Taking a Fat Chance
On Beef and Beer
Unfortunately, unlike movies and newspapers, which can rely on focus groups to determine their content, diets have to stick to those pesky scientific principles. This is inevitably disappointing to the would-be dieters who want TGIFridays Potato Skins Snack Chips to count as a vegetable.
Personally, I’d just about given up hope and was about to embark on a diet consisting solely of soy chunks and eight glasses of water a day, when I received an advertisement in the mail from a Dr. William Campbell Douglass II. In it, Dr. Douglass claims that a true healthy diet should consist of a lot of red meat and coffee, and that low cholesterol is bad.
I think I may love him.
Dr. Douglass is the editor of Real Health magazine, which is apparently devoted to debunking diet myths, such as the idea that consuming lots of soy, vegetables and water is good for you. It also enumerates the health value of foods traditionally considered unhealthy; for instance, he suggests you should drink four cups of coffee a day to reduce the risk of colon cancer. And to think, all this time I was doing it just for that bloated, jittery feeling.
Douglass also claims that red meat actually heals your arteries, and that low cholesterol can cause strokes. These concepts make up the basis for what he calls his "Eat Like a Human" diet, which seems to be assuming that the human in question is the guy who played Big Pussy on "The Sopranos."
Now, upon reading Douglass’ theories, a small part of me realizes the good doctor may be motivated less by his Hippocratic oath than by a desire to sell magazines. A much bigger part of me, however, wants to subscribe today, set fire to whatever broccoli I can find in my refrigerator and buy stock in Hardees.
But no sooner had I begun contemplating this dilemma than I received another magazine advertisement, this one from the publication All About Beer. It featured the headline "Beer and Your Health: Why You’re Better Off With Beer," and punctuated its point with a method common to many of the most reputable magazines: by showing an attractive blonde woman holding a beer approximately the size of her head.
Inside there was even more photographic proof of the health value of beer, including pictures of various athletes toting large carafes of dark lagers as they went about their healthy activities. As much as I wanted to believe this, I have to admit I was skeptical — I mean, golfing, sure, but mountain biking? What if you hit a log?
Then there was a picture of a man with a beer in one hand and three lemons in another. I can only assume this is to illustrate how beer makes you a better juggler. I suspect even Dr. Douglass would have a hard time with that one.
Far-fetched or no, the point is that people finally seem to be catching on to what will hopefully become a dieting truism: If you want someone to stick to a diet regimen, it should include all the stuff the person was eating and drinking anyway. Hence I’ve taken highlights from both magazines for my new diet, which consists only of items available at the Hilltop Steakhouse.
But I’m realistic — if it doesn’t work within 10 or 15 years, I’m going back to soy.