For once I was impressed by the NYTimes’s P1 editors’ story choice. The report summarizing the new research on how rare food allergies really are should have been above the fold, but it was enough that it made the front page. I would only have turned around the figures and said 95 percent of adults/92 percent of children have nothing to fear from peanuts/shrimp/milk/etc. Back in the last century I did a piece for Vogue asserting much the same thing, and it set off a shitstorm because even then people were going out to restaurants armed with business cards listing their food restrictions. Not, of course, described as issues but rather as allergies. At least now maybe it will be harder for people to pull the stunt a woman we used to eat with always did: Make a huge fuss over not being able to eat butter on her (inevitable) chicken. And then order ice cream for dessert.

File under unintended consequences: Some new study (admittedly underwritten by who knows whom) finds regular Vitamin D wards off memory loss. I’m already convinced the demonization of whole milk has contributed to osteoporosis. Now it could be that all those silly women substituting soy “milk” in their silly decaf “lattes” are incubating Alzheimer’s, too. And fake yogurt is not going to help them remember where they ate wrong.

I said this over at the satellite operation, but it bears repeating: First we really should kill all the “nutrition experts.” Especially those who felt compelled to weigh in on the once-in-a-country inaugural luncheon and trash it as too high in fat and calories. As if anyone eats seafood stew and a brace of birds every day. For Richard Simmons’s sake, don’t these people have McDonald’s salads to tout?

Then again, a booklet I came across while street-dressing after PT seemed pretty helpful for anyone looking to eat intelligently even while ordering in from minefields disguised as neighborhood restaurants. And then I got to the last page, with tips for a newish Indian joint. The authors, allegedly both registered dietitians, not only warned about the ghee the kitchen used but described it as “a k a lard.” Okay, anyone whiplashed by the great American fat frenzy can make a reactionary mistake. But just think about the idiocy of damning Muslims’ food  for pork fat. Describing schmaltz as bird lard makes more sense.

I’m still working my way out of a Vicodin haze, but I hope once my wits return I can do a side-by-side comparison of the nutrients in an avocado and in a can of Ensure. That shit is scary if you let your eye stray below the impressive list of nutrients, down to the main ingredients: Sugar, sugar and more sugar. It reminded me of Borden’s condensed milk with artificial flavoring, but my roommate wanted every can I wouldn’t swallow. What a strange concept, adding vitamins etc. to garbage and selling it as redemptive. In my next life I’m coming back as a marketer of geriatric formula.