What Thanksgiving Used To Mean

For a client, I wrote a blog post on fatty Thanksgiving foods after being inspired by one of the most disgusting food videos I've ever seen. (Blog post is here. :) )

I thought it'd be a great topic for the week before Thanksgiving, but when I was doing my research on the fattiest Thanksgiving foods, the only things showing up in search was low-cal Thanksgiving recipes. My searches for "fattiest Thanksgiving recipes" and "high calorie Thanksgiving foods" turned up articles on a lighter Thanksgiving, a low-cal Thanksgiving, and advice on how to not overdo it during the holiday. 

What happened? Why are we now obsessed with making lighter dishes on Thanksgiving, the one day of the year we celebrate our abundance of food? It's because Thanksgiving is no longer the one day of the year we have more food than we know what to do with. We regularly over-indulge, regularly eat beyond being full, and regularly feel sick from too much food. 

Now, the internet is full of Thanksgiving recipes that teach cooks how to make the same dishes with fewer calories. Now, we're told to not put marshmallows on our sweet potatoes, skip the cream of mushroom and fried onions on the green beans, bake potatoes rather than mash them with butter and cream, and skip the bread and rolls. 

I know I'm being a bit of a hypocrite when I say this, especially since running a blog called We Should Be Fat, but I wouldn't mind going back to when giant meals were a special occasion. I wouldn't mind us, as a country, enjoying our meals for what they are, and knowing what they are. We should put some butter and cream in our mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving and enjoy them without worrying about how many miles we'll have to run to work it off, but we should be far more sensible about how we eat on a more regular basis. 

Louis C.K. says the meal is not over when he's full, it's over when he hates himself. And it's funny because it's true for a lot of us. (He also says he runs 5 miles every other day to keep up "this shitty body.") We eat, and then we keep eating until our bodies tell us we're full, and then we feel like absolute shit 20 minutes later, when those last few helpings have settled in. And it's not like we're shoveling in vegetables... we're eating meat at every meal, often with bread, followed up with sweets. And we wonder why there's an obesity crisis.

I was a supporter of Prop 37 that would have required the labeling of genetically modified foods because I saw it as a step in the right direction. We have no idea what we're eating, partially because we don't read the nutrition labels to know what actually comprises those frozen chicken nuggets and partially because a simple ingredient like corn (which is in fucking everything - go look) is comprised of a number of new chemicals that aren't listed. We're eating more, enjoying food less, and suffering because of our over abundance. Our farm animals get the vast, vast majority of our antibiotics (not because they're sick, either), we're polluting our country and other countries laugh at us because of our food habits.

If we don't go full steam ahead with every meal and regret the vast majority of what we eat, we can enjoy what we eat more and worry about it less. We can let Thanksgiving go back to what it used to be - a day to be thankful for what we have, which in this country is more often than not an abundance.

Eating Animals

I kind of have a hard time eating guys like this.

As you may have noticed to the left, I'm reading a book called Eating Animals. Eating Animals is a book I've wanted to read for a long time now for it's frank journalistic look at what eating animals means for us, for animals, and for the planet. The author has had a on-again off-again relationship with eating meat, often being a vegetarian who had bacon on Sundays and on burgers. The book is not, so far at least, an evangelical vegetarian piece. It proposes an honest look at our meat industries, doing research too involved to do on a smaller scale and too unbiased for Peta or other animal welfare groups. The author, Jonathan Safran Foer, is someone who really likes the idea of vegetarianism but also really likes how meat tastes. When his first son was born he realized that he would have to make decisions about food for him, and he decided he couldn't do that without knowing what that meant.

The first few chapters talked almost exclusively about tuna. I read those chapters while eating a tuna melt. The second time I sat down to read I was eating a banana with peanut butter. The third time I ate black bean and corn tacos. I feel I'm going to find it more difficult to eat meat as I read this book, an issue Safran Foer discusses. He points out that the automatic assumption we make when reading about meat, even when we see the title Eating Animals, is that it must be against the meat industry for its inhumane practices, and if that's the automatic assumption made by the majority of the people, what does that tell us? It tells us that we already know the meat industry is wrong, that even if eating meat isn't wrong in itself, that how we treat and kill the animals we do eat is wrong.

