In case you missed it, medical researchers dropped a couple of dietary bombshells on us during the past week. The first one was that it turns out that a high-fiber diet, well, it doesn’t actually do much of anything for you one way or the other.
All that talk about how high fiber keeps you from getting all those awful colon diseases?
Turns out it’s not true. Flawed data. Lah-dee-dah. My bad.
So here’s my question: who do I kill?
No, I mean it. I want names. Somebody needs to pay for every bowl of fiber-laden cereal that has cramped my gut for nearly a decade when there was a freezer full of toaster waffles just screaming my name in the night.
The second revelation was that scientists have discovered that tofu—the earthy-crunchy set’s favorite protein-packed “health” food—has been linked to “a faster decline in mental abilities.”
Shoot. I could’ve told you that. I’m sure you’ve all met someone who has said they just loooove that tofu ice cream and right away, you’re thinking, “Now there’s someone who is experiencing a decline in their mental abilities.”
Turns out that a study of three thousand Japanese-American men living in Hawaii found that the men who ate tofu at least twice a week experienced a more rapid decline in mental abilities when compared to the non-tofu-eaters.
Not only that, the study found that the tofu-eaters actually EXPERIENCED A REDUCTION IN BRAIN SIZE.
This explains a lot of the stupidity in the world today. For example, today I went to the one-hour photo place and said, “I’ll see you in an hour,” and they said, “Well, we’re backed up and it’ll be more like ninety minutes.” “But,” I said, “you’re a one-hour photo store, not a ninety-minute store. That’s why you charge roughly forty-three dollars and fifty-three cents a roll.” And they said, “Well, we can’t guarantee you’ll get your pictures in an hour, that’s just what we do most of the time but today we’re real busy,” and I said, “Then you shouldn’t advertise one-hour service or you should make it a lot cheaper if you can’t deliver in an hour,” and they said that I was making their head hurt with all my newfangled logic.
Tofu-eaters, no question.
Just so you won’t think I’m totally close-minded, you should know that I tried tofu recently because some tofu-loving friends were coming for dinner and I didn’t want to just slap a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store on the table like I normally would for company. Didn’t want the sight of genuine quasi-home cooking to send them into some kind of reduced-brain panic.
So I bought a wad of tofu, which is Vulcan for “soybean curd mixed with pencil sharpener shavings,” and followed the package directions, which involved draining it, then sawing it into little cubes and frying them until lightly brown and spongy. The tofu-eaters were thrilled but we weren’t. The toddler pronounced it “very, very yuck” and we all ate big plates of fiber-free frozen waffles after they left.
Tell me we don’t know how to live.