Diet advice [yawn]

I pay no attention to diet advice anymore. I find it tiresome and snooze-inducing. I also dislike the superior attitudes of some of these advice-givers, especially Jane Brody in The New York Times. Besides, the advice often turns out to be wrong. Remember the government’s old food pyramid? The base consisted entirely of carbohydrates: “Bread, Cereal, Rice, & Pasta Group: 6-11 Servings.” That advice has been tossed out.

Like much else, I suspect that a person’s dietary needs may be unique to that person. My favorite example of this is eighty-five-year-old Warren Buffet, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and world’s most successful investor. He drinks at least five 12-ounce servings of Coke every day: “I have three Cokes during the day and two at night.” He also loves to snack on canned potato sticks. When interviewed about his breakfast, he said, “This morning, I had a bowl of chocolate chip ice cream.” He favors hamburgers, steaks, hash browns, and milkshakes. And he hates vegetables: "Broccoli, asparagus, and Brussels sprouts look to me like Chinese food crawling around on a plate. Cauliflower almost makes me sick. I eat carrots reluctantly.” He says that if a three-year-old won’t eat it, he won’t eat it. If you saw him interviewed on television, you’d see a bright, vibrant, happy, guy.

I read a book called What Makes Olga Run. It explores the wild athletic success of Olga Kotelko, who won over 750 gold medals and held over 30 world records in track and field events at the World Masters Athletic games. Note that her victories were for the 90-95 age category. (She started training at age 77.) She participated in a wide variety of events, ranging from sprints to hammer throw to triple jump. While she did eat a fairly balanced diet, the author tells us she ate “immoderate amounts of baked tapioca pudding. I once saw her glop onto her breakfast plate some mysterious ‘sausage’ gravy that looked practically radioactive.” Olga’s friend Ruth Frith, a shot put specialist who competes in the 100-plus category, eats no vegetables. She hates them. Inuits never ate vegetables either, and they got along just fine.

I realize I'm being a bit contrarian here. But I think that being overly fussy about what you eat can diminish the quality of your life. A while ago, at an event that included a buffet lunch, I saw a fashionably thin woman put a small piece of skinless chicken breast and two lettuce leaves on her plate. In my book, that's no way to live. Ice cream for breakfast anyone?

Next week: Saturated fat: nothing to worry about

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