One of the reasons I like Safran Foer (so far) is his inquisitive manner and understanding way of writing. He likes meat. It tastes good. He gets that. He just also gets the importance of not supporting the way we obtain our meat. To him, supporting something he believes in is worth ignoring his cravings. He's not out there to convert you- just to provide any reader with the information they need to make a decision 3 times a day. If you make the decision to eat meat, fine. But here are the facts anyway.

Peta, take note. The whole "chickens are people, too" campaign doesn't work. Mostly because chickens aren't people.

Gluten-Free Is Silly

I've heard (perfectly healthy) people (who can regularly tolerate gluten) talk about how cutting gluten from their diets has made them less lethargic or crabby, but I wonder what's really causing the difference. It could be that they're just eating less, or eating more vegetables, or cutting back on fat and salt, or exercising more, or just experiencing a placebo effect. Tons of people who aren't normally affected by gluten have decided that gluten is the devil and must be avoided at all costs. Look around in the grocery store: gluten-free brownies, gluten-free pizza crust, even gluten-free bread!

Granted, if you have celiac disease you probably don't want to die... but this isn't about that 1% of the American population, it's about the rest being silly. My dad's girlfriend is all about gluten-free; when my sisters were living with them they complained about there never being any food around. While there was always food around, it was either raw vegetables or gluten-free (not exactly easy to prepare on the run and not exactly tasty). They complained gluten-free pancakes didn't taste good, and I scoffed at them and suggested they suck it up for the free food. While I was visiting I made some Trader Joe's gluten-free brownies, thinking if it's from Trader Joe's it must taste good. Not true! That pan of brownies sat there all weekend... no one, not even my dad or his girlfriend, ate them (highly uncharacteristic of my dad to refuse brownies).

Don't search for images of food when you're hungry or craving sweets.

Which leads me to the word of the day: uncharacteristic. Except for those with celiac disease, people are generally fine with eating gluten. True, it's a relatively recent thing for our bodies to learn to accept in terms of intestinal evolution, but you may have noticed humans are pretty hardy little buggers; if we've been A-OK with it for the last 10,000 years, why has the last year or so been so tough on our little tummies? Because it hasn't! We're just fine with eating gluten, but celebrities and fad diets have told us otherwise and now a quarter of US adults are buying everything gluten-free.

But there's a giant glitch: gluten is a naturally occurring protein in wheat, barley and rye. You know what else comes from wheat, barley and rye? BEER. True, there are gluten-free beers available, but just try going into your regular bar or restaurant and ordering one. I would love to see someone order a gluten-free pizza crust ($5 extra) and a Bud Light. How silly.

Food

This will make sense later...

The New York Times has an article that presents vegetarianism to regular people in an honest, direct and meat-loving way. I know, it hardly seems possible, yet it's so obvious I'm shocked this is the first of its kind I've read. Since The Break-Up I've given a second thought to my diet; The Ex and I made a tradition of cooking, and we cooked amazingly delicious foods most nights. But there was a problem... The Ex did not, and I mean ever, eat vegetables unless they were in the form of sauce, ketchup or fried in oil (and even then only potatoes). I, on the other hand, loved vegetables. My body would actually crave broccoli or tomatoes when I went a couples days without any. But I compromised. And now that I don't have to I'd like to try cutting back on chicken, or cutting it out completely.

So back to the NYT: this guy Jonathan Safran Foer wrote about his struggles with meat and vegetarianism with a side of bacon in an excerpt from his upcoming book. I cut out pork in high school after The Bacon Incident left me fainting in church in front of the boy I had a crush on (I think I had already cut out beef by then) and pretty much stuck to poultry for protein. Though I know the horrors of the poultry industry (Peta is good for nothing if not making you want to vomit with their images) I still eat birds. Why? Part laziness, part poorness, part ignorance.

For nearly two years I've been allergic to avocados. I discovered this after graduating college and losing my health insurance (and the ability to find out why this most amazing fruit now makes me cry), and the dream of a San Diego vegetarian lifestyle started slipping away. My diet would require a hefty overhaul in order for it to be healthy for me to make the switch to meatlessness. Fortunately, I've been too poor to afford meat often so my meals have been vegetarian by default. I used to believe that it would be a better value to order chicken when eating out since meatless meals are usually priced the same (since when did salads start costing $15?), but lately I order vegetarian or fish to get ideas. And by golly it's working. Thanks in part to my pathetic food budget and thanks in part to The Break-Up freeing me from the necessity of meat I've begun looking towards vegetarianism in a new way, even sans avocado.

