TW Column by Emily Toth
Nutri-Prudes, Be Gone!
They’ll stop you on the street in Seattle when you’re with your chubby little darling, and hiss, “That baby has meat on its breath!”
They’ll harangue you: “Nitrites rot your cells!” They’ll try wailing and beseeching: “Fish are your friends! Would you really want to eat your friends?” And wherever you are, somebody is always ranting, “That’ll make you fat!”
They are what they don’t eat, those angular people who brag that they won’t consume anything but gently raised eggs and brown rice grown on an organic farm reachable only by donkey.
The nutri-prudes, with their lean and hungry looks, aren’t just cadaverous women. Michael Pollan thinks we’re crucifying ourselves on a cross of corn; Michael Jacobson tells us that a hit of fettucini alfredo is “a heart attack on a plate.” If you’re large, you’re the butt of late-night jokes. You’re advised not to run for president. And, of course, you’re going to get your comeuppance for your evil, self-loving ways.
Nutri-prudes like to spread the canard that Dr. Robert Atkins, with his tasty regimen of meat and eggs, died of clogged arteries. Actually, he fell on the ice at age 72, hit his head, and died a week later. This can happen to your neighborhood ectomorph, too. In fact, it’s more likely, because skinnies don’t have luxurious stuffing to cushion a fall.
That doesn’t bother the Virtuous, though, because what you eat is their moral cause. Locavores want you to head to the woods with your brave little trowel and trap your own morels. (Let it be known that my Irish and Jewish ancestors didn’t survive centuries of famine so that I could dig in the dirt for food.)
The truly nutri-prudish are Puritans of the palate, Calvinists who reject the idea that eating is love. They want their food revoltingly bland. No fat. No taste.
I’d rather swoon over butter with Julia Child. There are no food fascists among Chinese cooks, who make miracle foods from rocks and insects. African American cooks can turn the nastiest parts of a pig into gumbo and jambalaya, comfort and joy.
When I’m in charge of everything, I’ll ban the word “diet,” as well as prissy little synonyms for choosing starvation like “watching my weight.” Nixing “diet” alone would kill off 300 gazillion books—and save the lives of countless innocent trees that probably loved their moms and never hurt a fly.
I’ll also prohibit the word “calories,” except if it’s needed by physicists in labs under closely controlled conditions. While I’m at it, let’s get rid of “oversized” and “obese,” replacing them with “well-rounded” and “voluptuous.”
Let’s live off the fat of the land.
Let’s talk about the achievements of President William Howard Taft, not his weight. He was our last Unitarian president, a trust buster, and the initiator of a national income tax. He later became chief justice of the Supreme Court and lived to age 72, making him one of our longest-lived presidents. He was a lot more fun than that thin, squeamish little Woodrow Wilson—and which one had a stroke while in office?
I could rest my case, but first I’ll recommend some of my favorite books for exorcising the nutri-prudes from our psyches. Food will love you, if you treat and eat it right.
Read Susan Koppelman’s anthology The Strange History of Suzanne LaFleshe and Other Stories of Women and Fatness for the good news about those who have gotten past “eating disorders” and moved into adventure, knowledge, and self-love. For instance, contributor Vanessa Feltz writes in “Who Says Fat Isn’t Sexy?”:
Men who genuinely love women fantasize about being smothered in sofa-sized breasts and pillowed in marshmallow thighs. Pert is okay but pneumatic is heaven. Not for them the bite-size morsel.
“Wear horizontal stripes,” proclaims Marilyn Wann in Fat! So?, her own exuberant “fat-positive” answer to the body haters.
Revel in Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme’s My Life in France and the movie Julie and Julia, written and directed by that fabulous foodie Nora Ephron. Swoon with Gael Greene in Insatiable, when she’s served French snails:
First came the snails, supersize mutants and amazingly tender, nourished by crunching on the leaves of the Burgundy grape…. They had been snatched in adolescence, sautéed, braised, and sauced in a swirl of herb-scented butter—a last minute liaison requiring consummate timing.
Advertisers know that women must be wooed, as Katherine Parkin shows in Food Is Love. Ruth Reichl celebrates food and sex in Comfort Me with Apples, and Calvin Trillin’s Alice, Let’s Eat is a joyful shout-out for food and his beloved late wife and partner in zestful eating.
And there’s M. F. K. Fisher, whose classic How to Cook a Wolf begins with “How to Be Sage Without Hemlock”—a rant against nutritional regimentation:
One of the stupidest things in an earnest but stupid school of culinary thought is that each of the three daily meals should be 'balanced.' Of course, where countless humans are herded together, as in military camps or schools or prisons, it is necessary to strike what is ironically called the happy medium.
Fisher recommends a much happier calling: Eat what you want and eat a lot of it.
After all, as Erica Jong wrote in her first book, the poetry collection that started her career forty years ago: “The first poem in the world is/I want to eat.”
For Gorging or Nibbling
Writers Who Love Food and Fat
- The Strange History of Suzanne LaFleshe and Other Stories of Women and Fatness edited by Susan Koppelman (Feminist Press, 2003).
- Fat! So? Because You Don't Have to Apologize for Your Size by Marilyn Wann (Ten Speed Press/Random House, 1998).
- My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme (Knopf, 2006).
- Food Is Love: Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America by Katherine Parkin (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
- Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess by Gael Greene (Time Warner, 2006).
- Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table by Ruth Reichl (Random House, 2001).
- Alice, Let’s Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater by Calvin Trillin (Random House, 2006).
- How to Cook a Wolf by M. F. K. Fisher, originally published in 1942 (North Point Press, 1999).
- Fruits and Vegetables by Erica Jong, originally published in 1971 (25th anniversary edition: Ecco, 1997).
Art Information
- “Boiled Bream in Cured Ham” © Knut Pettersen; stock image
- “Cherry Cake” © Christian Setiawan; stock image
Emily Toth is a contributing writer at Talking Writing, where her column “Nothing but the Toth” appears regularly.
After finishing this column, Emily says she could be found “diving into a mess of greens, a side of fried pickles, and a vat of jambalaya."
