It’s about fat.

Non-Australians may or may not be familiar with the satire made by the ex-D Generation team of Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro, etc - they’re probably best-known overseas for the films The Castle and The Dish.

In their latest TV offering, The Hollowmen, they skewer the policymakers at federal government level, those (unelected) people who work closely with the Prime Minister and Cabinet developing national policy. Their first episode, Fat Chance, picks apart the creation of obesity policy: how it’s not really about health, but pandering to populist ideas and lobby groups. It’s fairly neutral, wryly pointing out conflict between the fast food industry lobby groups and the health food groups and so on, and depicts the policy wrangling that goes on in a fairly accurate but dramatised way. (Trust me, I’ve seen it in action up close more than once.)

One character even gets a word in about how the UK’s anti-childhood-obesity policies are duds, and there’s a good deal of pointing out the hypocrisy and absurdity involved on all sides. I suspect that the Won’t-somebody-think-of-the-children people will be most outraged by their depiction in this episode. The fast food industry comes across not as inherently evil, but simply protecting their interests (to me, at least, but I may be tempered by my belief that deep-fried chicken and the like isn’t “bad” because it supposedly Makes Kids Fat, but more that intensive farming and fast-food labour hire practices, etc, are often questionable). But the really important point in this episode is that the anti-obesity lobby is also depicted not as really caring about anyone’s health, but about protecting their interests and getting their own ideologies put into public policy.

The Hollowmen gets it remarkably right with regards to how Australia federal politics works, however unlikely that anyone at the top would ever admit it. It’s not as comedic as Yes, Minister, or as dramatic as The West Wing, but very wry and dry in keeping with the production team’s previous endeavours.

You can watch this first episode of The Hollowmen on the ABC website. (Probably - I’m not sure if the ABC manages content based on your location like the BBC. If you’re in Australia you definitely can, otherwise look out for the episode on YouTube.)

I was always a bit squicked out by tofu. Back in high school, our home ec teacher tried to get us to make tofu by coagulating soy milk. And let me tell you, the soy milk available back in the early 90s in small-town Australia was pretty dire, so it was bad from the start. Nobody wanted to try the gluggy mess, and nobody had any idea how to cook with it anyway.

I avoided tofu for a long time. Even when it was in laksa and smelled pretty damn good. And even when I was vegetarian for a few years a while back, I still never ate it. But now, my palate and attitude to food has matured somewhat and I decided I might as well give it a try. Except, how to not make it slimy? All hail the internet, for it threw me a page with some fine instructions on how to cook tofu. All you have to do is drain and slice and press, then dry fry, then marinate and add to your dish. The texture ends up quite like cooked meat patties.

So, last night I cooked with tofu for the first time and the result was, if I do say so myself, rather good. Here’s what I made! Note: Always use the best, freshest ingredients you can afford. Nom.

Chili ginger tofu noodles stir fry

• 250g/1/2lb block of firm tofu
• 3/4 cup tamari or soy sauce
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tsp mirin (rice wine vinegar) - use lemon juice if you can’t find any
• 2 tsp finely chopped or minced ginger
• 2 small hot red chilis, finely chopped (this is reasonably hot, use more or less as you prefer)
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 tsp high-heat veg oil - peanut, sunflower, canola, etc. Not olive.
• 4-5 cups assorted chopped vegetables - a mix of texture and colour is nice, for example: broccoli, carrot, baby corn, red capsicum (bell peppers). I used what looked nicest at the supermarket: green beans, broccoli, carrot and snow peas. Other suggestions: red cabbage, onion, bok choy, Chinese broccoli (kai lan), cauliflower, Chinese or Japanese mushroom, etc.
• 200g/(7oz?) pack of Hokkien or rice noodles

