A chicken in every pot

Finally! The New York Times reports on a study about fat in the diet that agrees with what my nutritionist has been telling me. The big point: eating saturated fats, found in meat, butter, and cheese, does not lead to an increase in heart attacks and other cardiac events. Some other major points:

* Trans fats are bad, as other studies have shown.

* Polyunsaturated fats, such as olive oil, are good.

* Cholesterol comes in two kinds, HDL (they happy kind) and LDL (the lousy kind). LDL also comes in two forms -- pattern A, which is fluffy, and pattern B, which is dense. Only pattern B is a health problem.

* And pattern B is increased by sugar and a high level of carbs.

* Studies should look at the whole diet because reducing one thing leads to increasing another and it might be hard to tell whether the result was due to lowering one thing or raising the other.



Another New York Times article focuses on how the corporate giant Tyson has affected our food. Some of my readers, like my dad, remember FDR's slogan, "A chicken in every pot." That slogan was a winner because for most people (not for my dad who grew up on a farm) chicken was expensive, the equivalent of $6.48 a pound in today's dollars. Now it is $1.57. You can thank Tyson for that.

But you must also thank Tyson for three big bad effects. First, the effort has been a catastrophe for the animals, now bred for huge breasts so that to live is to suffer. Second, factory farms endanger our health through pollution and the antibiotics that cause them to grow quickly result in infections resistant to antibiotics. Third, corporate farming has hollowed out rural America -- a few tycoons and lots of people struggling to get by. And good luck finding chicken not processed by Tyson or other big corporation in a typical community grocery store.

What to do? Going back to the farm structure we had before means chicken at $6.48 a pound. Even so, the first step is to recognize the current system doesn't work either, it is unhealthy.