Keep up please, fashions are changing again.

This most recent vogue uncovered by researchers, after for a long while revelling in that fashionable ‘one glass of red wine a day is good for your heart’ crap – based on the logic that grapes have health benefits even though the only thing about grapes that are actually beneficial to one’s health is the goodness found within the seeds and how many grape seeds does anyone ever encounter in a bottle of red? – is that any alcohol is to be avoided at all costs on account of its cancer-increasing properties.

Come on, be fair. We always knew that alcohol was killing us. We just loved to hear those reasons, those grabbing-at-straws excuses that perhaps it wasn’t as bad as we all thought it was. No, come on, realistically, alcohol is poison. We know this. We still drink it because it’s so much fun to try to kill ourselves; if only a little bit at a time.

Thanks to this band of delightful researchers, health fashions are forever changing and will continue to shift depending on the nature of the product/food group that needs promoting at the time. Why, just yesterday I watched as my grandmother scraped fifty grams of butter into a pot of soon-to-be mashed potato, announcing, “Gosh, I’m so grateful fat’s not bad for you anymore.”

I smiled and started mashing, considering the implications of her words: when she was a girl fat was a staple in her family’s diet. Around the ‘80s fat became the Devil’s work and the cause of all things poor health. Few years ago that changed. Now fat is seen by many to be the Saviour; in fact moderate fat content in a person’s diet is now believed – by our beloved researchers or course – to reduce the risk of cancer.

My conclusion, which is at risk of becoming entangled amid a flurry of frustration, bitterness and even a touch of resentment, is that our media groups for years have influenced our population’s consumer antics through scare tactics. Cancer is the favourite – everybody loathes cancer – so pay a group of researchers to discover that a particular food/food group increases/lowers a person’s risk of cancer and you will consequently increase or lower demand for that product respectively; of course all this must be achieved while remaining empathetic and above all, politically correct.

Since cigarettes have taken such a hit and New Zealand’s leading cause of premature death is no longer tobacco-related illness but in fact fat-related illness, by all rights, one would now expect these media groups to shift the fashion onto vilifying ‘overweightness’, just like the way the bastards condemned the nation’s hardened smokers for years, but no. The fatties of the nation have an illness. It’s not their fault they pack into their stomachs so much food – they have a disease called ‘food-addiction’ and despite the known cancer links to carrying around much more mass than is necessary we must be sympathetic towards their plight…

Besides, they’re putting dairy-owners’ kids through college.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by My Aunt Fanny

Photography by Hippo Croat