There's a new book out about diet, and it apparently says what I've known all my life -- protein is good for you, carbohydrates are bad, and fat is highly overrated as a dangerous substance. Well, it's about time. As my mother used to say, you can never have too much butter. This is how we cook steak in our house: first you cook the steak. Then you throw a huge pat of butter on top of it. That's it. And by the way, I'm not talking about sweet butter, I'm talking about salted butter.
Here's another thing it says in this book: dietary cholesterol has nothing whatsoever to do with your cholesterol count. This is another thing I've known all my life, which is why you will not find me lying on my deathbed regretting not having eaten enough chopped liver. Let me explain this: you can eat all sorts of things that are high in dietary cholesterol (like lobster and cheese and eggs) and they have NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on your cholesterol count. NONE. WHATSOEVER. DID YOU HEAR ME? I'm sorry to have to resort to capital letters, but what is wrong with you people?
Which brings me to the point of this piece: the egg-white omelette. I have friends who eat egg-white omelettes. Every time I'm forced to watch them eat egg-white omelettes, I feel bad for them. In the first place, egg-white omelettes are tasteless. In the second place, the people who eat them think they are doing something virtuous when they are instead merely misinformed. Sometimes I try to explain that what they're doing makes no sense, but they pay no attention to me because they have all been told to avoid dietary cholesterol by their doctors. According to yesterday's New York Times, the doctors are not deliberately misinforming their patients; instead, they're participants in something known as an informational cascade, which turns out to be a fabulous expression for something that everyone thinks must be true because so many reputable people say it is. In this case, of course, it's not an informational cascade but a misinformational cascade, and as a result, way too many people I know have been brainwashed into thinking that whole-egg omelettes are bad for you.
So this is my moment to say what's been in my heart for years: it's time to put a halt to the egg-white omelette. I don't want to confuse this with something actually important, like the war in Iraq, which it's also time to put a halt to, but I don't seem be able to do anything about Iraq, whereas I have a shot at cutting down consumption of the egg-white omelette, especially with the wind of this new book in my sails. (The book is called Good Calories, Bad Calories, and it's written by Gary Taubes.)
You don't make an omelette by taking out the yolks. You make one by putting in additional yolks. A really great omelette has two whole eggs and and one extra yolk, and by the way, the same thing goes for scrambled eggs. As for egg salad, here's our recipe: boil 18 eggs, peel them, send six of the egg whites to friends in California who persist in thinking that egg whites matter in any way. Chop the remaining 12 eggs and six yolks coarsely with a knife, and add Hellman's mayonnaise and salt and pepper to taste.
If you lock the poor chicken up in a high-stress environment and stuff it full of hormones, antibiotics, and industrial corn, you will get yokes that will choke your heart arteries. The yoke's on you.
One guest demurred, explaining that he did not drink.
"Don't drink you say?" said the startled host. "'magine that."
He then offered his guest a cigarette, which was similarly declined.
"Don't drink or smoke?" said Harris. "Well I do declare you must be one of them folks who's gonna die from nuthin!"
Just switch bacon and butter for the booze and smokes, and you've got the contemporary version of the same cultural hypochondria.
To be sure, tobacco has likely consequences that are not worth the trouble, and too much booze'll probably do you wrong as well.
But, as Dr. Franklin said a gazillion years ago: "Drink not to elevation, and eat not to satiety"
All things in moderation, kids.
I only hope your speaking out about the eggs doesn't lead them to target and disappear you also....
Nora? Nora?
So just how old was she when she died?
Not to mention, all the elderly relatives of my childhood whose idea of a Sunday lunch would give any cardiologist just witnessing the antipasto course a heart attack.
But the reality of occasionally eating like that is the rest of the time you are sensible in your judgement.
The fattest people I know are invariably not those who eat well or wisely or pay any attention to their food. And are way too addicted to sugar, especailly fructose, cheap fast-food fats and alcohol.
Egg salad with 18 eggs?
