Picture from the NYT. Because how else will we know that fat is bad if they don’t run a picture of a headless fatty with the article? Fat people don’t deserve heads. And this one must have been very, very bad because he doesn’t deserve arms, either.
What a very odd piece from the NYT on food bloggers and restaurateurs who suddenly find themselves, after years of overindulging in rich, fatty foods, to be, well, rich and fat:
Back before everyone with a fork and a laptop started nursing a food blog, Mr. Perlow was a founder of eGullet, a pioneering online discussion forum that helped obsessed food enthusiasts find one another.
It put him at the center of a community where no food was too fatty and no field trip too extreme. Ferreting out the best place for an empanada or the perfect way to braise pork belly meant tasting countless versions, often in the same day. Being the first in the group to find it was golden.
In October, Mr. Perlow was in Denver on business for his day job as a systems integration expert. He fell ill, and what seemed like a case of altitude sickness turned into a three-day hospital visit. There he heard the grim truth: He was diabetic. He weighed more than 400 pounds, his blood pressure was dangerously high and his blood was thick with glucose and cholesterol.
A doctor told him he would be dead in five years.
“I wasn’t shocked but I thought maybe it’s time the party’s over,” he said.
Yeeeeees, what a surprise, indeed, that mainlining chicken fat might lead to ill health.
The only thing that’s terribly surprising about this article is that the specific eating habits of those profiled, and not just their weight, is brought up for examination.
Indeed, other than the scorn (for, undoubtedly, the ickily public weight gain and tacky reminders that certain dietary habits can lead to mortality), I could see the descriptions of what’s being eaten among this crowd as the ultimate in indulgence in a non-belt-tightening era:
To which many members of the Fat Pack say: Shut up and pass the pork butt. Among a certain slice of the food-possessed, to suggest that indulgence might put one’s health in peril is to invite ridicule.
“I think enjoyment of food has never proven to be harmful to anyone’s health,” said Mr. Shaw, who turned from practicing law to writing about food in the late 1990s with an article for salon.com defending fat guys. He still cultivates a persona in print and online as The Fat Guy, and at 5-foot-10 weighs about 270 pounds.
Mr. Shaw said he believes the genetic component of weight and health matter more than moderation and exercise. Although his father died from heart disease, he thinks that the state of medical knowledge on the relationship of diet to health changes so frequently that it can’t be trusted.
Some of his views about diet and health border on the extreme. “I think the whole diabetes thing is a major hoax,” he said. “They are overdiagnosing it.”
Josh Ozersky, the online food editor for New York magazine, once told Mr. Perlow that they were the type of people who had their cholesterol tested for blood. Mr. Ozersky used the pen name Mr. Cutlets when he wrote the eating guide “Meat Me in Manhattan” (Gamble Guides, 2003), but uses his real name on his new book, “The Hamburger: A History,” due out next month from Yale University Press.
“Obviously, my philosophy on gastronomy can be summed up by saying the fat is the meat and the meat is the vegetable,” he said.
And here is where I part company with Mr. Cutlets and those who think like he does (why, yes, Anthony Bourdain, I’m looking at you): Meat is meat, but vegetable is vegetable, and if you can’t enjoy a vegetable without reference to meat, then what kind of foodie are you, really?
Because, honestly, why do you have to agree that meat and lard are the best thing EVAH in order to have an opinion that asparagus dredged in olive oil and grilled with salt and pepper is just about the perfect way to serve that vegetable?
Moreover, why should anyone be ashamed of liking tofu for what tofu is?
Just before Thanksgiving, Mr. Perlow told readers of his blog, Off the Broiler (offthebroiler.wordpress.com), the truth about his health. Reviews of chili dogs and videos of home tostone-frying projects gave way to meditations on lentil soup and The Big Salad.
“I can’t believe I just blogged about tofu,” he said just after the change began. But what a blog entry it was. Mr. Perlow prepared and photographed, in smart, annotated detail, ma-po tofu and tofu skin noodles with spicy peanut sauce.
