Gone are the plates of fudge, the boxes of frosted cupcakes and the crackers, cheese and dips. In their place, healthy-looking tangerines and apples, and strange-looking little plastic packages of what could be candy bars. But no, they’re more healthy cereal bars with zero calories and, best of all, NO trans fat!
Somewhere between New Years Day and the middle of January, trans fat made an appearance. Everyone is on a diet, it seems. The talk has gone from Christmas cards not mailed and packages that rattle, to pounds lost and progress on reduction of inches.
Although I’m not sure what trans fat is (or even how to spell it), I know it’s another of those Nutrition Ogres. Somewhere recently I also saw the famous food pyramid of my childhood, redesigned into a totally foreign concept. All I know for sure is that many of us Americans are overweight and 99% of those so afflicted, want a quick fix. The quicker, the better. Maybe tangerines will do it, but that old bugaboo, “exercise,” keeps insinuating itself into the dozens of health-related articles in glossy magazines.
In my recliner, feet up and snacks at the ready, I flip through these magazines, removing all the inserts first and then settling down to read about how Mary Lou in Indiana lost 300 pounds in two months by doing a few simple exercises. Mary Lou is shown “before” (tubbo) and “after” (anorexic). The photo layout showing the “simple” exercises, features a different Mary Lou – one whose scale never went over 100 and who never heard of Indiana. The exercises shown look very easy, it’s true, but a person has to actually lay on the floor and be able to lift both legs at the same time. This is a lot harder than when it’s done from a recliner.
Exercise is what we called “play” when we were children. We walked to friends’ houses; ran; jumped rope; played ball. I know times are different, there’s no shortage of young people telling me this. However, my memory is still very good and in those old class pictures we print occasionally, I don’t see a row of fat kids. Since most of us were raised on farms, we drank whole milk, ate butter, gobbled up bacon and fried eggs and (back in the good old days) always had dessert. We didn’t know what a food pyramid was, we’d heard of transcontinental and transform, but trans fat was in the future. Kids never worried about getting exercise and when our mothers told us to go outdoors and get some sunshine, we didn’t stop to ask if it would hurt us. She may not have heard of Vitamin D (the sunshine vitamin) but knew fresh air and sunshine meant healthy kids.
Over the years, the fields to play in decreased and households were confined to 50-foot-by-100-foot lots; backyards could never replace acres of fields and woods in which to play, so playgrounds sprang up; organized ball games took the place of finding a flat place to play a mile or so from home; shrubs and plants and hedges took the place of vegetable gardens and in place of the hen house or pig pen or barn out back of the house – we built decks, summerhouses and hot tubs. New families demanded sidewalks and public swimming pools (no more trespassing to the nearby brook), and “something for the kids to do.” A complete schedule of field trips and organized activities is available for a price. Lots of things to do, supervised and much of the time, inside a building.
Is it any surprise that we’ve managed to raise a generation of overweight children and adults?
Perhaps the appearance of trans fat as a Nutrition Ogre will help Americans, young and old, become more healthy and svelte. But it will take a great deal of imagination to enjoy a tangerine as much as a chunk of chocolate fudge. And riding on a bus to a supervised indoors swimming pool will never replace walking along a country road, accompanied by friends and their dogs, to wade in a pasture brook.
See you next week – if a plate of fudge doesn’t deter me.
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