Those Diet Drinks

I ripped off the illustration from here. (Apologies Elmhurst College Chem Lab.) And really this post isn't about the density of the product. Although isn't that fascinating? No, I'm really going to riff on this New York Times piece.

This study found a correlation between consumption of diet soda and metabolic syndrome, a collection of factors that indicate an increased risk for cardiovascular disease.

A couple of things about it make me say 'hmmm.' First, I'm not surprised that people who may have a little extra fat around the abdomen are tempted to drink diet drinks. Second, I'm surprised that the scientists are really musing about it in this way.

“Why is it happening? Is it some kind of chemical in the diet soda, or something about the behavior of diet soda drinkers?”

Well, the chemicals, if consumed in large quantities just can't be good for you. Your body must record them although the consumer writes 'zero calories' in his mental ledger. But mostly, don't you think, it's just that people are trying to hedge eating fried chicken by drinking them? That the doctors have worried them into trying to lose weight? That they are shamed by society to be seen consuming a full-blown, sugar-laden, twenty-six ounce soda?

It just seems that this study is drawing this one trivial conclusion that grabs the headlines and obscures the rest of the study. Which belongs in the (non-existent as far as I know) Journal of Completely Predictable Results. You know: the more fried food you eat, the more the risk. Unless one day they discover, that, nah, it was all the fault of diet soda.

Too Young For Strokes

I cadged this picture from an ebay trader long ago. Glass fruit for sale. I once considered having a collection of fake food. I came to my senses. But that's a subject for a different blog.

I wanted to illustrate with fruit because, apparently, a part of the The Beverly Hills diet is to eat fruit only for the first days of the regimen.

The inventor of the diet is dead at 63 from complications of a stroke according to The New York Times. This happened in October so it old news. [This reporter's delay in remarking on it is due to a bad habit of reading papers in a less than current fashion. Also, not the subject of this journal except, you know, to explain the unintended consequence of my remarking on old news.]

The obituary says that she slimmed down from 180 to 108. It would be interesting to know how many times she did that. Yo-yo dieting is bad for you. Some experts thought this diet inventor, Judy Mazel, had invented a dangerous diet. And, well, dead at 63 from a stroke? Seems young to me.

All Organ Meat Meal

We had a delicious '97 Burgundy Grand Cru and a 1986 Silver Oak Napa Cabernet last night in celebration of a friend's birthday. This is my foie gras with one succulent bite of the liver already gone so you can see how pink and beautiful it is. Yum. I had sweetbreads for my main course. A most politically incorrect meal. The sweetbreads were probably once the thymus gland of a young calf (dare I say the veal word?).

This delicious meal was at a venerable Austin restaurant whose name will not be revealed here because vandals have the handle as Dylan said. Although the vandals' attack on another restaurant had the effect of costing them in clean-up but making the foie gras sell out halfway through the evening. Go figure. As we are constantly pointing out in this space: things don't always happen like you expect.

I'm sure this meal is supposed to be damning my health, too. I buttered several small rolls to eat along with my two dishes, too.

Birthday celebrations. Hoping for many more. And we eat and drink. But is it really an accident that my most gourmet-minded, organ-meat-eating, vintage-wine-drinking friends are the ones soldiering on with me in the greatest numbers?

Perhaps the biggest unintended consequence of the way I live my life is that it is becoming a sort of experiment. My 90-year-old dad went along last night. He didn't drink too much. He had steak. He told jokes.

The Politics of Eating

Eating is getting more and more fraught with politics all the time. There is the organic food movement. Then there are the people who tell you that it needs to come from close to home to save fuel costs. Of course, there are the people who think foie gras is cruelly obtained and then those who would have you not kill animals at all.

Restaurants are eschewing bottled water because of the high cost of containers and shipping and going so far as to filter tap water and infuse water with carbon dioxide for the sparkling drinkers.

Here in Austin, there are those who are up in arms that the owners of Las Manitas got a forgivable loan to move their restaurant out of leased space. (Particularly irate is the barbecue joint owner whose place burned down when, with a fire station within spitting distance, the dispatcher decided that the 911 caller couldn't be serious..."they must just be smoking some meat." He got no help from the city in rebuilding his business even though, as a taxpayer, he should have surely had some expectation of fire protection.) Right on the Avenue (Congress Avenue) we will have two politically fraught choices when we move downtown (assuming they both last). Las Manitas ("Avenue Cafe") with their undeserved boost from the city and Jezebel, proudly serving foie gras...even for dessert. I've made my choice. I used to dine at Las Manitas occasionally and encouraged outlanders to try it for the local flavor and possible celebrity sighting. No more. I'll be eating foie gras down the street, even if I have to elbow some protesters.

I'm wondering, too, about the unintended consequences of the other movements. Where will the displaced long distance truckers and water bottling plant employees get jobs? While I try to buy locally made groceries from time to time, will sales of some things be adversely affected? Long term these movements do good. With the exception of the foie gras thing. I just wish they force fed ducks nearer to home. (Methinks they use ducks, not geese, these days. At least in the U.S.)

Tuna, I think, is the subject of much controversy, too. We are fishing them into extinction or something. But doesn't that plate of seared tuna look good? And if we are to truly eat locally wouldn't that really limit the fish we'd have in Central Texas? I love fish. It's supposed to be good for me. Locally we might get some catfish. A questionable bottom feeder that seems best fried.

Yeah. Eating has consequences. And it's political. But I think perhaps unintended consequences abound.

Trans Fat in Bulk

See this package? It is a three pack of tubes of cookies. I love these cookies and occasionally get them at Central Market or some place fancy like that. I don't like a lot of sweets. But I like these. Tangy and sweet, ginger and lemon. Yum.

I try not to buy them because then I will eat them.

So I was surprised and delighted and dismayed all at once to see a multi-pack at Costco. And cheap, too. Of course. I even had a discussion in the aisle with a perfect stranger about how good these cookies were.

I didn't resist.

Friday night I went to a wine tasting. I managed not to eat a lot of the rare tuna apps and such other goodies and had some nice tastes of wine but not too much drinking. But when I got home, I decided to have a little something else to eat with my coffee. (Yeah, coffee at night. That's another story.) I remembered these cookies. And I ate way too many of them. Yikes.

I went to bed Friday night thinking I shouldn't have eaten so many. But when I got up Saturday I felt fine. I showered, went for a haircut, talked to the barber a while and drank coffee. I went to the gym and did a long hard bike ride to nowhere. When I was lifting weights, however, I felt a little unwell. Dizzy. Nauseated. I went home. I felt a little fragile. It was lunch time. I rarely eat breakfast. So I had spinach salad with green onions, carrots, Craisins and shredded cheese and some feta dressing. And a bunch of water. Gradually I felt worse.

I lost my lunch. I blamed the cookies.

Now this is ironic. A perfectly OK lunch. But I couldn't keep it down. I'm never going to be a good bulimic person if I toss the stuff that's part of a good diet. And keep down the cookies that turn out to have trans fat in addition to many calories.

By Sunday I was much better. By Monday I was cured of the cookies. Of course, it might have been something else. Even a bug. I hear raw oysters from the Texas Gulf Coast are making people sick. But I haven't eaten raw oysters in a few weeks.

And I like to blame it on the cookies.