Nutrition Information

Tomorrow is Earth day. That's right, 35 years ago, a few crazy hippies got together and agreed that there should be a world-wide day in which Earthians are educated about how to live on this planet without screwing it up too much. I'd like to think that these guys were inspired by women like Rachel Carson, who, 12 years earlier published Silent Spring in which she said, "Hey dickheads, maybe the reason I'm dying of fucking breast cancer is because people are spraying fucking DDT everywhere." Well, she didn't really put it that way. She was a far more articulate scientist than I.

So, 35 years later, we end up with two different kinds of people. We have the people who throw away alumnium cans because it's just too inconvenient to return them to the store to get the deposit or, in cave-man states where deposit isn't available, take them to a recycling center. These are the same people that buy disposable furniture, disposable cars, and complain whenever a bunch of nutty environmentalists try to save a forest to protect the water table, or a endangered animal to protect an ecological niche. Then we have the people, like me, who are the nutty environmentalists that buy organic beef, unbleached toilet paper, and wear clothing made of recycled tires and plastic razors. The more extreme live in trees to prevent logging and live on the sides of city buildings just to be extra sassy. Sometimes we call these people "eco-terrorists" but in these dark ages, who isn't a terrorist?

With Earth day, my notion of eating organic foods is reaffirmed. It's also doubly reaffirmed by the idiot nutritionist at my university clinic who was educating me on my eating habits so to lower my cholesterol. It's really no surprise that my cholesterol is high given that my two favorite foods are bacon and bacon. I went with an open mind, hoping this women could be more helpful than the nurse that practically gave me an eating disorder when she told me that I'm obese as she jabbed me with a tetanus innoculation (by the way, could somebody please tell me why there's a woman serving a man coffee on the CDC tetanus info sheet?).

A typical exchange went like this:

Nutritionist: "Do you eat eggs?"
Me: "Yes, I eat eggs. I really enjoy eggs. But I try to keep to only two per week."
Nutritionist: "Well, you could eat an egg alternative such as egg beaters."

Such exchanges happened a number of times, and likely I rolled my eyes when she wasn't looking. My approach is to eat whole, nutritious food in moderation. Her approach to is to eat whatever crap is being marketed to poor assholes like myself whose cholesterol is points above the targeted 200. Among the ingredients in "egg beaters" are: natural flavor and xanthum gum.

As regulated by the federal government, a natural flavor is

the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional.

Rachel Carson, may you rest in peace, if you can.