Fat by Jennifer McLagen

I am always amazed by the vast number of opinions available on the Internet. I seem to remember a time when I could go and find a few definitive answers, make a decision and all is done. Perhaps that was when I just asked my parents. Now you can find opposing viewpoints, good arguments and plenty of indecision on any topic imaginable.

Take diet. From raw food to all meat, everyone has a view on the best way to lose weight and be healthy. There are common threads to be found, but even then, there is always someone to show you a different story. Take this book by Jennifer McLagen - Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes. Just when you think you can rule out animal fat as completely unhealthy, she convincingly points out otherwise.

I love when ideas so deeply ingrained into our social belief system suddenly come up for question. It allows us to realize that there are always alternatives and perspectives - to help us find new ways of doing things or to reaffirm the choices we have already made.

McLagen was recently interviewed on Salon, an excellent website packed with news, features, columns and ideas. I’ve included some of the more intriguing questions below, including the issues of obesity, food illiteracy, the French, Crisco and fearing our food. I’d also encourage you to check out the full interview and article.

There has been a huge movement against the consumption of fatty foods over the past 30 years or so. So why is obesity such a challenge in America today?

Eating less animal fat hasn’t made us healthier or thinner. We have reduced the amount of animal fat we eat, but statistics show the total amount of fat in our diet has increased. Vegetable fats have been replaced by animal fats, which has resulted in a huge increase in polyunsaturated fat in our diet (which can depress your immune system). We’ve also added man-made trans fats to the mix, which everyone now agrees are not good for us.

It’s difficult to blame obesity on one thing. But it is definitely not consumption of animal fats. I think there are many causes — the way we eat, alone, in the car, walking down the street, the constant snacking. Increased consumption of low-fat, fat-free “foods” results in us eating more sugars and carbohydrates. These products don’t satisfy our hunger and leave us wanting to eat more. Eating good animal fat does, so you eat less.

It’s also how we relate to our food. We consume large portions of prepared foods, huge portions. Food is relatively cheap: We spend less than 10 percent of our income on it. Consequently, we don’t value it. Many see it simply as fuel or a medicine, not a pleasure. Because people have become so disconnected from their food, they fear it and continually break it down into good and bad elements.

There’s also a widespread myth that making food from scratch takes too much time and is expensive. It may not always be quicker, but it is better for you and cheaper when all the costs are considered.

If we cooked our food, sat down at a table with friends and family and enjoyed eating it, we would be healthier, happier and probably thinner.

The French appear to have a positive relationship with fat whereas North Americans do not. Why is that?

I think most cultures, especially the French, have a positive relationship with their food and this carries through to fat. Look at how the Ukrainians regard their salo [salt-rendered pork fat]. They see food as something to enjoy and celebrate, and they treat it with respect. It probably helps that their food is more expensive, but, for example, look at how the food is labeled in France. It states the origin, producer and tradition: Terroir is important, whereas here it is calories and chemical composition. In North America we fear our food, but we have to eat, so our relationship is [hopelessly split]. We lack a food culture.

However, I believe many cultures are threatened today as they adopt American habits and embrace fast and industrial food. Even in France, which is not immune from the dominant American culture, there is a problem of obesity among the younger generation.

In the book you write, “We are a generation that is computer literate but food illiterate.”

I think many of us are food illiterate in the practical sense: We know the latest restaurant, hot new chef, current food trend or exotic vegetable, but we don’t know how to roast a chicken. The British critic A. A. Gill spoke of “a generation that can read a menu in three languages but cannot write a recipe in their own.”

Cooking should be a skill everybody masters. I am not talking about professional cooking. Everyone should know how to make something to eat. We all have to eat, and cooking dinner should be a simple, everyday act. It should be valued, not seen as a chore or a competitive sport. It is a rich, sensual experience that we can all take part in and enjoy.

But we are now so far removed from the source of our food that we no longer have any instinctive knowledge about our food and how to prepare it. We don’t know if it is good or bad, ripe or rotten. Rather than listen to our grandparents, we turn to science and government — or worse, celebrities — to tell us how and what to eat. We let large companies prepare our food. It seems we can’t even wash lettuce anymore! We are sentencing future generations to ignorance and industrial food.

Food shapes and expresses our culture, and our culture is revealed by how we treat and view our food.

How did animal fat, which was so popular in the early 20th century, lose out to Crisco?

Well, Crisco and other vegetable fats didn’t do that well at first. True, they were cheaper and popular with food manufacturers, but people preferred lard, suet, poultry fat and butter to cook with.

The vegetable fats were aggressively promoted, but it was not until the 1970s — when animal fat was declared “the greasy killer” and we were told to lower our consumption — that vegetable fats became “the healthy fats.” That’s when their sales took off.

