Christina Littlefield
Every single French fry has a gram of fat. Onion rings have four grams of fat each. A single Mother’s oatmeal cookie is right in between.
Don’t you hate it when people take a nutrition class and start telling you how bad your favorite foods really are?
I really didn’t need to know that there was a gram of fat in every McDonald’s French fry. It’s not that I ever thought they were healthy, I just didn’t know how bad they were. But now I am in “Introduction to Nutrition” and going to Mickey D’s would be like consciously killing me slowly.
I didn’t purposely choose to take this class. A science laboratory is a general education requirement. I opted not to take “Science as a Way of Graduating” for the same reason I didn’t take Math 210 (aka math for creative writing majors): just because I use the right side of my brain more doesn’t mean the left side is inept.
So here I am in nutrition.
Lesson No. 1 was that all the nutrition hoopla peddled by the media is a load of … well, you get the picture. Many of the fad diets promoted by movie stars and models not only don’t work, but are dangerous. Staying on the infamous Atkin’s diet (high protein, minimal carbohydrates) for longer than two weeks at a time can cause permanent heart damage or lead to ammonia poisoning from excess nitrogen in the meat.
The diet also has the duplicate side effects of both constipation and diarrhea because the human body simply can’t process that much protein.
Still, the desire to get fit quick has led to a $15 billion industry for supplements alone. My usually intelligent brother actually bought into this quackery because he didn’t want to give up his diet of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Dairy Queen. He swore the Colonel “puts a secret ingredient in his chicken that makes ya’ crave it fortnightly.”
He spent tons of money on these pills that were supposed to absorb all of the fat in one’s diet if taken before a meal so he could continue to patronize the Colonel.
He gained twice as much weight as he wanted to lose.
My brother eventually realized the error of his ways on that supposed wonder drug, but he still practically funds the health industry on his own because “anything written in Men’s Health has to be true.”
Yet I too always dreamed of some magic pill that could just melt the fat away. Nutrition just shatters those delusions.
An old cliché is that knowledge is power. Most of the time I would agree. Except in this case, knowledge is annoying. For me, learning about nutrition is like putting a padlock on my mouth.
I went to Denny’s with a friend late one night this past week and realized the only healthy thing on the menu was an English muffin — toasted, no butter.
Most likely I will “format the disk” of everything I learn this semester and manage to forget enough of the nutrition knowledge that French fries and pizza are once again desirable.
In the meantime, hello carrot sticks.
January 31, 2002