And though he is still in mourning for his old loves, especially pizza and burgers, he says his pleasure receptors are better tuned to the joys of vegetables and legumes.
While the former eGullet partners don’t speak anymore, Mr. Shaw said he admired Mr. Perlow’s latest venture.
“I’ve got to hand it to Jason,” he said. “He’s not part of the culture of deprivation. He is really enjoying what he eats.”
It’s not like you should jump off a bridge if you can’t get the perfect slice of bacon; there’s a whole world of tastes out there to discover.
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I like a well prepared vegetable as much as the next but giving up bacon is just harsh.
Meh… I hate it the way people imply that I loose out majorly on the pleasure of food after going veggie.
I beg to differ, seriously.
I’ve always loved food, I’m a sucker for sensations and gastronomical sensations can be almost like a drug to me. People that know me say they don’t know anybody who looks like they enjoy their food more than I do.
And still I don’t feel like I’ve lost anything dropping the meat off my diet. If anything I feel like I’ve gained a world of new pleasures.
And I’ve got two comments on the matter.
Loving food is not the same as abusing food, I don’t need to binge to satesfy myself.
Knowledge of the meat industry really put a clamp on my enjoyment of meat, in the end I only enjoyed eating game, and then that too lost it’s savor.
And it’s not a lie, quitting the meat does improve ones sense of taste.
Personally, what stuck out to me was his offhand comment that diabetes is a hoax that is being overdiagnosed. No, sorry, you shouldn’t take chances. Diabetes can lead to all sorts of complications such as blindness, and should be checked for. Of course I wish that people would not fat-shame on the basis of health, but trying to pretend that there might not be any risks puts people in danger. Risk factors are risk factors, and just mean you need to keep a closer eye on things. To be honest, everyone needs to keep an eye on their health, not just ‘fat’ people.
As for meat vs. vegetable, all kinds of food can be enjoyable, and I wish society would stop dressing meat as the be-all and end-all of food. I’m not even vegetarian but that annoys the shit out of me. Yes, it tastes good, but so do vegetables. And bringing up our kids to think that vegetables are just icky health food we don’t like to eat is just a recipe for disaster. I’m all for personal choice and indulgence, I just wish personal indulgence didn’t have to mean playing up to society’s expectations of what you eat or how much.
I do not agree with your main point – leaving the whole plant kingdom out of your diet and labeling it too mundane or boring to be ‘real food’ is stupid and unhealthful – I could have done without the ‘headless fattie’ picture.
Crap, I meant to say that I DO agree with your main point. It’s just the picture I have issues with :)
sighs – the whole diabetes thing is “overdiagnosed”? unfortunately, its the opposite – a lot of times doctors miss the early symptoms … and the really sad part is caught early, a person has a much better chance of delayed the inevitable diagnosis by changing habits – like how they eat and exercise …
that attitude is prevelant everywhere – becuase the bottom line is that people want an easy fix – they don’t want to change habits or indulgences but want to keep eating, exercising (or not) and followng the lifestyle they are in – even if it is killing them.
Two of my kids are vegetarian -one since she was 7 (now 21) and the other at 10 (now 15) – although our household incorporates some meat – we eat primarily beans, legumes, LOTS of vegetables and fruit- and you can do absolutely WONDERFUL things with a few spices and marinades AND eat healthy … I know concentrating on keeping away from what I call “white things” – i.e. anything that has white flour or useless carbs does not come into the house- my type 2 diabetes diagnosed 5 years ago has never progressed and after starting to eat this way and exercise LOTS I am (and have been) in “normal” ranges for 4 years ..
Ultimately, people with that attitude are killing themselves. Sadly, if they did some research, they would see the manner in which they are doing so is not pretty …
It came with the article. It occurred to me that the text you see if you scroll over it isn’t snarky enough, so I’m editing the post to add a caption snarking at it.
This is one reason the conflation of fat and ill health is such a dangerous concept — people who are thin or average weight are assumed to be healthy. But a thin person who eats like these people do is likely to have issues as well. It’s just that nobody will look for them unless that person has a crisis, or unless that person gains weight. And then it will be blamed on the fat.
