Eat It.
Let’s take a break today from presidential politics, from political perfidy, from pedophilia. Let’s find a safe space, just for a day. Let’s just talk about food!
Oh God. Trump is coming for our food!
The first rumblings of this came yesterday, when the president, speaking before a summit of McDonald’s executives, told them: “As you may have heard, I’m also one of your all-time most loyal customers. I really am. I think that’s good. I’m pretty sure that’s good. While other politicians fly around on campaign planes stocked with expensive catering, on Trump Force 1 we served only McDonald’s”.
This is not literally true, of course — Trump’s private Boeing 757 is said to also serve KFC and Diet Coke and pizza and Vienna Fingers, which are a small Keebler shortbread creme-filled cookie sandwiches made with dextrose, high fructose corn syrup, de-germinated yellow corn flour, soy lecithin and tert-butylhydroquinone, which is a synthetic aromatic organic compound also used in perfume. Two Vienna Fingers, each the length of one of Trump’s pinky fingers, deliver 150 calories.
So, the supposed all-Mac menu aboard the plane is a bit of a lie, but lies are de rigueur for Trump, and in this case nothing much to worry about, The worrisome part is that Trump’s lies are often said to be aspirational, stuff he wants to be true, such as our current “soaring economy” in which vulnerable people inexplicably seem to be going hungry. He wants people to eat like he does.
Trump seems to revel in the fact that he is a philistine who eats unwisely, bullying the crappy food, challenging it to take him down, if it dares to try. He famously prefers his steaks burnt beyond recognition, leached of all juice, devoid of any taste other than what is supplied by trowelfuls of Heinz Ketchup: In the end, they are slabs of ruined protein so sturdy-hard they “rock on the plate,” according to Trump’s late, beleaguered former Butler, Anthony Senecal, whose name was pronounced “Cynical.”
But at least Trump is not actually instructing us to eat like a ravenous, porcine vulgarian. His Secretary of Health and Human Services is.
Nasty characterization alert: Appointing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS Secretary was like appointing as Transportation Secretary a person who only travels by pogo stick.
See, that’s that’s the other food news out of The White House yesterday! RFK Jr., the anti-science HHS secretary with no training or expertise in nutrition, revealed in a speech to the Food Allergy Leadership Forum that, in new health guidelines to be published soon, he will end the “war on saturated fats.” His remarks seemed pretty amiably received considering the dramatic, fact-devoid rationale he failed to present; one possible explanation is that the Allergy Leadership Forum is financially beholden to David Koch, scion of right-wing libertarian Koch Industries.
Foods high in saturated fats include everything in the AI-generated image atop this column: fatty meat, cheddar cheese, ice cream. They also include butter and lard. Pastries and chocolate — especially chocolate pastries, such as the Krispy Kreme Iced Chocolate Glazed Doughnut,
… just two of which contain as many calories as a big, hearty plateful of Cheesy Tuna Pesto Pasta.
For a half century, nutritionists have blamed these products for high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, obesity and other afflictions of modernity.
RFK will apparently be recommending them all. His own diet — a diet apparently of of his own invention — is a modified paleo-carnivore regimen consisting of eating only meat , poultry, eggs, seafood, dairy products, and water.
Veggies? Only if they are fermented, he says, like kimchi. To me, kimchi tastes like rotted salad residue in a dumpster outside an Italian restaurant , but that is just my opinion, one that may well be ignorant and which does not reflect badly on other Korean foods, which I embrace enthusiastically, and Korean culture, which is a rich blend of ancient traditions and modern life, characterized by strong family values, respect for elders and for hard work, and a deep sense of community, all influenced by Confucianism . Plus Koreans are an unusually physically attractive people, which is not to suggest any other ethnicities are comparatively ugly, which they are not.
Is RFK Jr. right about saturated fats? Some experts think he might possibly be on to something. Most experts don’t. I am not an expert, but I also don’t. As much as I wish this to be true — I love and ear many foods that are high in saturated fats — I am not an idiot. I can look at what this diet has wrought, personally. I have high blood pressure and would be dead without the meds I take, and also I have the muscle tone and the body flaccidity of a male southern elephant seal:
The main reason that I don’t buy what RFK Jr. is saying is that he is RFK Jr..
This is the same man who dumped a dead bear in Central Park because he didn’t have time to get it home to eat it; the man who doubts that HIV causes AIDS; the man who thinks we should stop fluoridating water; and, most of all, the man who hates vaccines, which have saved more than 154 million lives in the last half century alone.
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So.
Today’s only slightly related Gene Pool Gene Poll:
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From the mailbag:
Q: Regarding your call for advice that was ignored: In a nature preserve in Texas I once yelled at some tourists who were throwing stones at an alligator. This place had no fences or boundaries or guards; you were there sharing the bayou and swamp space with the animals. Throwing rocks at an alligator seemed like a bad idea all around, and was also emphatically discouraged by large signs posted all over the place. When an adolescent girl accompanied by a woman who may have been her mother started throwing rocks at a partially submerged alligator I yelled at her to stop and appealed to the older woman. They both just looked at me impassively. I have always thought of this as exemplifying human stupidity and wanton imbecilic destructiveness. Somehow everyone survived.
A: In my neighborhood, some young people will eat fried chicken on their front steps, then fling the bones out into the grassy swale between the sidewalk and the street. Once, I confronted one of them. A nice, polite kid. I told him that I could see why it might seem relatively harmless – they’re biodegradable after time – but implored him to think of the neighborhood dogs, who snarf them up before the owner can react. I said that I knew he didn’t mean to do this, but he was endangering the lives of the animals – chicken bones can kill dogs. He listen, and nodded, and said he didn’t know that and thanked me for my comment. I looked back about 15 seconds later, from further down the block; having finished a drumstick, he threw the bones out onto the grass.
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Q: A very feisty friend and I were walking in our neighborhood in our pleasant college town. We came to a crossway at an intersection, only to see a big-ass truck pulled way over the crosswalk. Driven by (probably) a student. The driver’s window was down, so as we passed by him — dangerously close to the speeding traffic — I said to him, “Hey, you may come from a town without crosswalks, but we have them here. Next time, please don’t pull into the crosswalk.” He said nothing, but when we were almost out of earshot, I heard the driver say, “Bitch.” My friend went nuts! He tried to pull the driver out through the window, while issuing a stream of amazing profanity, and then KEYED the very new-looking F 150. The driver was so panicked, he gunned the truck when the light changed and roared away. Me, to my friend: “He could have had a gun!” The friend said, “I had the key.”
A: Wow, this calls for an emergency AITA.
Q: Regarding your piece on Kristi Noem, the Westerner: She’s all makeup and no brains.
A: I see what you did there.
Questions and Observations:
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