I can't get that book title, Skinny Bitch (a No-Nonsense, Tough-Love Guide for Savvy Girls Who Want to Stop Eating Crap and Start Looking Fabulous!), out of my head. Behind the glib, marketing-friendly title are some unpleasant, not-so subliminal messages: Women who are slim, either through nature or nurture, are malignant forces but still, we should aspire to be like them. You will only ever look fabulous if you are skinny. You are stupid if you can't stop eating crap (junk food) or, indeed, any other calorie-laden food. You are stupid if you aren't skinny. And will we have to wear corsets again to achieve a waist like that in the book's cover illustration? I wonder what my opinionated friend John Newton, a terrific Sydney-based food writer and author, might have to say about the title. My guess is that any thoughts John might offer would draw on those contained in an article he wrote for Australia's Divine magazine, which he has kindly allow me to reprint here and in which he outlines Newton's Lifetime 'Diet'.
10 Ways to Turn Meal Times Back into Good Times
by John Newton
Why are we so confused about food? Why is food becoming a problem to be solved, and not a pleasure to be enjoyed? I blame those pesky nutritionists. Since nutrition became a science just over a hundred years ago, its practitioners, nutritionists, have been making us frightened to put things in our mouths.
Food historian Harvey Levenstein, author of Paradox of Plenty, A Social History of Eating in Modern America, tells us that one of the first edicts from the gloomy prophets of this new pseudo-science was to advise the poor to stop wasting their money on expensive fruit and vegetables. That was just before the discovery of the importance of vitamins, after which vitamins became the miracle ingredients, and were added to everything, particularly breakfast cereals: the manufacturing process strips them from the grain, so they get sprayed on again along the production line.
More recently we’ve been told salt’s good for you, salt’s bad for you. Eat oat bran, wait, don’t eat oat bran. Fat good for you, fat bad for you. Carbs good, carbs bad. And every day, there are more and more restrictions and proscriptions, the latest being high GI and low GI. The Glycemic Index (GI) measures how fast a food is likely to raise your blood sugar, so it’s a very useful tool for diabetics. But why should the rest of us complicate our lives with it?
No wonder we’re scared and confused. But I’m here to tell you it’s not hard. There is but one simple rule to take with you to the market and the table.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FOOD THAT’S
GOOD FOR YOU OR BAD FOR YOU.
THERE IS GOOD FOOD. AND BAD FOOD.
So how do you tell good food from bad food? Simple. Good food is fresh, unfiddled with, familiar, traditional (to some culture somewhere) – and enjoyable. But let me provide you with 10 highly idiosyncratic and occasionally scientifically unsubstantiated and politically incorrect guidelines for eating well in the 21st Century – 10 ways to turn meal times back into good times.
1. You don’t need a degree in nutrition to know that margarine is bad food. Why would you spread a slice of handmade bread with vegetable oils that have been degummed, neutralised with alkalis (caustic soda for example), bleached, hydrogenated to solidify them, then further bleached, filtered and deodorised before having preservatives, emulsifiers and vitamins added? I happen to have seen it made, and that’s enough to turn anyone off. It’s not just bad food, it’s ugly food.
If you must spread your bread with fat, what’s wrong with butter or extra virgin olive oil? If you really do have a cholesterol problem, then don’t use anything – especially margarine.
And for cooking, butter and EVOO are natural and full of flavour. Margarine isn’t.
2. Avoid ‘lite’ and ‘fat-free food’. Fat carries flavour. This mantra should be borne in mind by anyone who cares about food. Not only do many flavour-bearing molecules dissolve only in fat, but other flavoursome dry foods are more effectively assimilated by our taste mechanisms when mixed with fat. Food without fat falls flat.
And fat is necessary for human health and intelligence. In his book Brainfood, Dr Jean-Marie Bourre writes “ it’s primarily a balanced and appropriate supply of fatty acids that defends the brain against toxic, immunological, and viral attacks, and that prevents premature aging”
3. Fat doesn’t make you fat. Too much food makes you fat. But too many bad fats can make you very sick. Think of chips swimming soggily in the deep fryer, the fryer filled with oil that has been used over and over again. That is bad fat. That doesn’t mean don’t eat chips, ever. It just means don’t eat them every day, or eat only chips you cook at home, fried in fresh extra virgin olive oil (yes – try it).
