Every year, the average American eats as much as 33 pounds of cheese. That's up to 60,000 calories and 3,100 grams of saturated fat. So why do we eat so much cheese? Mainly it's because the government is in cahoots with the processed food industry. And instead of responding in earnest to the health crisis, they've spent the past 30 years getting people to eat more. This is the story of how we ended up doing just that.
Every year, the average American eats as much as 33 pounds of cheese. That's up to 60,000 calories and 3,100 grams of saturated fat. So why do we eat so much cheese? Mainly it's because the government is in cahoots with the processed food industry.
Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don't get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goats cheese... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.
I like cottage cheese. That's why I want to try other dwelling cheeses, too. How about studio apartment cheese? Tent cheese? Mobile home cheese? Do not eat mobile home cheese in a tornado.
The growth of the American food industry will always bump up against this troublesome biological fact: Try as we might, each of us can only eat about fifteen hundred pounds of food a year. Unlike many other products - CDs, say, or shoes - there's a natural limit to how much food we each can consume without exploding. What this means for the food industry is that its natural rate of growth is somewhere around 1 percent per year - 1 percent being the annual growth rate of American population. The problem is that [the industry] won't tolerate such an anemic rate of growth.
I remember cream cheese in celery, with a sprinkling of paprika, served at my dad and stepmum's 'soirees' in the 70s, where people danced to Slade in long tartan dresses. I'd go down and eat the cheese cubes left over from cheese and pineapple on sticks, because guests would only eat the pineapple.
I eat mostly organic, but I love macaroni and cheese, Mexican food, and egg-and-cheese croissants. So when I indulge, I eat protein and veggies for the rest of the day. It really is all about moderation and balance.
Look at the average American diet: ice cream, butter, cheese, whole milk, all this fat. People don't realize how much of this stuff you get by the end of the day. High blood pressure is from all this high-fat eating.
I eat 230 grams of protein daily, 308 grams of carbohydrates, maybe 70 grams of fat. I can have one cheat meal a week but it can't be that I eat until I'm stuffed; I eat until I'm satisfied.
My job is to show people that true Mexican cheese is not neon yellow cheese. We don't eat tacos all day long and we don't eat burritos stuffed with everything in the kitchen sink.
I'm actually no longer a strict vegan. I don't hang out in the cheese section - I don't even eat cheese. I don't drink milk. But every once in a while I'll have an egg. I'm going to eat eggs that come out of my next-door neighbor's farm, that's just the way it is.
Fear of carbs, of gluten, of everything - we've distanced ourselves from the beauty of food, the art of it. It makes me sad when people say, 'Oh, I don't eat gluten. I don't eat cheese. I don't eat this. So I eat cardboard.'
How you eat is as important as what you eat. If I eat mindlessly while watching television, I get all of the calories and none of the pleasure. Instead, if I eat mindfully, paying attention and savoring what I'm eating, smaller portions of food can be exquisitely satisfying.
Much of eating is about customs and habits, and we've developed some unfortunate ones. Not enough families eat together. We eat in front of the TV while we're absorbed in a program. You know, the average person will eat up to 50 percent more food when distracted.
Swiss cheese is the only cheese you can draw and people can identify. You can draw American cheese, but someone will think it's cheddar. It's the only cheese you can bite and miss. "Hey Mitch - does that sandwich have cheese on it?" "Every now and then!"
Because fats are so calorie-dense - there are nine calories per gram of fat - at 400 grams of fat, you're getting a lot of calories in. It's so easy to digest fat, too. That was my fuel.
I will eat everything. Cheese. Mac and cheese. Anything and cheese. I love that stuff.