Fixin' Supper

Apparently, there are some of you out there eating red and processed meats with every meal.

I was scanning the news real quick, and I saw this item in the New York Times: Paying a Price for Loving Red Meat. A new study shows that people who eat more red or processed meat don’t live as long as the rest of us. Here’s the money quote:

To prevent premature deaths related to red and processed meats, Dr. Popkin suggested in an interview that people should eat a hamburger only once or twice a week instead of every day, a small steak once a week instead of every other day, and a hot dog every month and a half instead of once a week.

Umm, OK. Really? Are even you low-carb people eating that much red and processed meat? I guess someone is.

Despite the fact that 3/4 of this house are omnivores, we don’t eat a lot of meat. When we do, it tends to be chicken or turkey. But I have this thing for processed meat. I suspect it’s salt-related. As much as I love sweets, if I had to choose, I’d take Fritos any day. And so occasionally I get a craving for a dish with sausage or bacon or some other kind of meat product. You know, something that used to be real meat until they added a lot of salt and chemicals to it. Mmm.

Recently, I was at the store and noticed the bologna. While I like the high-end, butcher-shop variety, I’m just as happy with Oscar Mayer. I picked up a package of light bologna, trying to be healthy. I won’t make that mistake again.

1. Bologna isn’t healthy anyway.
2. The main difference between this and regular bologna seemed to be that they’d made the slices thinner. That’s a ripoff.

This did start a conversation between Ashby and me about olive loaf, however. Remember olive loaf? It’s basically bologna with pimento-stuffed green olive slices studded throughout. I happen to live in an urban neighborhood, where grocery stores are sometimes small, but one area where you can count on a full selection is the processed meat aisle. [Hey! I'll have a side of nitrites with my dioxin-laced soil and my exhaust-perfumed air!]

So in two grocery visits recently, I’ve looked for olive loaf, just for old times’ sake. And I can’t find it.

Just because….

A friend just sent me a link to this “nutrition” information for a large Heath shake at Baskin-Robbins. When they’re selling single drinks that total more than most people’s calorie requirements for the day, and more than half your sodium, never mind more than 2 days worth of fat grams, maybe we need to re-think.