h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

and.... besides... all the really really fat people.... they eat all that half fat, low fat sutff.... makes sense... i f you think about it.... clearly its the so-called 'healthy' food, making them overweight!

Healthy mushrooms tonight for dinner. with a bucket of butter, full fat (hence flavour) cheese... its winter.... humans need fats in their diet; we can't fight against evolution, its just not natural....

Right, think of all the Eskimos living out their lives with eating very little in the way of greens or vegetables whatsoever. Of course they can eat whale and seal blubber. Of course when you live near the Arctic circle ---your fat metabolism is very different.

Exactly! I heard an Antarctic explorer talking about how he and his crew got a strange urge to eat sticks of butter when they were tracing Scott's footsteps or something. The same way they would eat a Mars bar at home.

Similarly, on a really long hike in the mountains I get an urge for all sorts of sugary crap that I don't even normally like.

That's why I trust these cravings. They come for a reason. When you're eating too much of something, you usually know you are.

when you're hiking what you need is mental teacake. Or Kendal mint cake or something

"never leave home, without cheese"
seriously.... barmy grandmothers know a thing or two about food... even if they are normally obsessed with eels

The Mint Cake is a lie. Awful stuff.

"Considering all the lard and dripping and butter we used to eat (and I used to sprinkle salt on my dripping toast), it's a wonder we're all still alive, if the expert nutritionists are to be believed" [Gosho'd]

The expert nutritionists screwed up, seriously. They've had forty years in which to inflict their anti-fat propaganda on billions of Earthlings, with the result that never before has the world had as many obese people on it. The experiment has failed utterly. Carbohydrates have been prescribed as the best alternative to fats for decades, and billions of s have followed that prescription diligently. Now many of us face a firestorm of diabetes and its side-effects.

The thing is, the results had a lag time because it takes decades for hyperglycemia to produces its ultimate effects.

My own doctor keeps telling me that my triglycerides are too high because I eat too much fat. Forty years ago, the research indicated that it is *carbohydrates* that elevate triglycerides.

Bacon fat is more complicated. it has cholesterol and saturated fat and nitrates. The nitrates may be a trigger for stomach cancer.

My doctor also says my triglycerides are too high, but he does point the finger at carbohydrates. I'm not giving up my beer.

I refuse to believe anything that tastes as good as bacon, can be bad in any way. . . if I get stomach cancer... though... I think we'll all know why

Beer, yes. Maltose is pretty fattening, but I've taken the hard route by adding pounds without doing any drinking.

I still can't believe I've lost over 5 stone since my heaviest weight Its my oh so healthy diet of butter bread and bacon and eggs what did it

Tis funny how these things work!

After the ketchup binge the other day, the thought of cheese on toast with ketchup leaves me utterly unfussed.
What I would like is a nice winter-y beer, though, to round off the evening. Something strong, warming and rich to linger over.

You'd like the beer I just had. Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout.

Ohhhhh yes, I was already thinking along imperial stout lines!

I'll soon have to order in a bit of a special selection of beers for over Christmas.

The range of beers available locally has vastly improved in the last couple of years, though, so maybe I won't even need to bother mail ordering special ones in.

Incidentally, I was pleased to hear the news from the US - that craft beer sales have overtaken sales of Bud for the first time ever.

Old Rasputin

I love this time of the beer year. In September and October it's Oktoberfestbier season*; then winter and Christmas beers start coming in - the winter warmers, the old ales, the strong ales, the big stouts; and after Christmas its more stouts, strong ales and also barley wines

And then there's Sierra Nevada Celebration - a big fruit American IPA. Not a beer style you might associate with winter, but Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without it for me now.

*Let's not talk about seasonal creep and the fact that Oktoberfests and pumpkin beers (which I really don't care for) are on the shelf in July and Christmas beers in September

This is the first year I've had a pumpkin beer - the name escapes me, but it's "Ireland's only pumpkin beer", according to the label. I rather liked it - kind of vegetation-y, compost-y, but in a good way.

Definitely not something I'd want all the time, though.

MMMM.... off out tonight, I think, to the pub, first time in... I dunno a month probably.... and I think my body is also telling me its time to switch back to my more useual darker beers, stouts and porters Mind, talking of cravings.... I guess it must have been a craving that made me buy the tins of ambrosia rice..... and I guess... their not yet being consumed, means that craving was short lived Oh well.... at least I'm ready now for if the craving returns again

Creamed rice cravings mustn't have much staying power. I got that urge a while back too, and bought a tin which then say unopened for months. When I did open it, I took about two spoonfuls and didn't want any more.

Don't say that! please! no! - I still have the thoughts in my head - probably some long long long ago memory of my childhood, of eating ambrosia! - The memories are of eating something so* nice! and..... I know* for Certain* that the experience, when I do finally open a can, heat it, and then serve with buckets of strawberry jam, will not only live up too, but suppass this memory! It'll be like a cathartic moment of realisation, it will! it will! (isn't even convincing himself....)