If the Perfect Miracle Food were the food you despised most, would you eat a barrel of it anyway?

I’m beside myself [Ed: yes, right over here] with ecstasy that we live in an age where we’re constantly receiving updates apparently teleported, straight from God’s lips, on new life-saving Superfoods and diet strategies that will bring about world peace and end the shortage of sporty convertibles in our time. I realize that as long as there have been hucksters and hyperbolists that could spell Snake Oil there have been such claims filling the air and jamming our brainwaves with unrealistic wishful optimism. Purveyors of serious science and common sense have both long since given up on the possibility of coming to a definitive answer to the perpetual question of what’s good for us to eat, at least one on which all sentient beings can agree. That never stops anyone from trying either to discover it or to convince us (with our remarkably flexible wallet-hinges) that they have.

But the modern info-bombardment wherein we swim encourages us to see, hear and believe an ever-noisier, ever more enthusiastic and far-reaching set of claims to this Truth. Amazing! Astounding! and the ever-popular exclamation that I so love, Incredible! (As if I can’t tell just from the obnoxious typography of the advert and the hilariously awful before-and-after unretouched photos that there’s nothing remotely credible to be found in the accompanying claims.) Scientists are almost as guilty of outrageous claims as anyone, in this environment where every research program has to compete for every dime with not only every other genuine researcher but also the whole phalanx of false prophets and their wonderful platinum-plated products. It takes only a tiny effort for the completely uninformed amateur to sleuth out at least two diametrically opposed studies on any given dietary claim that have produced what looks and sounds like fairly convincing data, so I am loath to do anything more dramatic than take it all with a grain of salt.

. . . and how do you prefer your sodium chloride: hickory smoked or deep fried?

Which, indeed, is what I will likely do. Hey, there are enough mutually exclusive authorities regarding how much sodium is permissible in whose diet and in what forms to keep a whole herd of elk dying in wait for the salt lick. I’m fond enough of being alive and not feeling like, say, I’m in imminent danger of keeling over with toxins squirting out of every pore of my body while I disintegrate to dirty swamp water like the alien in a 50s B-movie that I do try on the average to put things into my mouth with a modicum of moderation and thoughtfulness. I look for what seems to make me feel my best and work to include that in my meals rather than always succumbing to the lure of the luridly unhealthy.

It just seems to me that we have actually been living for a bit right in the middle of Woody Allen‘s Sleeper. Regardless of your view on Woody Allen movies, I’m nearly at the point where I think all school health classes should be required to see that film at some juncture in their studies just for the scenes where hero Miles Monroe is brought out of his cryogenic sleep and is coached by his attending doctors on how the understanding of health has changed in the two hundred years while he was snoozing on ice. There’s something almost eerily familiar nowadays when reputable researchers and doctors from every corner are admitting that perhaps not all of our longtime religiously held convictions about sugars, fats, proteins and all of those other pesky elements of edibles we fear and worship are exactly the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. That perhaps there is a bit more difference in how one person or another is affected, and how good or evil that might be.

All I can say is, it’s kind of a relief to think that I don’t have total control over my destiny through what I ingest, so I’m going to continue to consider myself a so-far live experiment subject willing to undergo certain tests to see what can be most deliciously survived in my lifetime. Come on over and chow down with me, and don’t get too hung up on it, okay? There’s too much edible, drinkable goodness of every kind just hovering on the edge of my ken for me not to show it some respect and appreciation. Amen, let’s eat.

So many tasty choices, so little time . . .