The Food Police

Last week I was reading an article about trans fats (trans fatty acids) which suggested there may be problems with eliminating all trans fats from our diets. The ones we are going after are synthetic trans fats, produced by partially hydrogenating vegetable oils so that they are solid or semi-solid at room temperature. Trans fats also occur naturally in butter, other fatty dairy products, beef and lamb - and there is some suggestion that these natural trans fats may not have the negative effect on "good" cholesterol that the manufactured ones do.

All of this started me thinking about when I first became aware of the food police. Of course, I had been on and off diets since puberty - that's not what I mean. The food police are people who focus on single foods or nutrients or chemical components and condemn them.

In the late eighties I was underemployed, and earning some extra money by temping for the Reno-Sparks convention and visitors' bureau. One of the events we worked was the California Grocers' Association - so, of course our conversation during slow times at the registration booth turned to food. I remember one of my co-workers saying, "I love custard, but it is so BAD." I tried to imagine being condemned to a world where custard did not exist. I tried to imagine childhood without custard, and particularly my childhood without my mother's cup custards with a little maple syrup in the bottom. I tried to imagine life without the other homey desserts based on custard, like squash pie and bread pudding, or without custards for breakfast like french toast and leftover bread pudding. I made up my mind not to listen to the food police.

But they seem to be always with us, at least in our land of plenty, whether to condemn some foods or food components to oblivion, or to promote the nutrient du jour. And rarely if ever do they consider the big picture, taking into account the impact of what we eat on our planet, not just on our own bodies.

Let's consider the fat dilemma.

I know to eat less saturated fat, but I also know you just can't make that occasional pie crust without it. My favorite pie crust combines vegetable shortening (where synthetic trans fats got their start) and butter.

I suppose I could do what a neighbor does and use vegetable oil, but I really don't like the results. And besides, I can't imagine olive oil in a fruit pie crust, and many of the others are made from genetically modified crops.

So I'll hang on to the butter (using the kind without bovine growth hormone from a local dairy) and figure out what to do for the shortening. Actually when shortening prices got higher and higher I just used hard margarine, but that is now the ultimate no-no.

So I began looking for a shortening made from a plant oil that was solid at room temperature naturally, and there are a couple: coconut oil and palm oil. They, of course, are also the plant oils highest in saturated fats. (Lard is actually lower in saturated fats than butter, but even if I did eat meat where's the sustainably grown pork around here from which I could render it? I'm not going near the factory-farmed stuff, laced with preservatives, which you can buy ready made.) But I thought, well, I'll look for some palm oil shortening - after all I am just using it for the occasional pie crust.

But then I learned that most palm oil comes from plantations which are destroying the habitat of orangutans. This is something the food police who want to get rid of trans fats won't tell you - that many commercial establishments and processed food manufacturers are substituting palm shortening from half way around the world. And in the process our dear relatives are being driven close to extinction. Wouldn't it be a shame if the species that so inspired Charles Darwin were wiped out because Americans couldn't live without cheap solid fat?

The only solution I did come up with was some organic shortening from Whole Foods, Spectrum brand, from plantations in Columbia being established as an alternative crop to coca and costing about as much. Actually, I'm kidding here, as I have no idea of the price of cocaine. Better to say this shortening was priced a little higher than a comparable weight of butter.

That's quite a saga for arriving at a politically correct pie.

It seems that rather than focusing on the thou-shalt-not's, we need to spend more time looking at the big picture and the basic goals of a diet that is good for us and good for life which shares our planet. As far as possible eat fresh, local and seasonal. Make sure things that aren't are conscious choices. Choose sustainably grown when you can. Eat as low on the food chain as possible. And follow some manageable guidelines for eating, like the food pyramid. (Yes, I know - it's probably not p.c. - and it doesn't consider planetary health - but it's a whole lot better than it used to be. Check it out if you haven't.)

And once in a while have a little custard or a piece of pie.