Published at August 30, 2009
in Food.
I’ve kind of given up on being a mostly-full-time vegan. As I started paying attention to how much protein I should be getting in order to support my weightlifting, I started realizing that it was just too difficult for me to do it with only plant sources unless I consumed far more soy protein powder than my intestines would really like me to consume. It’s not impossible, mind you, but it requires a level of attention to detail and planning that I just can’t really handle while juggling all the stuff I’m juggling.
I began casting around for protein sources that didn’t cost an arm and a leg and were tasty and easy to prepare. Which led me to yogurt. Greek yogurt, and specifically nonfat Greek yogurt. I had bought some full-fat Fage yogurt for dessert (with honey and almonds) when some friends came over, and by damn, it was good. But it had a lot of fat, so I didn’t eat all that much of it. Then when I went to pick up some more, I started reading labels.
And — holy hell! — I discovered that the nonfat version has 22 grams of protein per cup. And only 120 calories. So a pint has 44 grams of protein. Which is almost a third of what I should be taking in per day.
I snatched up several quart containers. Highest price I found was $10 at a gourmet market; lowest was $6.69 at Fairway. Since blueberries are in season, I’ve been having the yogurt for breakfast with some honey and vast quantities of blueberries (you eat vast quantities when you buy two-pound containers and have no more room in the freezer for more).
Fabulous! Delicious! Nutritious! But still a little pricey, and the containers were piling up. They don’t have a top that makes them reusable for storage, so they had to be recycled. This was becoming an issue, since I’m trying to cut down on my waste.
Then I saw this post over at Hullabaloo, and knew it was time to start making my own yogurt. I scaled up since I eat so much of the stuff (I used a gallon and a half of milk rather than one quart), but it worked! I have yogurt. And it was dead easy, even if I don’t have a microwave and it took over two hours for the milk to boil, and had to heat the oven up again because I had so much that it didn’t set within a few hours. It’s chilling now, and I’ll start straining the first batch with a strainer lined with coffee filters (or a cheesecloth if I can find mine) once it’s cooled. I’d like to have a sense of how much milk is required to make a quart of strained Greek-style yogurt.
This morning, I saw a woman throwing garbage into the back of a Sanitation truck. I’ve lived here 12 years now, and I’ve never seen that; Sanitation seemed to be an even bigger boys’ club than FDNY. For that matter, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman on a garbage truck in my whole life.
Earlier this week, I was reviewing documents in a case involving the kind of technology companies that illustrate their presentations with photos of young, thin, hip, pretty, multiracial people in airy modern offices in futuristic high-rises. Occasionally, you’ll see an older man in “boss” posture, but never an older woman, and forget about fat people. Sometimes, you get a hip young thing in a wheelchair. But this week, I saw a type of person that I’d never even thought to look for: a pregnant woman. In the hip-young-creative-cutting-edge-techno-business setting. What does it say about me, or at least about my expectations, that that shocked me like nothing else has shocked me?
Obama’s signaling that he’s going to drop the public option and go with the Blue Dog/Republican insurance co-ops idea.
Just what we need, to be forced to line the pockets of insurance companies and only insurance companies. Will there be any regulation of these co-ops so that insurers must insure everyone, can’t charge exorbitant rates, and can’t use recission to deny claims and get rid of undesirables?
Somehow, I don’t think so.
Boy, am I ever glad I didn’t vote for this tool. Guy doesn’t know the first thing about negotiation. Unless the co-ops are exactly what he wanted to end up with, so he started with the public option.
Item the first: Anti-donut signs can get you fired from your job as a county health director, but only if you name and piss off local businesses:
A 38-year-old former Army doctor who served in Iraq, Newsom returned home to Panama City a few years ago to run the Bay County Health Department and launched a one-man war on obesity by posting sardonic warnings on an electronic sign outside:
“Sweet Tea (equals) Liquid Sugar.”
“Hamburger (equals) Spare Tire.”
“French Fries (equals) Thunder Thighs.”
He also called out KFC by name to make people think twice about fried chicken.
Then he parodied “America Runs on Dunkin’,” the doughnut chain’s slogan, with: “America Dies on Dunkin’.”
Some power players in the Gulf Coast tourist town decided they had had their fill.
A county commissioner who owns a doughnut shop and two lawyers who own a new Dunkin’ Donuts on Panama City Beach turned against him, along with some of his own employees, Newsom says. After the lawyers threatened to sue, his bosses at the Florida Health Department made him remove the anti-fried dough rants and eventually forced him to resign, he says. . . .
In May, lawyers Bo Rivard and Michael Duncan, co-owners of a new Dunkin’ Donuts, asked Newsom to take down the “America Dies on Dunkin’” message. Newsom already had run other anti-doughnut warnings, including “Doughnuts (equals) Diabetes,” and “Dunkin’ Donuts (equals) Death.”
The businessmen had the backing of County Commissioner Mike Thomas, who owns a diner and a doughnut shop. Thomas called for Newsom’s ouster, saying the doctor shouldn’t have named businesses on the message board.
Note the two statements I’ve bolded. If that’s not conflation of health and thinness/aesthetics, I don’t know what is. But what I find a little disturbing is that his bosses were okay with this kind of hatefulness being funded by the taxpayers until the businesses he called out by name lawyered up.
Continue reading ‘This week in fat hatred’
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