Whatever you do, don't believe an atom; they make up everything! I love that!
Now I thought that I'd be serious today; what d'you mean by 'it makes a change'? The western industrialised nations appear to be obsessed with diet, food fads, what's good for you or bad for you and what you should do to remain healthy by eating a (so-called) balanced diet. So while half the planet doesn't get enough to eat or hasn't access to fresh, potable water, you, who make up the reletively rich, worry about you whether you should pursue the 'F-Plan', the 'Atkins', the 'Gluten-Free', the 'Dairy-Free', the 'Vegan' or even, if push comes to shove, the 'Breatherian'.
It is plain to me, sitting down on my little patch of ice nursing my egg, that there are many of you who are just way too fat and some of you stretch the bounds of the 'pathologically obese'; what's that character in Blade who is so obese that he/she/it can't rise from her bed? You don't have to go without food for four months every year, my excuse, so why do you insist on taking in far more calories than you can usefully use? And having gone down that road, assume that 'this diet' or 'that diet' will get you out of the hole that you have dug for yourselves?
All things in moderation, said Epicurius. But people, he didn't meant it as literally as the nay-sayers would have you believe. He didn't mean a little of what does you harm, can do good or, at least, no harm. He didn't mean that shooting up heroin or snorting coke, in moderation, would do some good; or at least no harm. He didn't mean that bestiality in moderation was good or eating magic mushrooms, in moderation, could be beneficial. What he meant was; nothing to excess! Epicurius was, inter alia and at best, dealing with a limited range of foodstuffs; beans, legumes, cereals, meat (not often). Whatever the ancient Greeks could grow and husband. Most of them, that were not slaves, were a kind of gentleman/soldier/farmer. In the context of ancient Greece, nothing to excess makes perfect sense. Too much of anything, including water, is likely to damage and, no doubt, Epicurius knew that, albeit pragmatically. Was it Pythagorus who said 'steer clear of beans!'? Yes, an excess of beans will play havoc with a human intestinal tract but that's no reason to not eat beans in moderation! The Roman plebs practically lived on a diet of lentils!
There are people who have genuine, discernible intolerances to some foodstuffs. Much of East Asia is lactose intolerant as adults, which is considered to be the normal human reaction. Only the preponderance of cattle and sheep domestication and farming in Europe over the last ten thousand years has made the Europeans and their descendents in the Americas partially lactose tolerant as adults. There are people who have certain conditions which certain foods exacerbate; ceoliac disease being the most widely known. But really; gluten intolerance in a third of the US population according to a recent survey? Get outta here!
The reality of all of this is that 'we' as a species evolve due to a complex set of interactions between supply and demand to favour the food that our bodies require. Me, I evolved to digest fish (and lots of it) and to lay down fat. I aslo evolved the propensity to eat far more than my daily calorific requirements in order that my body would lay down, as it is natural, any excess as fat, which I could draw on in the bleak, Antarctic winter; it is the prime reason why we survive in the environment that we live as a species. A King Penguin would not last three weeks here during the winter.
So humans evolved to eat a wide variety of foods; much like their ape ancestors. (Chimps ocaasionally eat meat, mostly murdered monkeys; just ask Jane Goodall.) But, and it is a very big but, humans evolved in an environment in which food was energy-expensive to come by and, as a consequence, most of the energy expended in looking for, and hunting for, food was taken up by the energy which the food provided. Ergo few active people got fat. Nowadays, this does not apply. Once per week, you go to the supermarket in your SUV, you wander around at a leisurely pace filling your basket or trolley and then you go back to your home in your SUV. I doubt that you expend more than 200 calories of your expected 14,000 per week! Is it any wonder that you, as a society, are clinically obese!.
(I hereby apologise to all those who go regularly to the gym or the swimming pool on a regular basis to burn off your excess calories; you are regettably in the minority)
So, penguin; know-it-all. What's your answer, I hear you say!
Simple; educate the young!
My personal contact with humans is limited to a certain degree but MG, at 60, remains remarkably thin; if not toned. He is pretty much the weight he was at 21 and still sports a 29" waist, which he deems to be significant . (You can allow that as much weight as you choose.) What he says is this: I was brought up in 'just-about- post-austerity' Britain. We didn't have much and you learnt as a child to eat, however unpalatable it might have seemed, what was given. (Although he admits to the occasional sugar sandwich; or rarely, all too rarely, a banana and sugar sandwich.) Crisps (potato chips to you yankees) were not to be had until he was eleven and 'cordon bleu' cooking with copious quantites of butter (read fat) did not happen until he was seventeen or eigtheen, and then only by chance, when he first tasted 'real' food as purveyed by Michel and Albert Roux.
As a result of this, poverty by any of today 's 'western' standards, MG grew up with a concept of, what might be termed today, a healthy and balanced diet. And as a conequence, this has never left him. He still partakes of the occasional meat dish fried in '100% fat butter', still partakes of restaurant food occasionally which he knows to be grossly unhealthly. (But it tastes so good!) However it is in moderation people; once a month, twice a month; not to excess.
As hard as it may seem, get your young kids to eat vegetables and fruit. Get them to treat McDonalds, Pizza Hut and KFC as pariahs or 'once a month', treats and give them the arguments as why they are or, at least, as you perceive them to be; too much fat. Encourage them to do sport or some leisure activity like cycling which do not involve them sitting in front of the 'boob-tube' or texting their friends on Facebook. Get them to eat other cuisines, however much they SAY they don't like them; they seldom do not like 'it'. I have forgotten the numbers of children that have said: I don't like Chinese, Italian, Spanish, French, North African and end up liking it! Get them to encompass a balanced diet; one that embraces meat, fish, legumes, vegetables, fruit; your ancestral diet. And slowly wean them off meat; not to the exclusion of meat, just get them to believe that every meal doesn't have to possess great, hulking bovine, ovine or porcine wedges of it! And that one should rise from the table satiated not stuffed to overflowing! And while I am on a roll; cut out the sugar-laden drinks too. Messrs Coca and Cola have a lot to answer for when it comes to childhood obesity!
I know that it is difficult in these materialistic times when both parents work all day and time for food preparation is at a minimum; it is easier to phone out or get some form of 'ready-meal' that's over-burdened with too much salt (but that's another issue for another time) but realistically you owe it to your children not to make the same mistakes you all too clearly did.
Yeah, I know; it's not going to happen.
But, then again, maybe it might be Kansas after all! We can only hope.
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