Fat doesn’t make you fat (2). Some years ago I interviewed Dr Ron Bowrey, then director of research and development at Meadlowlea, the margarine manufacturer. I interviewed him for a story I wrote on food technology. Dr Bowrey was uncomfortable in his role as the promoter of ‘functional’ and ‘low fat’ foods, claiming that his company was “only giving people what they want.” Meadlowlea had just then launched an Omega 3 margarine which, Dr Bowring admitted, was a token gesture, saying that the only way to get adequate supplies of Omega 3 was from fish. It was Dr Bowrey who pointed out that, while the levels of obesity in Australians have been increasing over the past 10 years, the amount of fat in our diet has been decreasing. “It’s lifestyle that makes you fat rather than fat itself” he concluded. But that’s not something you can add to margarine.
Too much fat is bad for you. But so is too much water. And while we’re on the subject of fat …
4. Diets make you fat. Unless you are under the care of a physician for a specific problem, don’t diet. How on earth can I say this? Because only fat people diet. When first I tapped the word ‘diet’ into Google mid 2004, I scored 3,840,000 pages. In February 2005, there were 60,500,000; in October 2005, 80,000,000. In March of 2006 – 255,000,000, April the same year – 273,000,000 Try it for yourself.
Most of those pages emanate from the land with the largest number of fat people on the planet. I don’t want to drown you in figures, but at last count, roughly 39 million Americans – that’s 30 per cent of the population – were classed as obese, including 25 per cent under the age of 19. As the numbers of diets increase, so does the number of fatties. Australia is shaping up really well, with 67 per cent of Australian males and 52 per cent of females overweight or obese. Even the French Paradox is turning into the French Problem as those wine-swilling, butter-gobbling frogs turn to Le Big Mac. A survey of 22,550 French people aged 15 and over, carried out by opinion pollsters Sofres, has discovered that since 2000, the number of obese people has risen from 9.6% of the population to 11.3%. Because they’re eating Bad Food.
It seems that the more we diet, the fatter we get. What works? If body image is an issue for you, follow Newton’s Lifetime Diet. Enjoy eating reasonable portions of good food prepared by human beings with love and skill. But also consider the following.
5. Don’t worry about being fat – unless you’re really fat. The notion that fat is a disease is being challenged. There is a substantial body of evidence to refute the idea that obesity, in and of itself, kills. Obesity, this theory goes, is not a disease.
Most recently, on the ABC’s Health Report (March 2006), Dr Katherine Flegal, senior research scientist at the US National Centre for Health Statistics reported the results of a study of 38,000 people with a 30-year follow up, the most recent survey which she said showed “no relationship between weight and mortality at all … what we can say from our results is that we don’t think that obesity is associated with as many deaths in the United Stares as previously estimated.”
Below are a few statistics from Dale Atrens’ book, The Power of Pleasure; Why Indulgence Is Good for you and Other Palatable Truths offered without comment.
• A German study of 6000 grossly obese older men and women found that there was no increase in mortality in those with BMIs (Body Mass index, a measure of height and body weight, 18-25 is considered ‘normal’) up to 32. Even in those with BMIs of 33-44 (well into so called ‘morbid obesity’) the health liability was relatively modest.
• A Honolulu Heart Program followed a group of 4000 elderly Japanese American men for an average of 4.5 years. Compared to the men with the lowest BMIs’ those with the highest BMIs were half as likely to die.
• A similar study of elderly white women in Maryland showed thin women who weight cycled (lost and gained weight regularly) or who lost weight were four times as likely to die.
• And for all you dieters – Most evidence suggests that weight loss increases mortality.
5. Avoid food made by corporations. This is where I get into trouble. But it is a central tenet of my case. Corporations make profits, individuals make food. The hamburger made by my mate at The Spot down the road is a hamburger, the bun is toasted, the patty made by Patty as it turns out, who also shreds the lettuce and slices the onions. It is a thing of beauty. It is good food – again, as long as I don’t live on burgers.
That thing you buy from Maccas in any one of it’s two trillion outlets around the planet is a unit of profit. SIX MILLION SOLD! shriek the signs. No thanks.
Good food is made by human beings who want you to enjoy the fruits of their labours.
And good food is grown by farmers who care about the earth too much to use pesticides, herbicides or GM seeds.
