Time to wake up and smell the fried breakfast

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/10/fried-breakfast-high-saturated-fat-confused

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Whenever standard nutritional advice is overturned – as it has been this week by a study which effectively rubbished government guidelines limiting the intake of dietary fat – I am instantly reminded of a scene in the Woody Allen film Sleeper, first released when I was 10. I expect a lot of people my age are.

In the film Allen plays Miles, a cryogenically frozen health food store owner who is revived 200 years later. Two scientists are puzzling over his old-fashioned dietary requirements, unable to comprehend what passed for health food back in 1973. “You mean there was no deep fat?” says one. “No steak or cream pies, or hot fudge?”

“Those were thought to be unhealthy,” says the other scientist. “Precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.”

This was meant to be a joke rather than a prediction, but it’s beginning to look as if we may not have to wait until 2173 to see it validated.

I watched that scene again having forgotten what health foods Miles had actually asked for: wheat germ and Tiger’s Milk. I’m sure wheat germ still has its devotees – my Dad used to put it on his cereal – but it’s certainly fallen out of fashion, perhaps because it tends to go rancid really quickly. That’s why they remove the germ before they make white flour. I never liked it myself, but then maybe I’ve never tasted a non-rancid spoonful.

Tiger’s Milk sounds like a life-extending elixir, but it’s actually a brand of protein bar. You can still get them – their enduring appeal may stem from the fact that each bar is almost half sugar by weight, most of it in the form of high fructose corn syrup, presently vying for the distinction of world’s most evil ingredient.

Of course the new study isn’t comprehensively refuting the association between high saturated fat intake and heart disease; it’s just pointing out that dietary guidelines first adopted in the mid-1970s were not, on reflection, based on any real evidence. In terms of what one should and shouldn’t be eating, I sometimes feel as if I’ve spent the past 30 years in a freezer.

A roadtrip in my ear

Last week I embarked on a US radio tour. This may conjure up an image of a car driving across a dusty prairie toward an enormous tower with call sign letters painted on it, but it wasn’t quite like that. I just sat alone at my desk with the phone to my ear while someone in a New York publisher’s office patched me through to various US stations, one after the other, for the better part of six hours.

By the end of the day I had done 17 interviews: some for dedicated book programmes full of pregnant silences; some for rolling news stations with ticker-tape noise in the background; some on morning drive-time shows hosted by DJs called Bulldog and Coach. Each time, just before I was put through, a woman in the publishing office would quietly tell me the name of the next presenter, plus one salient fact: “Steve is a single parent,” she would say; “I’m connecting you to Barbara, who has an extremely strong southern accent.”

Much of the time I was simply waiting. And while I waited I listened, to two or three or even 10 minutes of the radio station I was about to be on. I heard about traffic and travel in Jefferson City, and the weather in Cedar Rapids. I sat through a long advert for a father and son – a doctor and lawyer respectively – who offer a one-stop service treating and then representing people who have been exposed to asbestos. I eavesdropped while previous callers offered opinions on mystery topics, and I learned a lot about Chicago’s newest medical marijuana dispensary.

In a weird way it was a bit like touring the US. But all I had to show for it was one sore ear.