Fruits and veggies are sublime wonderful things. Fresh from the vine peapods, the succulent juiciness of a ripe flavorful warm summery tomato, peaches that melt in your mouth, the sweet taste of a fresh green bean…
I’m getting all warm here! ;-)
You know, just because the photo came with the article doesn’t mean you had to use it. You had a choice, and your choice was to use a photo denigrating to fat people. I’m disappointed that a blogger of your caliber would resort to such a thing.
Perhaps you’ll be happier at another blog, then. As I’ve said, I added a caption commenting on the headless fatty picture. The use of the headless fatty picture as part of the article is part of the whole fat-shaming shorthand. I could talk about it, but why tell when you can show?
asparagus dredged in olive oil and grilled with salt and pepper is just about the perfect way to serve that vegetable?
Oh, gods, isn’t it, though? Lacking a grill, I’m forced to roast or broil, but I do it the same way. Freshly cracked pepper, sea salt… Mmmmm.
I suspect that one of the reasons more people don’t realize how delicious veggies can be is because so many people don’t have access to or knowlege about how best to prepare them. Most of the people I know lived on canned veggies and salad, and if your impression of, say, green beans comes from a can? I can’t blame you for not being impressed. But fresh green beans with a little garlic and onion? Mmmmm.
Roy: get yourself a cast-iron grill pan.
I agree Zuzu. I have been a veggie for about 15 years, since I was a teen, and it annoys the crap out of me when people don’t recognize any other food groups but meat and dairy.
I was at a pot luck a couple of weeks ago and I brought my very favorite dish: North African Peanut Stew. It’s vegan and made of delicious. People asked me in hushed tones if it was vegetarian and I said yes. No one would try it until a couple people took some, declared it the best dish there and everyone ate it up.
Why was it the best dish? Because it did not rely on meat to be the primary flavor. Everyone else’s dish did. But you’d think I was trying to convert people the way they were acting. We are headed down a dark path in our society if we can’t learn to cook veggies.
One of the things that really bothered me about this article was the assumption that the love of food leads to ill health.
Loving food has nothing to do with weight in my opinion.
Also, eating well is hugely dependant on your economic status, veggies can be very expensive. Joining a gym is expensive. Coming home after a long day of work and trying to prepare a nutritious and fresh meal can be difficult.
I think the fat shaming is closely related to classism.
Sorry for kind of going off on a tangent there.
George Foreman countertop grill. Makes it all nice and crispy.
Back on topic, I do like me a good piece of meat, but the important word there is “good.” Mediocre chicken from a factory farm is about as tasty as mushy green beans out of a can. You can have a healthy diet that includes meat, but we are omnivore humans and not carnivore tigers, so we require more than meat to have a healthy diet.
And, yes, a bad diet can lead you to diabetes even if you’re not overweight. They don’t make you exercise for Type II diabetes just to make you lose weight — it actually gets your body functioning better.
What bothered me most about the article was the fuzzy logic, the conflation of unhealthy eating, fat, and ill-health. Those things can go together; they do not have to. Unhealthy eating and ill-health DO go together most of the time, but fat may or may not accompany either of those two. You can be fat and healthy; you can eat really badly and be very unhealthy and still be skinny. And you can eat healthily and be skinny and still have such health problems! A 29-year-old good friend of mine is a healthy-eating vegetarian (not just peanut butter and pasta, in other words), has been for 10 years, weighs about 120 lbs, and has sky-high cholesterol because of her genes. Genes do matter in terms of whether you get fat, as well as for your predisposition to various diseases. But diet and exercise CERTAINLY affect whether you get those diseases and when, and that’s true whether you’re fat or thin. It’s not just fat people who need to be healthy.
Oh, and I was also bothered, as you were, zuzu, by the swagger about meat and animal fat. Fine, they taste good to you. It doesn’t make you a better, more sensual person than someone who takes pleasure from a sublime winter squash risotto, or the perfectly prepared asparagus. /grumpy vegetarian
Also re photo: seems fat folks don’t deserve clothes that fit properly either. Geez. Who would actually wear a button down that was skin tight?
