I am pro gluten. I just wanted to come out and set the
record straight once and for all. I am not ashamed of my love for gluten,
although, I must be honest, I don’t really know what it tastes like, or even what
it is. Even though I don’t know what gluten is, I know for a fact that I love
it. When I was a kid (actually, up until about two years ago) no one had even
heard of gluten. That means everything that I ate was probably chock-full of
gluten, and I loved everything I ate. Also, I think gluten may come from wheat,
and I am definitely pro wheat, since wheat is a very important ingredient in
beer. There is probably tons of gluten in beer, so gluten is obviously
delicious!
There has been a lot of conflicting “data” over the years on
what we should and should not eat. Take eggs for example. (I almost wrote
eggs-ample, but I didn’t know if you would find it as humorous as I do. Probably
not. Anyway…) Eggs have been alternately bad and good for us at least twenty
times over my lifetime. Since I love eggs, I always bet on the come line and
kept eating them, hoping they would end up being good for me. We are currently
in an “eggs are good for you” cycle, so I’m feeling pretty good about my
decision. In fact, I think eggs are now being listed as “superfoods” that you
should eat every day.
“Superfood” is a new term, like gluten, designed, I guess,
to really hammer home the idea that you are eating all the wrong things. It
seems like there is a new superfood or a new thing you should never eat again
coming out about once a week now.
Carbohydrates, which I think is another word for gluten,
used to be an integral part of the food pyramid that they showed me in grade
school. The pyramid has now been replaced by a pie chart, and carbs may or may
not be good for you. They were bad for a while, but I think they are moderately
back in favor, as long as your pie chart remains gluten-free. I’ll bet
gluten-free pie sucks.
Fats are a mystery as well. Trans fats, which are
unsaturated fats, are bad. However, saturated fats are even worse. But somehow,
omega-3 fish oil fats are the messiah of proper nutrition. If omega-3 is a fat,
it has to be either saturated or unsaturated, since those seem to be the two
choices, so how can it be good? And how does omega-3, which apparently does
everything from curing arthritis to making you smarter, affect my bad LDL
cholesterol and my good HDL cholesterol? And if cholesterol in any form is bad
in food, how do I have “good” cholesterol in my body. I’m made up of food!
I’m not sure where bacon fat fits in there, but since I am
now supposed to be eating eggs every day, I must conclude that bacon fat is
super-healthy, since it is impossible to eat eggs without bacon.
Speaking of breakfast, I also want to come out as being pro
lactose. Lactose is another one of those things that no one had ever heard of
until it was about to kill us all, and again, I don’t really have any idea what
it is, but I know it’s found in dairy products, which are delicious. I know I
am pro lactose, because I am also pro fresh milk, which makes me anti
homogenization. I had milk fresh out of the cow once and it was the best thing
I’ve ever tasted, besides beer. (We were having dinner at a friend’s family dairy
farm, and he got the milk out of the giant stainless steel holding tank. We did
not drink it directly from the cow. That would be weird.)
Breakfast is now supposed to include dark berries and Greek
yogurt. I originally thought Greek yogurt was just regular yogurt that couldn’t
pay its bills, but it turns out it’s really just yogurt that has been strained
three times instead of two. That extra straining apparently really ramps up the
probiotics, which are the very best thing you can put in your body. That
confuses me, since antibiotics cure
diseases, so they must be great for you. How can probiotics and antibiotics
both be good for you?
The dark berries provide you with antioxidants, which are
also the very best thing you can put in your body, besides probiotics and omega-3
fat. Antioxidants eliminate free radicals, which are obviously bad, even though
being free and being radical are widely regarded as good qualities.
Today’s smart breakfast is a healthy balance of the
following: Whole-grain bran, acai berries, blueberries, sardines, kale, walnuts,
pomegranate juice, sweet potatoes, quinoa, lentils, kefir, Greek yogurt, steel-cut
oatmeal, and stone ground whole wheat bread. And, obviously, bacon and eggs.
That should take care of de-oxidizing any free radical biotics (pro or anti),
and minimize the LDL levels in your non-lactose, de-gluten-ized fiber, both
soluble and dietary.
Simple enough, although I do see one problem that is certainly
looming in our future. Since gluten comes from wheat, and chickens eat a lot of
wheat, our precious superfood eggs may not be entirely gluten-free. Just like
the pregnant mother is not supposed to smoke or drink, the chicken surely must
be passing some amount of gluten to the egg.
Our chickens may be free-range, but until they are fed a gluten-free
diet, eggs may need to get back on the “bad for you” list for a while.
I guess we can all just substitute a few more slices of
bacon to make up the difference.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen
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