August 1978: Lowering Your Nutrition Consciousness

I’ve had it with this nation’s nutritionists, that rather large, amorphous mass of disingenuous intellects who would have us believe that everything we eat is garbage, that eating-out is hazardous to our health, who would love to legislate what we should eat even to the point of having the Government subsidize the crops farmers farm so that they’re not burdened with a surplus of bad food. (Be that as it may, here’s what I think vis-à-vis our trade balance: before the USDA imposes any crop subsidy, wouldn’t it make sense to first evaluate global food needs to find out how much of an export market exists for bad food. Just a thought.) 

Proposals proposed by nutritionists at hearings before Congressional committees (especially before the now defunct Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs) border on the harebrained. They are, to boot, illegal. Let me put it this way: my tummy is my temple; and if I wish to desecrate it by feeding it potato chips and Pepsi only, that’s my business, not the Government’s, and I’d rather appreciate their keeping their crummy bureaucratic mitts off of my body; and, instead, concentrating on the important stuff like loans to farmers who want to convert all or a portion of their farms to income-producing recreational enterprises. Check it out, go to p. 112 of the U.S. Gov’t Manual.

No thanks.

I think it’s dandy that the Government thinks enough about me to tell me what and how to eat (keep my elbows off the table; don’t talk with my mouth full—that sort of thing), but the minute it restricts my choices and orders me to eat this and that, to give up thus and so, to balance this with that (or else), I recoil. A national nutritional council, I find commendable (as commendable as the president’s Council on Physical Fitness: it never insisted everybody exercise; it merely recommended it as a spiffy way to keep fit), but a national nutrition law, I find repulsive. The Government telling me what to eat is as serious a violation of my freedom as its telling me what to write.

I have watched nutritionists soar to dizzying heights of rhetoric as they condemn as junk the food sold by fast food restaurants, yet the same people blissfully approve—relevant digression follows—the school-feeding programs of Len Fredrick, food director, Clark County School System, Las Vegas. I believe he won a special award (something called the Silver Plate) from the International Foodservice Manufacturers Association for his resourcefulness.

Let me explain. Fredrick, upset because students were throwing away Type A lunches (don’t ask), offered instead fortified hamburgers, cheeseburgers, tacos, fried chicken, sloppy joes, french fries and milkshakes. The kids ate it up. All of a sudden, ersatz fast food was good for them. And if it was good for them at school what could possibly be wrong with eating it all the time wherever the real stuff was sold. Nobody told them it was wrong. They didn’t know the difference. They were kids.

Fredrick, pleased as punch that his program is in the black, has accomplished little more than to encourage bad eating habits among kids; and has set back considerably the cause of nutrition education. Which is not by the way, to imply that Whoppers and Extra Crispy Chicken are bad for you. It is to imply, however, that a steady diet of Whoppers and Extra Crispy Chicken (or what have you) is. As we pointed out years ago, “If we were a nation of fast food eaters only, the incidence of malnutrition would be epidemic.”

I think the reasonings of nutritionists are unreasonable, their findings unfounded, their pronouncements unclear, their articulations muddled, their goals misguided. For example: nutritionists, with the support of Government agencies and Congressional committees, blame soaring costs of medical care on poor eating habits; suggest that if we were a nation of happy eaters, medical costs would drop. That’s the kind of logic that gave us Watergate, folks; and is typical of many of the sweeping syllogisms voiced by nutritionists.

There is no doubt in my mind that restaurants serve good food and nutritious meals—far better than what most of us eat at home. You show me a restaurant that serves Spaghetti-o’s and Froot Loops and I’ll show you a restaurant that serves home cooking.

Finally, if what the nutritionists say about us is true—that we are a nation of sloppy eaters—then who in the name of everything that is sane is eating the tons and tons of onions, scallions, and leeks; avocados, artichokes, and asparagus; apples and apricots, breads and cereals; mangoes, papayas and pineapples; kumquats and cucumbers; okra and oranges; peas and peaches; parsnips and parsley; beans (lima, navy, black, soy, string, kidney, and garbanzo); cabbages and corn; grapes and grapefruit; lentils and lettuce; peppers and pecans; beets and tomatoes; potatoes and peanuts; coconuts and cantaloupes; broccoli and Brussels sprouts? Who’s eating all of that iron, protein, thiamin, riboflavin, calcium, niacin, phosphorous, magnesium, zinc, vitamins A, B (6 and 12), C, D. and E?

For the answers to these and other gripping questions, stay tuned.
Fruit plate: Voyagerix

Footnote: Coming up next week, a change of mind and heart: Separating the Wheat from the Shaft.