And when I stand up from my lunch of vegan noodles and veggies (mmmmm) I will leave half my ass behind, obviously. *eyeroll*
I love all the moaning about how people don’t! understand! diet! and! health! THIS IS WHY. Because there are little to no mainstream resources for understanding diet and health that are anything but misleading/flat-out untrue fat-shaming.
What a crappy article. The worst part about it is the way it portrays fat people as self-destructive gluttons who eat rich food all the time. I’d imagine if you really look at statistics, poor people would be more likely to be fat because cheap food is the crappiest for you. Most people aren’t fat because they were pigging out on foie gras and eclaires, but because they’re stuck subsisting on Top Ramen and Velveeta sandwiches. And plenty of other fat people eat healthy diets and regular exercise and are, gasp, perfectly healthy!
and GET regular exercise. D’oh!
You do realize that most people don’t bother to mouse over a picture to see if there is a caption? It didn’t even occur to me until you said something about captioning it. After seeing the picture I actually had to read the post over 3 times before I stopped seeing red long enough to realize *you* weren’t agreeing with the article quoted. Fat people see these things often enough to have a knee jerk reaction to photos like that. Perhaps putting in writing *why* you chose to use the picture would be helpful, as opposed to a mouseover caption that most people don’t read anyway and that doesn’t always work in a news reader besides.
And now it’s captioned. Happy?
Also re photo: seems fat folks don’t deserve clothes that fit properly either. Geez. Who would actually wear a button down that was skin tight?
Me, because I like that risque feeling I get when my breasts are causing that fun gap where the button-down goes over them.
What can I say? I like to live on the wild side.
Martizia, you must be new here if you’ve never seen a single one of the essays that both Jill and zuzu have written about fat-shaming.
You may want to click on the “fat” archive to the right and get caught up.
Speaking as someone who adores a good piece of meat and drools when dreaming of duck or a steak and kidney pie, I hate it when people think that meat is the be-all and end-all of food. I also happen to love tofu for what it is and be able to wax rhapsodic at the drop of a hat about the joys of the perfect spinach salad or a really good butternut squash soup. It makes my heart sing when I can get proper fresh green beans straight off the vine and sautee them lightly with a bit of garlic and a few lovely, fresh herbs, and perhaps a few slivers of toasted almond.
Truly good eating and true appreciation of food requires variety as well as quality. In fact, the only table I dislike sitting at is the carnivore’s delight where vegetables are – if present at all – a mere afterthought.
And for the record, I weigh in the range of two hundred pounds, stand 5′2″, and have perfect blood pressure and my cholesterol and blood sugar are well within normal ranges. I also dress well and know how to pick clothes that actually fit. And I feed my family good, fresh vegetables all the time on a painfully limited budget in a very expensive part of the country. Budget Tip: ethnic stores often have higher quality fresh vegetables at lower prices. If there’s one near you, give it a try and watch your veggie intake improve in both quantity and quality while your grocery budget shrinks.
I just hate the forced dichotomy between skinny people who are supposedly depriving themselves and fat people who are supposedly gorging themselves on fatty foods. I have been fat and thin and I know that being either means hauling around a lot of baggage that you didn’t pack.
Next time you grill asparagus, instead of salt and pepper, try one of those citrus grill seasonings that they make for steak. That’s some tasty eats.
just a point…
i HATE tofu. a LOT
Maybe it was cooked wrong.
A friend of mine won’t try tofu, no matter how it’s been prepared. She said she’s had it before and it’s gross and she doesn’t like it. I asked her when she tried it — her family is big on stews out of a can and just-add-water convenience foods. She said that the vet had recommended that their very sick dog eat it. They tried feeding some of it to the dog, who wouldn’t eat it. She tried it (like a parent — to prove it’s good enough for the child) and didn’t like it. Well, yeah. Nibbling on a raw block of tofu is like eating gelatinous glue. It just doesn’t taste all the much like anything worth eating until you cook it and add it to stuff.
