Health, Organic and Hygiene - Part 1 Health

Unhealthy: ‘causing or conducive to poor health / unwholesome / of a risky nature’ (from The Free Dictionary by Farlex); ‘in poor health / no conducive to health’ (from The Oxford Dictionary). There is no mention to fat whatsoever.

I have to say I’m kind of tired of seeing ad campaigns and inevitably, within a short time, hearing those who have jumped on the bandwagon, saying, for example, ‘sausages are unhealthy’ and even ‘olive oil has to be avoided!’’ It may be better to say that too many sausages and too much olive oil can be fattening, and that an unvaried diet can clog your arteries, leading to heart attacks and other scary things. The point lays precisely in the words themselves; fat is not unhealthy but too much of it definitely is. You add a little adverb and everything changes, including people’s thoughts and eventually the market as well. Let’s get something straight, I’m not against eating lighter. Everyone is free to eat whatever they like, but give me a break big brother!
I think the situation is getting out of order. If you fancy a sausage more, or a stuffed pork loin, you may be pointed at as an unhealthy person. Yes sir, because now more than ever you are what you eat and you may feel different somehow from others who eat lighter, but perhaps not necessary healthier, foods than you. Probably the same people who use spray oil and no fat cheese but then drink tanks of fizzy drinks and munch buckets of crisps, just because the drinks are “zero sugar” and the crisps have “less salt than ever!.”
Sometimes I’m really scared that we’re going to end up with the eating habits of characters in sci-fi movies such as Demolition Man or The Island, where everything is laboratory made and has in it no food-stuff that has ever seen the light of day, yet contains the perfect amount of salt, protein and fat for our own well being. This is a scary vision of the future.
I understood then, that the issue is the fat and not the health. People don’t want to cook with butter, yet drink things that contain no natural products whatsoever. Have you ever watched the video of the experiment made with sweets, coke or some other fizzy drinks?

But the blame has to be taken by the media, TV, newspapers and magazines. It seems there’s a crusade against fat, salt and cholesterol (actually there is); take it easy guys, listening to you makes it feel like fat is more dangerous than the virus chased by Dustin Hoffman in Outbreak. The brain washing carried on by all the media can even be considered fascist, they warn us we are disgusting if we eat all that fat; we are constantly under the attack of advertisers that say ‘eat healthier’ (when they actually mean ‘eat lighter’), and then anytime we visit the supermarket we always try to buy the “healthier” version of the product; products that inevitably cost more than the fuller fat option.
So we have cheese with “only” 2% fat, no fat yoghurt, ‘be good to yourself’ products, Weight Watchers and so on. They show on the label the percentage of fat but what about how healthy the product is in comparison with the original (which people ate for centuries)? They can never say how early you’re going to die if you drink full fat milk or if you eat a steak with the fat still clinging to the edges.
These days it seems that the supermarket only has room for “healthier” products and this puts the classic products further and further into the corner. So in the future when fat will most likely be banned or perhaps criminalised you could be spotted straight away sneaking a fat product from the little corner where the traditional food eaten for centuries has been squeezed into.
I work for a catering company, and a couple of years ago due to all the campaigning around health issues, ‘less mayo’ sandwiches were launched. So this customer walks into the shop and after he saw that all the food had less mayo he asked me, “excuse me are all your sandwiches less mayo, mayo free or whatever?” and I reply “yes sir we’ve just launched this new range of lighter products. You know with all this talk about fat and junk food….” He interrupted me saying, “Yes I know, but what about people who like more mayo in the sandwiches?” He was right. Big Time.
Why do they only advertise light products? What if I want a fatter cheese? What if I want the milk so fatty and creamy than you’d need to slice it rather than pour it? What if I want to be mean to myself, sometimes? Why would I buy pork mince meat with less than 2% fat? The pigs are fattened before being killed, so basically you fatten the pig and then you take the fat off. Well done idiot! But perhaps the pigs are actually size 0. Who knows! But do we want to have some respect for the animals that have died for our own sustenance and pleasure; if they (the animals) knew that all the fat, and therefore the goodness they had, was eventually taken off, they would probably be on hunger strike before long. We’re showing no respect whatsoever to them and to the farmers who work to fatten the animal.
Do we want to find a conspiracy in all of this? Yes? Right, listen to this: what if Supermarkets used health as excuse to sell more expensive products? They advertise, “Don’t eat fat or you’ll burn in hell you fat bastard” but “eat our new range of products with only 2% of fat, -10% of flavour and 25% more in price. Isn’t it a bargain?” Yeah you twat, you’re fattening the wallet of the supermarket.

Personal health is what all of us care about the most. It’s the same old story; we are constantly bombarded with information about what food is healthy and what is unhealthy until we convince ourselves that we are all sinners and that eating that loin stuffed with herbs, butter and garlic is almost certainly a free pass to a premature death. Think about it. If all the campaigns were about fat instead of health it wouldn’t have had the same impact. I don’t need a doctor to tell me that eating burgers everyday makes me fatter, but the supermarkets use our health to sell lighter products. However, these products are lighter only in calories. Light food was made originally for people who want to be in shape, for those who needed to be on diet, so not for all customers. Now everybody wants to be good to themselves. So the bigger the audience the higher the earning power of the supermarket. I think it is all psychological; if the range “be good to yourself”, was called “keep yourself in shape” or “don’t get fatter you pig”, the product would have been ignored by most people but not the ones on a diet, who lie outside the subject of this post. Because at the end of the day we don’t mind gaining a little bit of weight due to consuming some fat in excess as long as the food is good, but everyone wants to be healthy. Hence brainwashing by the media plus adding a funky name equals buying “be good to yourself”, equals slimmer in shape but more so in wallet. And this is another issue; can anyone tell me why lighter products cost more than others? If the fat is taken off, if you add less salt than before and the product contains actually less substance, shouldn’t it be cheaper? I know that probably the industrial process used in order to get rid of the fat is probably more complicated (we’re not sure anyway) and expensive, but who asked you to do that? People have eaten these foods for years and those who wanted managed to get in shape even without these overpriced products. Top models and pin-ups girls don’t eat these foods anyway, vegetarians ditto and vegans would probably blow supermarkets up if they could.

You see my point is that health and fat do not always go together. I know that too much fat is unhealthy but a little is so good, and isn’t it better to eat a little of tasty food than a lot of plain boring tasteless stuff?
Somebody once said that we only live twice, but he or she must have been drunk, because I can tell you it’s officially proven that we only live once. So make the most of it!

You only live twice,

Or so it seems.

One life for your self,

And one for your dreams.

You drift through the years,

And life seems tame….

So you can enjoy your life and also dream about being good to yourself and buying lots of “healthy” products.
If you like a further reading about the subject try ‘Fat’ by Rob Grant
Now talking about fat here I suggest a recipe which will destroy the efforts you did in the past three months in order to loose weight.

CASTAGNACCIO (chestnut cake)

Ingredients (for a 24cm baking tray):

250gr chestnut flour

250gr water

50gr sultana

30gr pine kernel

Method:

In a bowl dissolve the flour in the water, a pinch a salt and a tbsp of olive oil. Allow to rest at least one hour. Meanwhile soften the sultana in a little water. Pour the mix in the baking tray and add the sultana and pine kernel over the surface. The mix has to have a density that doesn’t let the sultana drawn completely. Put in the oven at 180°C for about 30 min or until the surface is dark and cracked