Piggy Trevalion

I had some risotto last night.  I never eat stuff like that, but what do you do when it has put in from of you?  It was so good I literally dreamt about risotto some hours later.  So here is food for thought:

THAT “DIETING” TED TALK

If you haven’t seen it, and worry about your weight — or worry that your daughter worries about her weight — click here.  If Sandra Aamodt’s right about the “set point” and the “thermostat” in your brain, it may save you a lot of time and money and angst.

DON’T EAT

As I wrote once before:

I don’t eat much.  Saves time, saves money, saves the planet*; good for your looks, good for your health — and makes everything you do eat taste better.  This is such a simple yet life-changing, life-extending win-win-win-win-win-win I think I’ll leave it at that.  Just sayin’.

PIGGY

It’s impossible to think of all this without thinking of Piggy Trevalyan.  You know Piggy?  “Fattest damn woman in London?”  “In the whole world, actually?”  If you have 99 cents and just under 8 minutes, treat yourself to a re-listen to Mike Nichols & Elaine May’s “Adultery” sketch, into which Piggy figures as “small talk” (as it were), in the British hotel lobby.  I say re-listen because it’s all but impossible to imagine that you have not already enjoyed this.  (Next you’ll be telling me you haven’t seen The Maltese Falcon?  Casablanca?  Dr. Strangelove?  Dr. Zhivago?  What kind of generation are we raising?)

OH — AND BY THE WAY?

Here’s a report on America’s new hunger crisis.  (“In the 22 years that Swami Durga Das has managed New York’s River Fund Food Pantry, he has never seen hunger like this. Each Saturday, hundreds of hungry people descend on the pantry’s headquarters, an unassuming house on a residential block. The first people arrive around 2 am, forming a line that will wrap around the block before Das even opens his doors.”)  Since that report first appeared last October, the Republicans have been working hard to cut food stamps for the poor, end long-term unemployment benefits, keep the minimum wage low, and block Medicaid expansion.  How else to keep taxes low?  Which, George W. Bush proved, leads to a booming economy, a budget surplus, and a growing pie for everyone.  (Oh, wait.  That was Clinton.  Who raised taxes.  Well, never mind.)