The only time I’ve liked it was when it was deep-fried, but pretty much anything tastes decent if you deep fry it. Other than that … don’t like the taste, don’t like the texture, just don’t like. Soy milk is nasty and chalky, and I’ve tried different kinds. I do not like soy, and trying to sell me on it by saying that what you’re offering me is fermented — like that’s a plus with beans — doesn’t work, either.
Though I don’t mind whole soybeans (edamame). It’s the derivatives I can’t stand.
I end up eating a vegan-esque diet for about 6 months out of the year. I have had the joy of discovering hundreds of new flavors, new veggies, new methods of preperations because of this.
It truly expanded my culinary and gastronomic horizons.
Honestly, if I had more time to cook (I work quite long hours) I would try for it all of the time.
Time and money are the biggest constraints.
( I quite love tofu- baked is my favorite)
Soy milk is nasty and chalky, and I’ve tried different kinds.
The only soy milk I’ve ever liked is the cappuccino-flavored Soy Slender, and I think that’s because the coffee flavor balances out the “chalky”. It also helps to think of it as a “soy beverage” rather than “soy milk”.
i HATE tofu. a LOT
And I hate shellfish. But I don’t go around telling people who like oysters that shellfish represent the death of the pleasure principle in food, the way some of the guys in this article (and a lot of people like them) talk about meat v. tofu. I don’t know why it makes them feel so righteous to talk about other people’s diets that way. It gets tiresome.
(Not that you were doing this, denelian, but that statement reminded me of all the people who have.)
Isn’t the greater problem here the fat hatred in the article, and not people’s opinions on proteins and righteousness on both sides of the forced dichotomy of tofu vs meat?
Yah, considering that entire cuisines are founded on soy, I don’t get the whole “OMG! You must hate food if you like soy!” attitude that many people who consider themselves “foodies” express.
Mnemosyne, have you tried inari? Nice briny flavor and no SOYSOYSOY texture at all.
My dog, FWIW, likes tofu. And tomatoes, and red peppers, and edamame. Odd little beast, but then, I’ve allowed her to beg, so she digs just about anything that I’m eating.
I don’t think so, but Google was telling me that Inari is a Japanese goddess, so I couldn’t quite figure out if I’d had it or not. From the pictures, it looked sort of cutlet-y? I can deal with soy when it’s chopped up fine and mixed with other stuff, but I can’t eat it as a chunk.
My complaint about the Soy Pushers (and I live in Los Angeles, where we have some really militant vegans) is when they try to convince you to try it by saying it tastes “just like” something else, or that you won’t be able to tell the difference. I can tell the difference between sweeteners (Splenda, Nutrasweet, saccharine, HFCS, real sugar and stevia all have distinct tastes) so, trust me, I’m going to be able to tell the difference between a piece of chicken and a piece of soy.
Not to mention that when omnivores tell you that something tastes “like chicken,” it inevitably means they’re trying to get you to taste something you would normally find repulsive, like rattlesnake or alligator. So “tastes just like” is wedded to “gross” in my mind.
I’m an omnivore, but I eat veggie burgers sometimes. Not because they “taste like” a beef or turkey burger, but because I like the taste. (Especially black bean burgers with a sliced green chile on top — yum!) Morningstar Farms makes a really good Parmesan ranch fake chicken patty. It doesn’t taste like a chicken patty, but it tastes pretty good and is easy to cook, so I’ll have it for lunch.
I think vegans and vegetarians are finally starting to figure out that you need to tell people that what you want them to eat tastes good, not that it tastes “just like” meat, but you’re fighting against 20 years of vegetarians claiming that they can’t tell the difference between seitan and beef, which makes the rest of us wonder if they cauterized their taste buds or something.
I’m another non-veggie who gets shirty when she hears “MEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAT! BURRRRPPP! REAL FOOD!” They’re really missing out. And it’s macho posturing to boot.
