A Con in a Can
When I was a kid, the idea of a ham in a can (from an exotic, far away land like Denmark no less) was fascinating. My parents, raised in the Depression and steeped in frugality, never bought one, which only added to the notion that these were some alluring delicacy and the fare of a people far more aristocratic than us.
As an adult I now know the pale, slimy horror the colorful can hides, and the desire to buy one is permanently gone along with some of my naivete.
So much of the stuff the world tries to sell us is like that, and the surprising thing is how long it takes us to realize we're being conned.
It took 59 years of my life to realize the deceit behind the government's food pyramid, but they were just one player in this charade. Other supposedly helpful information was disseminated by politicians, so-called public health advocates and the very industries whose livelihoods depended on the public's consumption of large quantities of grains, sugars and highly processed seed oils.
Fortunately, the wall of diet disinformation is crumbling and its total collapse seems inevitable. Even as this happens we have defenders of the thoroughly discredited low fat, high carb diet desperately trying to be heard. Their shrill name calling and dire health warnings remind me of the Wizard of Oz, who, trying to avoid being unmasked, admonishes Dorothy and friends to "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain".
