Sunday, July 19, 2009

Or a lumberjack, eh?...

I read this in the Globe and Mail when I was in Canada last week: Real Men Eat Healthy.

The ironic thing is that I'm married to a public-health nurse whose career mission is to promote healthier lifestyles. You could wallpaper our house with the healthy lifestyle literature she's brought home. Low-fat cookbooks overflow from our shelves. I have a drawer full of Healthy Heart T-shirts (size XXL – more irony there). I can recite the seven benefits of broccoli. Still, I ate like I owned Frito-Lay stock. Clearly it's not lack of information that kept me from proper eating.
Personally, I blame the low-fat yogurt ads. You've seen them – women doing high kicks in swirly skirts while sipping yogurt from ever-so-pretty containers and dancing, always dancing. These cute and colourful health-conscious messages are clearly not aimed at your average guy.
By contrast are the fast-food ads in which two men feed burgers into their mouths like steel billets through a rolling mill while discussing the merits of seared cattle flesh. Eat like a man is the message here, and saturated fats are the medium. [Great short essay]

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