I've been learning a lot about the consequences of my food decisions. Palm oil is pretty much the worst thing in the world because its production causes so much habitat destruction for countless species, and coffee is terrible for the same reason (buy shade grown!). I learned that eel is farmed at great cost to the environment and you can choose your meal based on the healthiest option for the Earth. I've already started making some conscious decisions about what I eat; but I'm still a total hypocrite for advocating animal rights and eating mass produced chicken.

Foer's excerpt discusses the importance of meat in traditions and the difficulty in participating in tradition without those foods. My family always had Holiday Food for holiday breakfasts: Eggs Benedict. At one point all of us kids didn't eat pork, which frustrated the hell out of our mom. Now it's just me (again) and I don't really care for Eggs Benedict but I'll eat a poached egg on toast to make her happy. The Catholic celebration of Lent is still tradition for me, despite my departure from Catholicism, and it requires abstaining from all meat except fish on Fridays (which really soured The Ex, who also does not eat fish, ever times infinity). I think this year I'll "give up" chicken for Lent and forgo fish on Fridays. If that works I'll be well on my way to eating the way I've wanted to for a long time.

Rather than being vegetarian or pescetarian, I'd like to be opportunitarian, like Costello. He hunts for fish but he'll also scavenge for whatever someone else left behind. I'd like to make my meals of sustainable fish and vegetables (and shit loads of rice... no matter how poor I am I'll always have rice and canned tomatoes) but if someone offers me chicken or pork or even beef that would otherwise go to waste I'll happily eat it so the creature didn't die in vain. Someday, when I have a house, I'll keep a chicken coop so I'll always have fresh eggs. People appreciate presents of fresh eggs and everyone can feel good about eating eggs that come from a pet, rather than a farm stuffed with caged hens.

The Human Guinea Pig

Butters and Reese

It's pretty rare I get so embarrassed I almost start crying, but today was a rare day.

First off, I'm all for human testing. Humans give their consent to be tested upon, animals don't, and human products don't have consistent results when tested on anything other than humans. So when I found out about a clinical trial testing a new generic cream for eczema I signed my rashy self up.

The trials were conducted in what used to be a dentist office. The nurse, who looked my age if not younger, asked to see my eczema. Unfortunately for me (and everyone else involved), it's not in an area I can see without using a mirror... I had to put on a paper gown while she fetched the (male) doctor. I told her the idea of a male doctor viewing that area was an uncomfortable one, and she tried assuring me it would be just fine.

After waiting almost completely naked in a dentist chair for 30 minutes the doctor and nurse finally came in. He checked my skin in the less embarrassing places with a doubtful look and asked me to stand up to show him the rest. Oh. My. God.

"That's not eczema."

Huh? Sure as hell better be eczema or I want my $400 back from UC Medical Center.

The doctor is convinced it's not eczema because it's not a full blown rash despite me telling him it was when it was originally diagnosed, and even if it was I don't have it bad enough to participate in the trial, so he starts telling me my options. I could go to my general health practitioner, but I don't have one. I could talk to my insurance provider, but I don't have one. I could restrict my diet, but he can't tell me what foods I should eliminate. I could get a prescription for the drug this clinical trial is testing, but they're testing a generic version because it's fucking expensive. I could use him as my doctor, but he'd have to charge me for a visit. I also should not use any antiperspirant until the rash goes away, but I work in fucking Escondido, outside, in the cab of a truck with no air conditioning, in an environment made to resemble Africa. I sweat.

Then he asks me if I have any questions, and at this point I'm so embarrassed I had to bend over for no reason and frustrated at my conflicting diagnoses that I'm slightly teary-eyed.

"No, I don't have any questions."

Then we have a staring contest for half a minute.

"Should I have a question? Is there something I should be asking?"

"No," the doctor says. "Only ask the question you want to ask."

"I don't have any questions."

Keep in mind all this is going on while I'm in a paper robe and have shown very private areas to the dude. Thankfully he leaves, hopefully feeling as awkward as I was. I put my clothes on in record time and am about to bolt when the door opens and the nurse comes back in. I can tell she feels for me and maybe understands my position as a broke-ass person with conflicting diagnoses about a relatively new disease, and she secretly hands me a few trial sized tubes of the test cream. I take them and practically run to my car.

