Building Strong Bodies One Or Two Ways

Building Strong Bodies

(One or Two Ways)

by John Christmann

The other morning as I was driving my older son to school, he announced, “Dad you should eat healthier.” At the time I was wolfing down a chocolate covered donut; because after force feeding everyone else Cheerios and strawberries for breakfast, I didn’t have enough time to eat breakfast myself. I plucked the last remaining morsel from my lap, threw it in my mouth, and looked at him in disbelief. This was from a boy who for most of his life has requested nothing but cookies and has disdained anything that was green unless it was a lime Popsicle.
“No seriously, Dad. We are studying nutrition in health class,” he informed me. “You should be eating less processed sugar and fatty foods and more whole grains.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t really go well with coffee.” I said.
“You could try one of those sugarless, fat free, whole wheat donuts.”
I glanced over to him sharply, making sure I caught his eye.
“That’s a piece of toast with a hole in it,” I told him.
Undeterred, he went on to explain the in and outs of proper diet guided by the new and improved USDA food pyramid. My eyes glazed over like the frosting on the donut I had just happily consumed.

Don’t get me wrong: I think it is great that our kids are learning about nutrition in school. But I think this is a subject that should be taught at lunch time by a heavyset, scar-faced man in uniform standing guard over the cafeteria line. For despite what our kids learn about healthy eating, there is a fundamental, dietary truth: they only eat what they like unless someone is there to tell them otherwise. And given my lecture in the car, it would now seem that I was now in need of some arm twisting too.

I can’t say the things I eat now are vastly different than the things I ate in my youth. I still eat cereal for breakfast, even though it is no longer the Breakfast of Champions. I still eat bread, even though it doesn’t necessarily build strong bodies 12 ways. I still eat macaroni and cheese, although now it has a broader array of Italian names and sauces. I still eat bananas because I love them and boycott Brussels sprouts because I hate them. Maybe I don’t drink as much milk as I used to, but I now consume more vegetables and fruits in the form of hops and fermented grapes. And of course, I still eat ice cream and potato chips and donuts and the stuff that I am not supposed to.

So why do I suddenly feel like I am breaking the law every time I eat something that is not DC (dietarily correct)? And who is it exactly that is establishing these laws and making me feel like eating is a science project? And why is it that after years of telling my kids to eat their peas, they are now telling me what to eat?

I did a little research, and here is what I found out:

A Brief History of Nutrition

In the beginning there were only three foods: vegetables from the Garden of Eden, snake meat (which was pretty unappealing), and apples. At that time the leading authority on nutrition, The US Department of God, believed fruit was very, very bad for people. This, of course, made apples extremely desirable, and in a moment of weakness Eve ate the forbidden fruit and unwittingly unleashed new and improved sinful foods into the world: foods like chocolate, Hagen Daaz ice cream, and Cheez Doodles. Shortly there after, when Adam and Eve began begating children, bread and dairy products were introduced because their kids wouldn’t eat anything but milk and peanut butter sandwiches. Thus the basic dietary ingredients were formed: meats, vegetables, fruits, grains, dairy products and all of the evil stuff that tasted really good. Man lived on this core diet for millennia. Children thrived. French restaurants blossomed. Life expectancy improved. Things were good. Very, very good.

Then, during the mid 1900s the US Department of Agriculture decided to simplify the food groups to make it easier for Americans to understand, because with the introduction of TV to society, we had forgotten how to eat. The USDA combined fruits and vegetables into one category to make four groups and then recommended that we eat three square meals a day, the square referring to the four basic food groups which we ate on round plates. They also introduced the concept of a Recommended Daily Allowance so we would know when to stop eating and also have something educational to read on cereal boxes. This worked well until they realized they had omitted the sinful food group which, of course, had no recommended daily allowance and was therefore gobbled up in abundance. So the USDA added a fifth food group, and to make it even more enticing, threw in alcoholic beverages with the strict warning that these foods be consumed in moderation.

Unfortunately, this new classification scheme really did confuse people, who by this time were used to sitting on a couch in front of a TV moderately consuming Oreo cookies and beer three, four, and even seven times a day. So the USDA threw all of the food we eat into a triangle and called in a pyramid. The good stuff which we weren’t supposed to eat was at the top. The stuff that no one wanted to eat was at the bottom so we would know we were supposed to eat more of it. And this was fine until the morning news shows started trotting out nutrition experts and scientists who claimed that the bad stuff wasn’t always bad and the good stuff wasn’t always good and everybody started drinking red wine to prevent heart attacks.

So the USDA took the food pyramid, which was really a food triangle, put it on it’s side, color coded the original six groups spawned by Adam and Eve so that we would know to eat enough blue and orange food, and put a little man walking up the stairs to signify exercise and actually make the triangle look like a pyramid. Then they called it MyPyramid even though it was supposed to be for us.

Oh, and at some point during this period McDonalds introduced the Happy Meal, which as far as I can tell has no food group classification.

It really is a wonder that we can even feed ourselves.

Personally, I don’t know a calorie from a Kielbasa, but I have been guided by a simple principle that I have followed all of my adult life: eating healthy requires us to eat the things we don’t like and moderate the foods we do. For example, servings like vegetables and salads that tend to be pulled from the ground are particularly annoying, and thus should be consumed in abundance. Conversely, foods that are really, really enjoyable must be consumed in moderation. Foods like dessert. This is precisely how I feed my children. And since they are healthy and complain about what they are given to eat, I have every reason to believe that I am doing a good job. So until the USDA nutrition police or the most recent experts on the Today Show come and stand over my table, I am not inclined to change any of our diets, thank you.

If the proof is in the pudding that we should not be eating, then let me share my dietary guidelines with you as a perfectly healthy father-of-three who eats donuts from his lap in the car. Here they are:

Ten Guidelines to Healthy Eating for You and Your Children

Your body tells you what it needs; your tongue tells you what it wants. The rest is just negotiation.
Vegans grew up eating the same junk we did and are no fun at dinner parties.
If it’s finger lickin’ good, be sure to wash your hands before you eat.
No one ever got a stomachache snacking on carrots.
Pizza is a healthy alternative to cooking.
If you hate it, don’t eat it. If you love it, share it with others. If you are not sure, try adding some butter.
Cut your food in bite size pieces with the sharp side of the knife facing down.
Beans are a good source of protein and also make for funny noises.
Blenders were made for milk shakes and Margaritas, not vegetable drinks.
Just because the dog won’t eat it doesn’t mean it’s not good for you, it just means your cooking is bad.

Remember, we were all healthy as children. It’s as adults that we have a problem. If the pyramid changes, I will let you know.