New Advice from the World Health Organization

The World Health Organization has issued a new proclamation today: We 're eating too much sugar.

On the face of it, that would make sense. We DO eat a lot of sweets. Pop (aka soda) comes to mind as the number one source, but of course, there’s candies and pastries, etc.

But the WHO is condemning not just the obvious sources of sugar, but foodstuffs such as peanut butter, fruit juices, salad dressing, and bran cereal.

It drives me crazy. The WHO is like a hospital full of doctors with just one patient, and they don’t talk to each other. So one says, stay off that broken leg until it heals up, another says, you’re sitting around far too much, get up and exercise!

And it got me to thinking of all the things the WHO is advising we eat, and don’t eat. They decided we are far too stupid to not eat things that taste good. So they invented the “food pyramid’ to make it easy for us to to obey them rather than the instincts that brought us from the African savannah to contemplating landing people on Mars. 

At the tip of the pyramid are oils and sweets, like sugar and high fructose corn syrup. Mayonnaise has so many bad things it’s not even considered edible by the WHO. Corn oil? Oh god, no. Butter? Even worse. Even the artificial oils are going to kill you. Olive oil is supposed to be good for your heart, but it’s an oil and therefore bad for your arteries. So no oil and vinegar on your salad.

Next is meat. Eat “sparingly”…the WHO says no more than once per annum. All meat is bad, in any form.  No ham or bacon-they’re processed with nitrates that make the flavor jump out and please you. Pork? Well, you better cook the flavor out of it; everyone knows rare pork will kill you with intestinal parasites, so just forego pork.   Beef is by far the worst. It was created by Satan in order to kill you slowly. That’s why he made it so tasty and muscle building. And it gives you colon cancer.

Don’t eat eggs as they will kick up your cholesterol (separated into Good Cholesterol and Bad Cholesterol but no one can tell the difference). Plus one in several billion eggs might possibly carry salmonella so just to be safe, don’t eat the yolk, the best part, just eat the tasteless white of the egg, cooked to the consistency of caulking compound. In fact, don’t eat the interior of the egg at all. The shell is full of calcium, and calcium is good.

Chicken is bad, because it’s full of antibiotics and kept in horrid conditions. When a chicken is processed for consumption, apparently the bird is sprayed with salmonella, so don’t eat chicken. Turkey is even worse, in that it will make you so sleepy you will miss the entire second half of the football game.

Fish isn’t considered meat, so maybe it’s safe to eat fish? But no. Tuna? Nope, it’s full of mercury and besides, they’re going extinct from overfishing. Oh and don’t eat tuna if you’re pregnant.  Salmon? Well, the stocks have collapsed from overfishing.  Cod? They were destroyed years ago. Bottom fish like halibut? Oh my god, no, they’re full of PCBs. Small fish (usually referred to as ‘bait’) have been eating plastic, the only thing plentiful in the ocean. About the only fish species that is plentiful, if nasty tasting, is goldfish. Now you know why you should keep the fishbowl clean.

Milk and milk products: well, we covered butter. Milk is indigestible unless it’s been stepped on so much that is merely white water. The best milk to drink is “raw” (meaning, right out of the cow) and unpasteurized. The WHO doesn’t want you to risk that, because the big milk producers don’t want any little backyard organic dairy horning in on their turf. Cheese is supposedly full of calcium, but the WHO doesn’t want you to eat just any cheese. No, they want you to eat the stuff that doesn’t have all that moldy gunk on it. That’s probably loaded with germs, and germs are bad. Most commercial yogurts are loaded with sugar, so…no yogurt.

Then you have “fruits and nuts”. They want you to eat 2-4 servings of fruits and nuts every day. But not just any fruits and nuts. The WHO said today that fruit JUICES are bad. Yes, that nice glass of orange juice may be full of vitamin C but it also has sugar in it, so no fruit juices. Citrus fruits aren’t much better because there’s no fiber in them, just pulp. As far as I can see, the WHO’s sole choice for a fruit is an apple. The only apple that survives factory handling, packaging and retailing is a Red Delicious, the most over rated apple on the planet. Red it is but delicious, not. It was bred solely to withstand the rigors of factory handling. It has the consistency and taste of a wet paper bag. Washington State is the US leader in apple production, with Red Delicious being the number one apple produced. Washington State has the lowest per capita consumption of Red Delicious apples in the world. Behind every  school, hospital or any sort of institution that serves food are dumpsters, full of pristine, untouched and uneaten Red Delicious apples. They don't rot. They don't get wormy.  Even the crows ignore them. Every pastry company in the US buys Red Delicious apples and inserts flavors into the apple pulp. They then sell their product as “blueberry flavor” or “lemon flavor”. But it’s all still made of apple.

Nuts? Well, almonds would be nice if there were any bees left to pollinate the plants. Peanuts are NOT nuts, they’re a legume, and peanut butter is not only loaded with sugar but is an oil as well. Besides, you have to put peanut butter on bread. Which is bad. Most nuts are expensive, labor intensive, subject to blights and always seasonal. They go rancid like that because, after all, they’re mostly oil.

Vegetables: ah, there we have something the WHO likes. Eat 6 servings of vegetables every day. What fun! Celery for breakfast, brunch, lunch, midday snack, dinner, and bedtime snack. Oh, come on, there are other vegetables. Tomatoes! Whoa, not so fast. A tomato is a FRUIT, not a vegetable and hasn’t a lick of fiber, so no tomatoes. Potatoes are starchy, and starch is bad. Besides, the WHO knows that you’re not going to eat the potato raw. No, you’re going to deep fat fry it (in OIL) to a crispy, crunchy perfection, and everyone knows French fries will kill you. Besides, you will eat fries with that beef burger with bacon.  OK, spinach? Nope, it’s full of oxalic acid, which will give you gall and kidney stones. Lettuce? Well, okay…but no dressing. Beans? Not only do beans give you gas, but they’re impossible to eat by themselves. Which is why chili was invented: to cover up the taste of the bean. Pasta? Bread?  Nope, they’re made of refined wheat flour. Wheat is almost as bad as corn. And refining anything is Bad For You. In fact the WHO would prefer you don’t eat anything white.

Corn? Well, corn is a grain that is used in everything from food to paint to gasoline. It contains more sugar than starch. Sugar is bad for you as is starch. And, like the aforementioned French fries, the WHO knows you’ll make popcorn, drenching it in rich, salty butter. Sinner.

So, looking at the pyramid, and thinking hard about the WHO’s determinations of what is good for us, I’ve narrowed the Perfect Diet down to a simple four items, dispensing with the pyramid altogether. It’s eaten daily, for every meal, by gorgeous athletes that radiate health, stamina and happiness.

I call it the Horse Diet.

Hay (fiber!). Raw oats (whole grain! Gluten free!). Carrots. (root vegetable!) And those damned Red Delicious apples.