. (Such as the one I attended in Green Bay in December, 2009, before the Packers-Ravens game, which featured barbecued chicken, beer, baked beans, burgers, hot dogs, fries, cole slaw and potato salad.)

Dembowsky, despite all the fanfare about lower fat foods (which generally taste like crap, just like lower salt foods) also wasn't aware of a poll taken barely three years ago which asked Americans about their food preferences as functions of longevity. One of the questions, as I recall, asked: 'Would you rather live 25 years longer and give up all foods bad for you, or live only five years longer and eat what you wanted?"

A full 61% chose the latter! (Which, when you think about it, may not be so dumb given that the average 35 -year old today is forecast to need at least $2 million to retire, in order to last to an estimated age 94).

But in the end, watching football doesn't go with lentils- baked or otherwise. If you want baked lentils and baby carrots then go to your nearest croquet match and enjoy! That is a sport more in tune with that sort of femme fare. But not hardnosed football, and especially featuring two hardnosed, take no prisoners teams.

Does that mean football fans will "pig out" every other day of the year? Of course not! I myself, while I enjoyed my beer, sliders and chips on the Big Day, instantly returned to my regular fare the next: ordinary chicken with brown rice and cucumber salad- with vinegar, no cream.

This is what the Food Police and associated physicians, dieticians, advertisers and advocates need to know: People need a break every now and then from the incessant hectoring about what to eat and what not to eat.

I daresay that if the Food Overseers and their lackeys would back off a bit, especially the insufferable Vegans, we'd hear much less about the "Nanny State"!

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