Read Online Does This Taste Funny? A Half-Baked Look at Food and Foodies by Michael Dane - Free Book Online Page A

you’re a ‘Torahvore!’ I got a
million of ‘em!
    Of course, in addition
to vegetarians, there are vegans and then there are ‘ fruit arians,’ who I
can only imagine are even more  judgmental than vegans.
    And if the only animals
you eat are seafood, I believe that makes you a ‘pesceterian,’ although maybe
the ‘Pescetarians’ are a religious cult devoted to annoying people. Or a
fanatical group that worships Joe Pesci.
    I have trouble keeping
track of what I’m supposed to eat. There’s always some new healthy grain or
super-fruit or must-have amino acid. Then we hear that something that was
healthy suddenly has been declared borderline toxic.
    I think, decades from
now, the scientific community is going to make the following announcement:
    “Since everybody is different, our recommendation is that you eat you want. If
it smells good, and tastes good, and you don’t know anyone who’s gotten sick
from it, then by all means have some. Try not to have not too much of one
thing.”
    At this point, I figure
I’m as qualified as anyone to toss out diet suggestions. So, if the either of
the following diets work for you, great!

 
    THE LEXICOGRAVORE DIET
    First, assign a letter,
in order, to each day of the month. You only are allowed on a given date to eat
foods that start with that date’s letter. So, on the first of the month, you
can eat apricots, artichokes, avocado . . . for day two you’ve got your bacon,
maybe some blueberries, even brisket!
    After day twenty-six,
you can eat what you want until the first of the month, when it’s back to
arugula, or maybe alligator. Also, on day twenty-four, you can eat what you
want because no foods start with ‘x.’
    THE CARTOGRAVORE DIET
    Get out your placemat
with the big map of the U.S. on it, because, on this diet, you will only be
able to eat official state foods, and you’ll be eating them in the order the
states were admitted to the Union!
    On day one, how about
carving up Delaware’s state bird and enjoying some blue hen? Sure, it’s their
state bird , not their state food, but if you cook it right . . . Day two
is cheesesteak, and you might want to fill up on it, because for New Jersey’s
day, all you get is a tomato.
    The rest of your first week includes Georgia grits
(technically their official state ‘prepared dish’), but plan ahead, because
Connecticut has no state food, so on day five, you don’t eat at all. Just be
careful on day seventeen, because too much Ohio pawpaw probably isn’t good for anybody.
    ----
    The creepily named
‘Center for Science in the Public Interest’ recently put together a list of the
ten healthiest foods.
    Sadly, none of them are
pastries. Fans of butternut squash, though (you know who you are) should feel
vindicated.
    Every few years we find
out something is bad for you that we thought was just fine. It was easier to be
healthy when I was younger, because we didn’t know as much!
    “Why,
when I was your age we only had ONE kind of cholesterol, and we weren’t sure
whether it was good or bad for you!”
    Let’s be honest. We all
have a vague idea of what ‘healthy’ is, but we crave the crap. And to me,
that’s part of a balanced diet, too.
    But if I’m gonna eat
something I KNOW is bad for me, I don’t need to find out HOW bad. I’ve never
understood why, for example, Hostess would bother to list ‘nutritional
information’ for their ‘fruit’ pies.

    I
guess it’s useful to know that if you eat one, you’ll get two percent of the
calcium and four percent of the phosphorus you should be getting in your daily diet.
    Hey,
if my math is correct, that means that if you eat twenty-five pies a day,
you’ll get all the phosphorus you need!
    What
I love most about that picture is that it refers to “real fruit pie” (there’s
even a picture of real fruit to prove it).
    Yet, if you look
closely at the wrapper, the food wizards at Hostess realized it still needed to
be “artificially flavored.” I