So how exactly is cooking with animal fat better for us?

Unlike vegetable oils, animal fats are very stable and don’t turn rancid easily. This makes them ideal for cooking, which involves heating the fat. And they have no trans fats.

It is much easier to roast a bird or a joint of meat if it has a good quantity of fat. The fat guarantees taste and succulence. Without it, the meat will be dry and tasteless.

Animal fats have lots of good fatty acids that fight disease, help absorb vitamins and lower cholesterol. Your body burns the short-chained fatty acids found in animal fats and stores the long-chained ones found in polyunsaturated fat. It is a myth that eating animal fat makes you fat.

Animal fat also has a good ratio of essential fatty acids. Many of us have a skewed ratio thanks to too much vegetable oil. When this ratio is out of balance, it results in illness and depression.

But best of all, fat — with its big round molecules — tastes good, it feels good in your mouth, on your tongue and it carries flavors.

This is one of my favorite morning rituals…one that I have been doing on and off for over 10 years: Morning Pages.

I found it in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and I know she’s talked about it in many of her other books. Googling “morning pages” gets all kinds of great results too, and this site was full of helpful hints.

It works like this:

First thing in the morning - still in bed even - reach over and grab your ragged notebook and writing instrument (I love a good smooth pen). Start writing, three longhand pages of whatever is traveling through your mind. Don’t stop until you get to the end - 30 minutes later give or take. Try not to get interrupted.

The idea is to dump all the chaos of that morning out-of-control mind onto those pages. Just get it down and out of the way so you can really get your creative juices pumping.

When I started, I found that if I didn’t get out of bed, I’d be asleep half a page in. Sometimes a quarter. So I’d have some water and nestle in a chair. You wouldn’t believe the lively curses that I could muster some days. The boring drone of complaints and annoyances. Mostly about relationships and money and the combination thereof, interjected with heavy doses of self criticism. My dreams would come by here and there for a visit. Sometimes I’d repeat myself over and over: “I’m tired. I don’t know what to write.”

Then, something happened. Sheer inspiration. Flowing from my pen, first thing in the morning. Stories, images, ideas. I would dance as I wrote, or at least, felt like I was dancing. Creativity flowed through my body and out my pen.

I don’t know - maybe I finally dumped enough sludge from my mind that interesting things could emerge. It didn’t matter to me…I could hardly wait to get to that page to see what might come out. What possibilities it might present for my day. If I decided to act on them, that is, and there was freedom in knowing I didn’t have to.

In fact, Julia Cameron recommends that you don’t do anything with those pages. That you write and store it away for months before you read it. If you ever read it at all. I cheated at that after it got really good, transcribing my inspirations to my computer right away (and I don’t regret it). But mostly, I let the negativity lie.

Once, I did pick up one of my old notebooks. I was bemused to see that some things hadn’t really changed. Still angry about the same things. Guess I can work on that a bit harder. And I was happy to see that some of them had changed…that I’d actually forgotten how much those things used to annoy me. I closed the books and returned them to their dusty shelf. 

I have a few clients that I’ve encouraged toward the practice as well. Recently, one of them told me that after the first page of trivialities, she found herself listing all the things she was grateful for - a list that had grown substantially since she had found her joy.

I’ve heard of prayers emerging, business ideas, all kinds of inspiration. I think it comes from getting the mind out of the way and giving the deeper inner voice room to speak.

One last bit of advice before you jump in: At first, take it seriously. Do it everyday, in the morning, first thing. After that (could be a couple weeks, a couple months), don’t worry if you miss a day or two, or a few weeks. Get a feel for how it works best for you and follow that guideline instead.

For many people, one of the biggest problems with meditation is finding the time. Who has an extra 30 minutes a day to sit and desperately attempt to quiet the mind? It takes serious discipline to make that a practice, especially when piled on top of work and exercise and foraging for the next meal and relating with people and cleaning the house and everything else.

Meditation in a New York Minute

That’s one of the reasons I love this book. You see, what you really don’t have is an extra 30 minutes in a row. You do have driving time and eating time and pauses while you wait for your computer to catch up. Mark Thornton’s Meditation in a New York Minute takes advantage of all those extra moments (way more than 30, by the way) and shows you how to use them to destress your life.

He has numerous exercises on how to do this, ranging from simple to advanced. For example, why not put an alarm on your PDA to remind you to take a deep breath? I have something like that on mine - and occassionally I’ll change the alarm time or the message to help me see it in a new light.

My favorites activities are, of course, those that help you really develop an awareness of your body - when you’re eating, walking, brushing your teeth, working in the garden. I often encourage my clients to do the same with their senses - anywhere, anytime - feel the experience of life in that moment. After all, the input is there. We’re always smelling, tasting, hearing, touching, seeing. Simply allow yourself to notice.