1864 The politically correct diet

The other night a group from church got together for dessert after a funeral. I brought my sugar free apple pie and warned everyone it had a peanut oil crust, just in case someone was allergic. Of course, no one our age is, so we talked about that. No one remembered food allergies among our peers when we were children. And most of us knew very few overweight children. None of our children or their friends had allergies to peanuts, and everyone seemed to live on peanut butter sandwiches, although some had had allergies to eggs or milk.

Are we being too careful about our food? I grew up drinking whole milk, but very few whole grains, solid margarine and occasionally butter, pie crusts made with lard, bacon and eggs, beef, chicken and pork, but almost no fish, home canned fruits and vegetables from the garden plus factory canned, but not a lot of off season fresh items and no frozen foods, lots of potatoes and pasta, real sugar, real peanut butter and real cheese (well, except for Velvetta). We might have had ice cream once a month, and soda pop twice a year, but lots of Kool-aid. I can’t think of anything I ate other than bananas that was imported, unless it was the occasional shredded coconut on a cake.

We didn’t have vitamin supplements but when we were little we did get cod liver oil drops. I suppose most of my peers were consuming about the same diet, some with less meat and less milk (I would notice when I ate dinner at a friend‘s house that some had much less variety). Our mothers were the first generation to benefit from time saving “convenience” foods like Spam, Jell-o and store bought white bread--which weren‘t exactly powerhouses of nutrition.

By the time I was in high school I think 2% milk was in the dairy case, Crisco had replaced lard, and “oleo” was colored to look like butter. The only beverage machine in our high school had USDA surplus milk. Going out with friends brought me in contact with more soda, but really I never developed a taste for it or for alcohol. Hot dogs, hamburgers and French fries were available at drive-ins, but were only as “fast” as slow food is today.

I recently came across a web page about Canola oil and its history. I haven’t researched it, but its track record probably follows what has happened to our diet which now contains more olive oil, soy bean oil, corn oil, peanut oil and canola oil and far less animal fat, but we sure aren’t any healthier for it, are we? In fact, low fat diets are dangerous for growing children. And we’re certainly not thinner!

There is no Canola plant. Canola oil is rape seed oil. Well, that’s a toughy to market, and it was produced primarily in Canada by Cargill as Low Erucic Acid Rapeseed, or LEAR oil. Canada Oil was renamed Canola which sounded a bit like "can do" and "payola," both positive phrases in marketing lingo. However, the new name did not come into widespread use until the early 1990s. Read The Great Con-ola which points out there are many ridiculous stories circulating about the dangers of canola. But it does show how cleverly new foods are marketed to the health conscious consumer--who will just about swallow anything in the name of “healthy.”

Technorati tags: food allergies, canola oil