Eating with friends is always fun, and recently I've been
grocery shopping with
friends as well. It's amazing how people who will order just bout anything on a menu, or eat whatever I place in front of them at a dinner table will turn into Mr. or Mrs.
Nutrition the moment they step into a grocery store.
When I shop I buy mostly raw
ingredients, and I've only gotten odd looks when I buy such items as lard (which I really only use rarely) and
butter, as i watch my friends pick up
margarine. However my shopping companions will often buy pre-packaged and frozen foods and their eyes always go directly to the fat content.
I will go to these people's homes and watch them consume pound after pound of food and drink litres of
soda at a time and tell me it's ok because it's all fat free. Somewhere they got the idea that: fat in the food == fat on their hips.
These people are the same group who will sit contentedly after one of my meals, exclaiming how they could never make nay thing that tasted so good. "It's not hard" I tell them, but they never listen
The secret ingredient is.....
FAT oh yes, butter, lard and olive oil. Now I don't eat this way every day, and neither do they. But every once and a while it can't hurt. Now I'm not saying that fat is "good for you" it's not, but it's not going to do a whole lot of bad for you when taken in reasonable amounts. Contary to their belief Fat does not make you Fat, that's a question of
calories in vs. calories out. However fat isn't good if you want to stave off a
heart attack.
Fat makes things taste good! Actually I do eat "fatty" foods quite often, but I don't eat them in large amounts (well the occassional
binge, but hey, I'm only
human). I could get into all sorts of instinctual "fat eating"
behavior, and try and rationalize the
hell out of "why fat tastes good", but the facts are that we don't need to be afraid of fat, but to understand and embrace this lovely food feature. The power is through understanding fat, and your
relationship with it.