I remember well the first time my diet was called into question. I was at a quaint little New England diner ordering a breakfast of three scrambled eggs, hash browns, toast with lots of butter and a double helping of bacon and sausage.
When the waitress asked if I wanted anything else, my brother quipped, "Yeah, a defibrillator."
While I haven't gone to the extremes of the fern and bean curd diet my brother enjoys, I have finally faced the harsh reality that anything that tastes really good is probably bad for you.
Of course, like nearly everything I write in this column, that's an oversimplification. There are lots of tasty things that are perfectly healthy, there's just nothing that's good for you that's as tasty as a Krispy Kreme devil's food doughnut or deep-fried chicken.
My main dietary concern these days is cholesterol, which is currently too high. Heredity and age are two major contributors to high cholesterol levels, but no one has come up with a cure for either of those yet. Those lazy, shiftless bums at the Centers for Disease Control aren't even working on a cure for heredity yet, so you're stuck with your Uncle Louie, who still insists on pulling nickels out of your ear and asks you to pull his finger at every family gathering.
The other things that contribute to high cholesterol are diet, exercise and weight, which are obviously pretty related and can be dealt with. Let's focus on diet this time around.
There are two kinds of cholesterol, good and bad. Bad cholesterol, more properly called low-density lipoprotein (LDL), steals your credit cards, sleeps with your significant other and brags about it to your friends at work.
No, I'm thinking of something else.
What it really does is transport cholesterol from your liver to various body tissues, notably the arteries, where it builds up over time like that horrible stinking black gunk in that U-shaped thingy under the sink that you had to take off to find your ring that time you dropped it down the drain.
Eventually it can fill up so much of the arterial wall that your blood doesn't flow well and you end up with a heart attack or a stroke.
Just so we're clear here, that's bad.
Good cholesterol moves that gunk back to your liver where it breaks it down so it can be flushed from your body, unless, of course, you happen to be Oscar Goodman. In his case, the bad cholesterol just bellies up to the bar and badmouths your mother. Unlike Oscar, bad cholesterol is a mean drunk.
The American Heart Association recommends you eat a variety of foods that are low in saturated fat and LDL cholesterol. That means lots of fruit, vegetables and fiber. For omnivores, it means more fish and skinless poultry and less red meat, particularly the more fatty cuts. Spit out that gristle right now!
If you're trying to swap out the bad -- fast food burgers, fries, bacon, deep-fried dough, etc. -- with more good high-density lipoprotein (HDL), there are some tasty options. If you must cook with oil, use canola or olive.
Fish and orange juice are good for you, but probably not a tasty combination you want to go for.
Beans and raw onion are good as well, though it's not likely to make you popular on any long car rides. Oat bran is tastier than you think, and the loud crunching noise in your head will drown out the complaints from your family about the beans and onions.
Last but not least, there is the ever-popular red wine. A lot of studies show that a glass or two a day will raise your HDL levels and make the tofu much more palatable.
I repeat: a glass or two a day. Drinking the whole bottle won't do you any more good and will lead to other problems and ... Hey! Didn't I tell you to spit out that gristle?!
F. Andrew Taylor is a Las Vegas freelance writer. His column appears twice monthly. Contact him at fandrewt@cox.net.
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