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Government Money Well Spent: Study Shows Meat and Fat are Good
The writers who work with me know that they can short-circuit my temper by mentioning one of two hot-button topics: the Writers Guild or the USDA Food Pyramid.
I’m against both, by the way. Each has done damage to very personal and important parts of me — my wallet and my waistline.
Now, though, at least one of them is starting to crumble. From the NY Times:
People who avoid carbohydrates and eat more fat, even saturated fat, lose more body fat and have fewer cardiovascular risks than people who follow the low-fat diet that health authorities have favored for decades, a major new study shows.
Boom. The Food Pyramid — a federal government boondoggle of cronyism and incompetence — told us to eat more bread and pasta and fewer fats and less meat. As with almost everything the federal government codifies, this was, we now know, not only wrong but unhealthy:
The average person may not pay much attention to the federal dietary guidelines, but their influence can be seen, for example, in school lunch programs, which is why many schools forbid whole milk but serve their students fat-free chocolate milk loaded with sugar, Dr. Mozaffarian said.
And now we have fat kids. So what should we eat? How about this:
A typical day’s diet was not onerous: It might consist of eggs for breakfast, tuna salad for lunch, and some kind of protein for dinner — like red meat, chicken, fish, pork or tofu — along with vegetables. Low-carb participants were encouraged to cook with olive and canola oils, but butter was allowed, too.
In other words, you’re supposed to eat pretty much what people ate for years and years before the federal government decided to get into the nutrition business.
So that’s one pet-peeve put to rest.
I await the study that tells everyone what they already knew about trade unions, which is: their time has come and gone.
Published in General
That’s a totally different issue. Nobody is saying to eat peanuts in moderation if you’ve got a peanut allergy, either; or milk if you are lactose-intolerant… It’s still good advice. If you have an allergy or intolerance, then something trumps that advice, it does not invalidate it.
All substances are poisons at a high enough dose.
Rob, how would Hollywood function without the WGA, SAG/AFTRA and the others? Like most actors in Los Angeles, I have fought and clawed my way ever closer to membership in these unions in hope of finding myself in possession of that ever elusive “living wage”.
is it possible that something like the old studio system could reemerge to fill the vacuum? I’d certainly love to not have to join a union to get work in our industry.