MAKE Them Eat Cake

I could be getting old and cantankerous, but I can't take the nincompoopery of the ubiquitous food experts out there for very much longer.

I accidentally stumbled upon a blog belonging to a "food coach." She tells you what to eat so you can be beautiful (like her, naturalement!). Of course, that's what every diet book has been doing all along, but this woman's approach is so artless. She basically comes right out and says: "Here, Ugly...eat this and that, like I do, because I am fabulous and gorgeous and I have a superstar life in NYC that's better than yours can ever be out there in hill country. And, oh...no pouting! I'm just trying to help you, poor thing."

She goes on flitting about her smoothies and her probiotics while she rallies around the impossible diet du jour, whatever it might be. She anthropomorphizes the chia seed into a young coquette, referring to the seed as a "she".

I cannot suffer a fool like this gladly.

The blogger has an assistant whom I suspect she does not pay, who sometimes helps her with the blog posts. Poor kid probably wonders how she'll make the rent while the boss lady has inflated the import of her gopher work as a substantial part of her young charge's curriculum vitae. After all, this lucky child hit the mother lode when she stumbled upon this opportunity to grovel for such a beautiful member of the culinary elite.

Oh, Puh-leaze! I'd give you the blog address so you could be fed up with people like this, too, but I don't dare drive more traffic to her self-serving site.

Yes, I agree food can contribute in great part to overall health and vitality, and anyone who is healthy and strong radiates their natural attractiveness more brightly than their peers who woke up sallow, bloated, sick, or hung over due to long-term misguided choices. So, please, by all means, DO eat well. But once you find out what eating well means to you, don't think you've cornered the market on health and beauty. You haven't.

Because as awesome as your blood counts look on a low-glycemic vegan diet, there is someone down the street who has recharged their health with a primal steak with lots of marbling and butter sauce.

I earn my wages primarily as a "healthy" chef. I cook for people in the way that they believe, or their doctor has told them, will keep them healthy. And let me tell you, there is a looooot of variation in these healthy diets. And you don't necessarily have to subscribe to the food trend du jour to be healthy. You don't have to wear jeans with skinny ankles. Or T-shirts with tattoo-inspired cursive writing on them. You don't have to shop at the grocer whose staff goes in for the homely look because "homely" sounds like "homeopathic".

You can do it however you want. And you should. Because among other things, the healthiest gift food can give you is a few moments of pure pleasure shared amongst the community of your dining companions. I can't think of anything healthier than breaking bread and sharing stories with good friends and family, even if said bread is not sprouted flaxseed with raw organic almond butter.

Me? I'm into baking lately. I bake a couple cakes a week. I used to hate the pastry arts, but now I find that it simultaneously stimulates my curiosity about the chemistry of food, while the whole ritual relaxes me. So, I am exercising my brain (potentially staving off Alzheimer's) while I reduce stress (potentially staving off wrinkles, gray hair, hypertension, and heart disease). I also cement relationships with the surprised smiles of family members and friends who get to keep the products from my baking lab. Finally and counter-intuitively, I seem to be dropping pounds as the baking hobby gains momentum. In fact, my sister sent me an article stating that the occasional, reasonable serving of high carb sweets may actually normalize grehlin, the hormone that controls your appetite.

That sounds pretty healthy to me even if it makes the highlighted hair on that upper-east side, know-it-all blogger stand on end.

Now, wouldn't it be great if we could make those blowhards sit down and eat a piece of cake every once in a while? It might give the rest of us in the food business a moment of peace from their non-stop proselytizing while they actually got some enjoyment out of life at the table.