I recently read that coconut oil is
good for me. Or maybe it’s bad for me. To be honest, I don’t remember which it
was, but the article definitely had something to do with coconut oil and robust
health.
My memory is vague on the topic,
since I read about 30 articles a day dealing with that whole “good for you bad
for you” issue. It’s hard to keep them straight in my head, especially since
I’ve usually had a couple beers by the time I settle in for the evening’s
reading.
Yes, beer. Historically, bad for you.
Recent research, however, says otherwise. A couple beers, scientists who study
this sort of thing say, are actually good for the heart. This is why I love
science.
Coffee’s another one. Used to be bad
for you, then it was good for you. I’m not sure where the matter stands currently,
but even if they reported it might cause me to grow gills and flippers, I’d
drink it anyway. Cocaine’s illegal, so I need coffee; it’s a simple as that.
And of course you can open any
magazine in America and read stories purporting the health benefits and/or assured
lethality of red meat, whole grains, butter, avocados, hot dogs, salt, pumpkin
pie, ice cream, asparagus and certain brands of cat food.
Americans love to read about food,
though – based on my observations at the beach last summer and my own
reflection in the mirror – we don’t often take the proffered advice. For the
most part, we eat what we want.
Health experts spend a lot of time
gnashing their teeth and wailing over this phenomenon, but not me. I think it’s
a good thing.
Why? Well, because I love ice cream
and bacon, sometimes together; that’s one reason. Also, I think stressing
overmuch about your food intake is more likely to cause health problems than
might anything you put in your mouth.
For the most part, I follow the culinary
philosophy of my Great Grandmother Kelly. She lived through the Depression and
if you believed her stories, there were days when her family of 13 children and
two parents had to eat boiled dirt. Not the good dirt, either, but the dusty
stuff that blew off the road when the milk wagon passed.
When, as a young child sharing Sunday
dinner at her place, I would inquire as to the identity of a food item – “What is this great-gramma?” – she would
reply, “Shut up and eat it.”
When you’ve lived on boiled dirt,
your patience can grow thin.
Whether the dish was chicken, beef,
lamb or – who knows? – boiled dirt, great-gramma’s cuisine was to die for.
Everything always tasted great and nobody left the table hungry.
Great gramma never gave a thought to
the potential health benefits of a dish. If it provided enough calories to keep
you alive, it was healthy. If not, she fed it to the chickens and then ate them
when they grew large enough.
She didn’t need the latest issue of Cosmopolitan to tell her that steamed okra
would put the sparkle back in her love life. If she could grow it in her
backyard garden, it went on the table.
As far as I know, great gramma never
exercised, either. Unless you count running a small farm, maintaining a home,
raising kids, grandkids, chickens and goats exercise. But she wasn’t fat. I
would guess she weighed in at about 90 pounds.
And yet, everything she cooked was
fried in the same medium: bacon grease. She kept a coffee can on the back of
her stove. Every day, she would take the bacon grease left over from breakfast
and pour it from the cast iron skillet into that coffee can. Once cooled, she’d
place a lid over the can to keep it “fresh.”
To the best of my knowledge, that
same can of grease had been sitting there since 1936. Nobody ever died from
eating food cooked in it. Great gramma herself lived to be 98 and was
reasonably healthy right up until a few months before she passed through this
veil of tears and went to her everlasting reward.
Her daughter, my grandmother,
likewise lived into her late 90s, eating the same diet she’d learned as a kid.
So now the experts are telling me
I’ve got to eat like a bunny if I want to see 70? No. Sorry, dude, that ain’t
gonna happen. I’m over 60 and can still ride my bicycle as far as most people
ever drive a car, though probably not as fast. I’ll take my chances and live by
the ethos shared by great gramma’s generation: if it tastes good, I’ll eat it.
If it’s fried in bacon grease instead
of coconut oil, I’ll have seconds.
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