6. Don’t eat any food with a list of ingredients as long as a short story. You buy a bottle of tomato sauce, you want tomatoes that have been crushed, maybe with a bit of salt – or if you’re that way inclined, sugar. Do you really want to eat alpha-cyclodextrin? Or octanoic acid or a cotton genetically modified to be resistant to cotton bollworm, pink bollworm and tobacco budworm? All of these approved by the food police for use in our food – not by Patty down at the Spot, but by the food giants.
7. Eat fresh food in season that grows near where you live. Why would anyone want to eat a Mexican mango in the middle of winter? First, they cost the earth (in more ways than one – to the price of the produce add the cost of fuel to bring them here); second they’re never as good as local mangoes and third – you eat mangoes in season, you gorge on them, you get sick of them then you wait a year for the next season. And finally, food in season is cheaper.
And not just fruit. Fish and seafood also have seasons. School prawns in Summer. Oysters – as a general rule of thumb, Sydney rock oysters from the north in summer, from the south in winter (different seasons apply for Pacifics – check with your fishmonger).
8. If you eat meat, check its pedigree. For a variety of ethical and health reasons, us omnivores have to put a little research into the meat we eat. No, we don’t have BSE (mad cow disease) in Australia – I hesitate to say yet – but there are chemicals and additives in many meat products best avoided. For example, it’s still legal in Australia to feed antibiotics to chickens routinely – not just when they’re sick. Debate rages about the possible side effects of this practice. The chicken producers claim they are necessary to cure or prevent disease, promote (or hasten) growth – or a combination of all three. But concerns have been raised over this level of antibiotic usage globally. Some believe that it may contribute to the development of resistance to antibiotics administered to treat human diseases.
Did you know that growth hormones are routinely given to cattle and pigs: bovine somatotropin (BST) and porcine somatotropin (PST) respectively? These hormones – the animal equivalent of the steroids used illegally by athletes to boost their muscles and their performances – are fed to cattle and pigs so they grow faster, and get to market quicker. Again, there is a debate as to whether or not they are harmful to humans. Their use has been banned in Europe since 1993, but is permitted in America – and Australia. My view: let nature take its course. Why risk possible health problems for ourselves – and the animals we eat?
And then there are the ethical issues around such practices as lot feeding – cattle being fed grain and other supplements (in the case of BSE, animal scraps, long banned in Australia) instead of being allowed to roam free and eat pasture.
Where the menu proudly boasts ‘400 day grain fed Wagyu’, reflect on this. At between eight and 14 months of age, the young animals will be transferred from a paddock to a feed lot where they will spend the next 400 days eating grain instead of roaming freely in the paddock eating pasture. These are battery-reared animals – like caged chickens.
Apart from animal welfare issues, what are the other problems with lot feeding? First, cattle do not eat grain, they are ruminants, and the stomachs of ruminants are designed to digest grass. Eating grain can ruin their livers, affect their brains – at the very least it increases the E coli count in their guts around 80 times.
And is it not stupid and environmentally indefensible to feed an animal 7 kilograms of grain to produce 1 kilogram of flesh? Nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans.
How much water does it take to grow the grain to feed the cattle? Figures supplied by David Pimentel, professor of ecology at Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences show that grain-fed beef production takes 100,000 liters of water for every kilogram of food.
Apart from the ethical, environmental and health problems of lot feeding, pasture-fed beef tastes better. Cleaner, sweeter, and with no fat residue.
There is an easy way to enjoy your steak or chook without worrying about all these issues. Specify organic. Sure it costs more, but for the sake of the earth we should really be eating less but better meat. As the author of the River Cottage Meat Book, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall puts it, ‘pay twice as much money for half as much meat.’
9. Cook from scratch. If you feel like chicken tonight, buy an organic chook, stuff it, roast it with fresh local vegetables, make a gravy from the juicy fatty scrapings de-glazed with a slug of wine. If you feel like cake, get flour, water, butter and sugar and make one. Cooking is a joy and a stimulant to the appetite as well as a way of pleasing and honouring your family, friends and loved ones. Turn off Jamie Oliver, turn on the oven.
10. Enjoy. Finally, another excerpt from Brainfood: “…the pleasure of eating stimulates the body to a greater voracity for calories. In other words, sadly eating a piece of candy or a slice of bread and butter is more likely to lead to weight increase than enjoying the same food with liveliness, delectation, even excitement!”
