It happens every year about this time.
When I’m asleep, someone sneaks into the bedroom and switches all my clothes for a size smaller, then removes the perfectly good mirror hanging on the wall and replaces it with one of those funhouse mirrors that make you look fatter than you really are.
I’m not making this up. And, to be clear, it has nothing to do with Christmas cake.
I don’t know who these people are or why this is their idea of a good time. All I know is that I have to go on a diet every year so I don’t have to go naked. Which, if the funhouse mirror is any indication, would not be pretty.
There was a time “going on a diet” was simple and involved cottage cheese. Then that wasn’t good enough and you had to have non-fat cottage cheese. Now, according to the latest nutritional science, cottage cheese is a no-no, as dairy products are linked to cancer, heart disease, irritable bowel syndrome and Dutch elm disease.
Don’t take my word for it. The head of the Harvard School of Public Health says it’s “udderly ridiculous” for the USDA Food Pyramid to recommend three glasses of milk a day, and more than implies that the new improved Pyramid, revised just last year, is as much a result of intense lobbying by the National Dairy Council and other food pressure groups as it is a product of nutrition science.
These guys play for keeps. Who can forget that the beef industry sued Oprah when she announced she was giving up red meat because it’s bad for you (not to mention what it does to the cow)? And when they’re not trying to herd Oprah, they’re trying to get ketchup and fries declared daily servings of fruits and vegetables.
So if you can’t trust the Food Pyramid, who can you trust? These days, if you believe nutritional gurus such as Michael Pollan (“Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”) it’s not enough to watch the cupcakes for a few weeks, you have to be born again, with vegetables.
The poster boy for the lifelong-mostly-plants-no-cheating-no-fun diet is none other than good old Bill Clinton who never met a Krispy Kreme or an intern he didn’t like. Until he had heart-bypass surgery.
Have you seen him lately? America’s First Vegan has come out the other side of the funhouse mirror and looks more like Lance Armstrong than the Pillsbury Doughboy.
If Bill Clinton can change his evil ways, anyone can.
So hallelujah and pass the garbanzos. These are gonna be my salad days, whether I like it or not.
