Mashed Potatoes: An adventure.

Am I an adventurous eater? I don't know. Most people would say no, because there are a lot of things I haven't eaten and don't want to try. Things like Chinese food (sounds like lots of bits and pieces. If I want leftovers I'll just eat leftovers. I also prefer  to be filled up by my meals, and rmor has it that doesn't happen with Chinese.

I don't like soy sauce or teriyaki or other Oriental seasonings, although I'm not always clear on the country of origin.

I just plain don't like seafood. I have yet to taste anything that does not overwhelmingly taste of vast anounts of stale salt water.

I don't eat Mexican food, either. It is way, way too spicy for me. Hot spicy. I've sampled this, while cooking, but not eaten as a meal or part of one. I don't like the ingredients.

I don't like  hot spices. I want to taste the food. I don't want my taste buds burnt out or overloaded to the point where they don't function. I want to enjoy the taste, to savor the flavor, and to be able to take in all that the food item has to offer.

If that makes me unadventurous, so be it.

I like food. I like to smell it, feel it, taste it, hear it, .and see it. Eating should be a sensual experience. Not all the senses will be used with every offering, of course. Mashed potatoes are pretty quiet.No crisp snap of the fresh potato. No crunch at the first -- or last -- bite.

But they can be cheesy, golden, salty, lightly garlic, smooth, lumpy, snowy white, steamy, dry, peppery, and even food-colored if you have a kid who will only eat green. 

Mashed potatoes are mundane and boring, but they sure can be jazzed up. 

That can be an adventure.

Seasonings and combined ingredients should enhance one another and especially the main ingredient. Too many people  and places do not use balance or moderation. jalapeno flavored should include the taste of jalapeno -- not taste like jalapeno and nothing else. 

So, if my adventures in eating aren't what you expect, I'm sorry.

But let me share with you my cheesy mashed, and maybe you will learn that true adventures start with the familiar.

Lower the numbers; raise the profits

This is the latest strategy of the health industry. Everybody is sick and needs us -- and our products. Whenever the numbers start to decrease, we'll go back into our laboratories and jiggle some statistics around and we can PROVE that a lower number for the same high-number illness is just as bad for you. Therefore, the lower number indicator means you have the higher number illness and you MUST have our medicine to survive.

I've seen this happen with hypertension. It happens every few years. People, I am sorry to tell you this, but no one has normal blood pressure anymore. It is either low or high, according to the professional experts. The parameter for normal has become so narrow as to be nonexistent.

It's been happening about every five years with diabetes. Numbers that were low-normal just a few years ago are now borderline high. Diabetes can now be diagnosed by one high reading in a doctor's office, instead of making a patient undergo that intolerable glucose tolerance test, or instead of tracking the blood sugar levels over an extended period of time.

I read a study yesterday that says that  "over 60% of people are obese"

Now, I'm not a scientist, nor have I studied health. Another thing I am not is a math genius. But I vaguely remember things about averages and norms and suchlike. When something is in the 60% range, that, mathematically, means it's pretty much the average, the norm.

Just because someone educated drew a line on a paper and said everyone above this line is sick doesn't mean they are. 

There are still doctors who go by the older numbers if their patients aren't in distress. They are few and far between and often work in isolated, rural areas. They don't go along to get along with the insurance companies. They ask "Why?"
When they ask "Why?" they become estranged and ostracized.

They generally don't want to practice that kind of medicine anyway, so they go to where they are over-needed and where they are listened to.


What really bothers me about medicine by the numbers is that it leaves out the element of change. Evolution, or mutation, or whatever you want to call it. Humans began as five-foot tall bipeds who could live thirty years.

Science and scientists have had no problem with embracing our growth and evolution from that standard.
Imagine if some nearsighted observer in the Whatever-ithic era said that anyone over 5'2" was an aberration, and had an illness and needed to be treated for it. Maybe had the afflicted eating weeds known to stunt the growth. Would we still be five foot and old at thirty?

No, we would not. Change and growth are not aberrations. At first as those numbers begin to trickle in, they are an anomaly, and yes, worthy of study. Worthy of tracking. Maybe even worthy of treatment, until it reaches the point where there are more 'anomalies' than there are 'normals'.

Once that point is reached, it is the duty of responsible scientists, researchers, and statisticians to take another look at a new definition of normal, a new average. Not to hit the panic button and start name-calling those they are trying to help.

We're not getting sicker -- we're getting different. We're changing, evolving, mutating.

We are growing.