Aw Man, Another Stupid Report!

(originally posted on 11/1/07)

I guess I should stop reading the news, because I keep opening up stupid stories that depress me. There is a new report out, detailing the links, actual links between eating the wrong kinds of food, which make you fat and cause you to have cancer. This isn’t new. We’ve been bombarded with this information for a very long time.

Skinny, anorexic people who don’t like food in the first place, conduct these studies to torment those of us who do like food. They keep telling us we’re going to die if we don’t stop eating. I wonder if these clowns have ever heard of starvation? Starvation happens when you don’t eat and then you die.

So what do we do? We die from cancer if we eat...We die from starvation if we don’t. Give me a break please!

I like food. I like cooking food and serving food to my friends. I like food to go with my favorite wines. I like the ambience of dinner parties. When I go to a restaurant with my friends, I don’t give a damn if my fettuccini alfredo is drowning in ten tablespoons of butter. I like butter! Actual eating at a restaurant is only secondary to what else is happening around the table.

I’m not talking about going to a sit down at some family restaurant like Golden Corral or KFC where, despite the noise level in these places, no one talks. Those places have simply replaced eating at the table at home because parents don’t have time to cook. No conversation needed. Hell, bringing a book to the table or reading the newspaper was the norm when I was growing up. Once you got past “how was school” there was no talking...just eating so that you could get to the rest of your evening.

What I’m talking about is an enjoyable night out at a good restaurant, with great wine and libation and sparkling conversation between a group of people who like each other. I’m talking about stops for dinner before or after the theater or concert. Food is not the main attraction, it is a sidedish to the evening activities. The conversation really prevents the overeating that all the skinny scientists keep yelling about, because as everyone knows, you shouldn’t talk with your mouth full, it simply isn’t polite.

What these scientists or food-o-phobics want us to do is to take a beautiful menu of suggestions and then ask the chef to make all of our choices taste like cardboard. We sit there and pick at it and finally push it aside.

I mean really, who really likes the taste of all that diet/light/calorie free crap, anyway. This study even warns us about drinking too much wine and beer or spirits.

Well, I want to tell you, if I can’t eat, I am going to drink. I may as well be drunk on my ass if I’m going to starve to death.

Care to join me?