I'm unsure what I should take away from this experience. This all started at Urgent Care with a rash spanning almost my entire body and I was told I had eczema and the eczema medicine helped. All the information I could find on the condition says it's worse in the winter, and since it's not only not winter but the hottest part of summer and I work in "Africa" it makes sense that it's not a full blown rash right now, but a well managed, uncomfortable skin condition. Also, nowhere did I find a consensus on what products or foods to use or avoid- this seems like a highly personal condition, and my version of it is highly unusual, especially having been diagnosed as an adult with no relevant family history. Then this new doctor takes a look and says nope, last doctor got it wrong, so it's probably just an allergy, and maybe I eat too much broccoli and kale. What the fuck is kale?

I'm just going to stay my current course. I make sure to take cool showers, pat or air dry, put lotion on immediately and as often as needed, stay hydrated and eat healthy. And until I can afford health care this is about the only option I have. This is why I get so pissed when people complain about how a public health care option is going to ruin our country- I'm sure these naysayers are all happily insured and don't have to go through embarrassing clinical trials in order to get medicine. And to them I say fuck you, you put me in a terrible mood.

The "Secret" Link Between Diet and Health

Or don't eat like a fatty.

I come from three very food-oriented cultures: the Irish love them their potatoes, the Italians treat pasta like a god, and Americans, well, we all know how Americans eat.

It's not difficult to see how eating healthy foods can contribute to a healthy body. These past few weeks of marvelous unemployment I've become a regular gourmet in my kitchen, dishing up gnocchi with tomatoes, chicken sausage, bell peppers, onions, garlic and cheese, and  a plate of baby greens topped with bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and balsamic dressing, and some broccoli rice and chicken sausage. I even made goat cheese and sun-dried tomato pizza!

However, very shortly before unemployment started, the same week in fact, I discovered I have eczema. (This "discovery" involved a trip to urgent care, some ointments, two days off work, and over $400. And there goes nearly a third of my severance pay. Bastards.)

I've been researching what I could do to keep the disgusting rash at bay. The following are lists of "Do's" and "Don'ts."

Eat shitloads of the following:

• Water based fruits and vegetables, such as cantaloupe, tomatoes, and green "peepers." I love finding typos in others' work.
• Vitamin rich fruits and vegetables, such as strawberries, carrots, and leafy green veggies.
• Sulfur rich foods, like eggs, garlic and asparagus.

One website even published a sample menu.

• Breakfast is a raw fruit smoothie with "golden flax seeds," "wild crafted blue green algae," "green drink mix," and "probiotics." WTF are blue green algae and green drink mix? 
• Lunch is vegetables added to any of the following: salmon, rice, potatoes, and miso soup. Boredom not allowed.
• Dinner is a glass of vegetable juice. That you juice yourself. V8 is cheating.

Here's a list of things to avoid like the plague:

• Fried foods and animal fats (and apparently every meat except salmon)
• Soft drinks, sugar, chocolate, potato chips, or any other junk food
• Alcohol and caffeine
• Hot water (seriously)
• Fun (not so seriously)

There is such a thing as going too far. You'll look like the orange patient in "Scrubs" after a few weeks of eating nothing but colorful vegetables.

Not the guy I meant; he apparently doesn't exist on the Internet.

I'll just stick to the recommended 8 glasses of water a day. When filtered water was free and chilled at work I'd go through about 2 liters every day. My happiness would suffer if I were restricted to juicing vegetables three times a day, and don't they say the placebo effect can have as much to do with health as many cures?

Or maybe the simplest solution is on the tip of my tongue... There have been cases of eczema that have been "cured" due to a major hormonal change. I couldn't afford health insurance with my paycheck, so when my free birth control ran out and Planned Parenthood wanted me to pay for more I took a hiatus. Luckily (?), after a week I lost my job and qualified for free pills again. I had recently tried Ortho Evra, or the Patch, which caused weight gain and "enhanced" emotions. All of this was exactly at the time my eczema began. I'll be a happy, happy camper if all I have to do to keep the itchy away is take the pills I'm used to taking. I'll update in a month or so.