The trouble is, many people don’t like vegetables because they were forced to eat canned or factory-farmed, overcooked, underseasoned ones as children. Barbara and Camille Kingsolver point out that the reason so many kids hate vegetables is that the ones they eat taste bad. It’s worth it, if you can afford it, to spend a little more for locally-grown or at least organic fruits and veggies, and free-range chicken, grass-fed beef, etc.
BTW, Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” is FABULOUS and will make you think of food in a whole new way.
And diabetes is no joke. It’s a major cause of disability. Skinny people can get it too (I know a couple!). Mr “Diabetes is overdiagnosed” ought to visit a dialysis center some time.
Mmmm that’s actually the best way to enjoy tofu if you ask me. Cold and raw and sitting on plate by itself, preferably some high-quality untextured silken tofu. Maybe with a little tiny bit of soy sauce. But then, I was raised on the stuff, like a whole lot of other people in some parts of the world. Everyone has their own tastes of course, but it’s not like tofu is inherently nasty. I tend to think most reactions to tofu have to do with it being unfamiliar — not just the “this looks weird and I’m not sure” first-time thing, but it’s pretty different if you grew up with it as an ordinary staple. Of course, some people who did don’t like it either, but that’s a rather different way to arrive at a taste.
North African Peanut Stew
Sepra, would you mind sharing this recipe? It sounds DIVINE.
My complaint about the Soy Pushers (and I live in Los Angeles, where we have some really militant vegans) is when they try to convince you to try it by saying it tastes “just like” something else, or that you won’t be able to tell the difference. I can tell the difference between sweeteners (Splenda, Nutrasweet, saccharine, HFCS, real sugar and stevia all have distinct tastes) so, trust me, I’m going to be able to tell the difference between a piece of chicken and a piece of soy.
I’m with you for the most part, Mnemosyne. I enjoy things for what they are- I don’t want soy or whatever to try to pretend to be meat, because it isn’t. Give me a good blackbean burger that tastes like a blackbean burger, and I’m quite happy.
Not to mention that when omnivores tell you that something tastes “like chicken,” it inevitably means they’re trying to get you to taste something you would normally find repulsive, like rattlesnake or alligator. So “tastes just like” is wedded to “gross” in my mind.
I’ve never understood the claim that gater tastes like chicken. Chicken tastes like chicken. Gater and snake taste like gater and snake. Although, repulsive? I think not. I looove gater. Mmmmm.
I think vegans and vegetarians are finally starting to figure out that you need to tell people that what you want them to eat tastes good, not that it tastes “just like” meat, but you’re fighting against 20 years of vegetarians claiming that they can’t tell the difference between seitan and beef, which makes the rest of us wonder if they cauterized their taste buds or something.
Ha! Too right. A friend of mine kept trying to tell me that his fake meat products were just like meat, and that his fake cheese was just as good. I’m sorry, but no. Neither claim was true. Which isn’t to say that they’re *bad*, but if I’m going into it expecting it to be like something that it distinctly isn’t? I’m going to be put off. Just tell me what it *actually* is, and let me enjoy it or not.
I love fruits and vegetables. My favorite part of having moved to Berkeley for grad school this year is the amazing produce, year round. I did not know what avocados were supposed to taste like when I lived in New York. The Cheeseboard makes the best pizza I’ve ever had with all vegetarian, seasonal, locally-grown ingredients. Today people came over for impromptu barbecue and we made lemonade with lemons from the backyard. In March. It was rapture.
I also love meat. For said barbecue we made burgers with jerk sauce and home-made orange-chipotle mayo, and wrapped asparagus in prosciutto with fontina. I think there are a lot of good reasons to give up eating meat, but the comments posted above to the effect that vegetarians aren’t really missing anything and that omnivores can’t really taste how good fruits and vegetables actually are pretty silly. No, meat and dairy aren’t “better” than other foods, and I sure as hell don’t eat burgers and prosciutto-wrapped asparagus every day, but cutting entire food groups out of your diet doesn’t render you uniquely capable of experiencing the ~50% of what’s out there that you actually do cook with.
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