How many people are you feeding? Can't you just say use the same two egg and one yolk ratio for egg salad? And be sure to add some chopped chives, lots of coarse pepper and just the tiniest trace of mustard to make it all scrumptious.
What is it with writers and egg salad anyway?
No one else ever seems to eat it unless they are under 7 or over 75.
My observation is that you can tell how any project is going by checking the level in the Hellman's jar.
gala
So if your cholesterol levels are high, and being on a low cholesterol diet does not seem to lower them, you are in that 70%. Just get off your couches and exercise.
Enjoy your eggs people..........
All my health care comes via the VA Hospital in Boise, Idaho, paid for in part by medicare, parts A and B, supplemented by co-payments for my "meds", all of which has kept me alive AGAINST ALL ODDS for the last six-plus years, and for which I am as grateful as I can possibly be.
To the point>
My "primary care giver" is a totally committed M.D. who has never failed to explain my various conditions to me, including the options that he sees in each case, leaving the ultimate call to me without pressuring me one way or the other, which in my two page book makes me believe that he is a man to be implicitly trusted to give me the most accurate information that he has available at any one point in time......and HE SAYS that is not so much a matter of WHAT YOU EAT as it is a matter of HOW MUCH YOU EAT AND WHEN.
By following this man's GOOD ADVICE, taking my meds AS DIRECTED, and eating like a "rational human being" instead of as a dingbat "glutton", my weight has dropped from 265 lardy pounds to 212/215, mostly stable over the last six months, and all my lab checks including blood sugar are now "within the window", and I get to eat pretty much WHAT I want as long as it is within "reasonable limits"!
By the way, I eat egg white omelets because I DO NOT LIKE EGG YOKE AND NEVER HAVE....to each his/her own....
Some of us are more prone to producing high levels of cholesterol than others. Keeping track of ratios is just as important as that "total cholesterol" number.
In addition, we've all veered away from our evolutionary dietary paths over the past 100 years or so. Local produce, foods in season and no superprocessed, high fructose corn syrup. salt and chemically laiden junk should be allowed into your home.
I don't believe everything I read anyway. Besides, doctors get plently of samples and sometimes paid to push certain drugs from drug comapanies. My doctor has never said, "Steam, sit ... wait .... I'll make you an omelet you should excuse the expression that's--to die for--a white egg omelet, so I know white omelets are good for me. After all, if my doctor isn't offering me a sample of the companies product, it's got to be good for me.
As for butter, no no, Nora has to bring out the big enchilada. my mother used this all the time when I was growing up and it's really the Big Bertha of food weapons if you want your heart to attack you--chicken fat!
My research (true story here) revealed that patients with a family history of heart disease had healthier arterial systems (less calcification, read via cardiac scoring) than those WITH heart disease.
Heart attack is one possible response to a highly stressful situation, by the body of a person who doesn't handle stress all that well.
Yes, 50% of heart attack victims have elevated cholesterol, and 50% DON'T HAVE ELEVATED CHOLESTEROL.
We are to the gods as flies to wanton boys,
They kill us for their sport.
kills you, I think it's the sitting on your ass
and drinking gallons of 'diet' soda...
I really liked the horehound candy! The first time I finally got to try some was when I was 10 or 11 years old, at Knotts Berry Farm, down in southern CA. It was in the form of candy drops, not the wonderful candy stick described in Little House on the Prairie. It was strange tasting, but I liked it. I'd like to try some again. I haven't seen any since then. And that was 43 years ago.
Horehound was an herb used medicinally in those days, for sore throats and other similar ailments. From what I've read, horehound candy was very popular back when. My grandmother remembered eating horehound candy when she was a little girl. And she was born in 1888.
About dietary cholesterol. (Sorry, Nora.) I dropped my "bad" cholesterol level 80 points, from the 270's to under 200 in a couple of years mainly by cutting out dairy products more or less completely (save for the occasional lapse) -- cheese and, especially, eggs (whites AND yolks -- no eggs period). I miss both but I'd rather live longer and miss cheese and eggs than the reverse....