1. Prepare the tofu as instructed.
2. While it’s cooling, mix up the tamari, water, mirin, ginger, chilli and garlic in a medium bowl.
3. Place the tofu in the marinade and let it soak for 30 or more minutes.
4. Chop the veges while you wait! The best way involves thin slices that don’t need long in the wok. Carrot can be julienned or sliced on the diagonal, separate broccoli into small florets, snow peas and baby corn can be left whole.
5. Prepare the noodles according to the packet. Usually this is just covering them with boiling water and leaving for a minute then draining.
6. Heat up a large wok, electric or whatever is fine, as long as it can get really hot! Or a very large high-sided skillet can substitute.
7. Add the oil and brush it around the sides of the wok, letting it get really hot too.
8. Add in the hardest vegetables first - carrots and broccoli, followed by the softer ones like mushrooms and capsicum/peppers. When you stir-fry, you should keep the ingredients moving around the wok - traditionally with large cooking chopsticks but I find kitchen tongs work just as well. You can pick stuff up and toss it around. If you’re talented/a risk taker, you can flip stuff by yanking the wok around as chefs do.
9. The vegetables probably only need two minutes, tops, then add in the noodles and toss them about too. After about 30 seconds, add in the tofu and all the marinade sauce.
10. Keep tossing everything around until it’s well-coated with the sauce and the tofu is heated through. The actual cooking should be over in a total of about four minutes.
11. Serve in bowls, and eat well!

Serves 4 regular or 3 hearty meals. This reheats in the microwave reasonably well, but don’t freeze it.

The Australian federal government has set up a Preventative Health Taskforce. It’s to make recommendations on preventative strategies to combat the ‘burden of chronic disease currently caused by obesity, tobacco and the excessive consumption of alcohol’.

It will allegedly ‘provide evidence-based advice’ on the above. Just putting fat next to smoking and binge drinking and it’s an EPIC FAIL right at the start. (see note at end for more on this)

The experts chosen to make up the Taskforce have short biographies available on the Taskforce website, but I’ve compiled some other important information the public might like to know:

Professor Rob Moodie - mostly involved with anti-drug and alcohol campaigns and global health. He is currently not a member of or involved with any organisation or company that’s notably or specifically with an anti-obesity focus (that I can find), but he has written articles like this one, Obesity - a market success, full of the usual OMG fat kids are reducing life expectancy! panic. As Chair of the Taskforce, he recently said “there should be five-yearly check-ups on Australians’ obesity rates, activity levels and nutrition”. WTF mate.

Professor Mike Daube - again previously mostly invovled with anti-drug and alcohol abuse policy, but also on the public record as getting all agitated about Too Many Fat People and thinking a ‘junk food tax’ will fix it.

Professor Paul Zimmet - involved currently and previously with a long list of think tanks and health policy organisations, etc, mainly to do with diabetes and obesity. Calls obesity an “insidious creeping pandemic” and “international scourge“. Pandemic. I do not think that word means what he thinks it means, what with it definitionally requiring a transmissible disease. More importantly, Professor Zimmet is also a currently a board member or scientific advisor for pharmaceutical companies that are developing obesity and diabetes drugs: ChemGenex, Apollo Life Sciences, and Dia-B. He is a member of Monash University’s Centre for Obesity Research and Education (which states ‘obesity’ is a disease) and several other organisations whose continued funding relies on the continuation of the idea that being fat is a horrible deadly disease.

Ms Kate Carnell - not much to add about Carnell beyond what’s on her bio there, but interestingly when she was CEO of the Australian Divisions of General Practice she stated the ADGP (now the AGPN) had decided that banning junk food advertising was not a practicable idea because the definition of ‘junk food’ was not clear. Has made general obesity-bad statements.

Dr Lyn Roberts - Can’t find any blatant commercial interests, but here’s an example of her (fairly standard, mainstream) stance on fat and health. I find it interesting the difference between the way she talks about fat and health compared to the dramatic language used by Zimmet: by no means fat-friendly but not using fearmongering as an argument technique.

Mr Shaun Ramsay - a senior manager at HCF, a private health insurance company. Previous to that, he was an executive for a large private hospital company. Is on the board of Research Australia, an organisation for strategic health research funding. RA is supported by a great deal of vested interests.

Professor Leonie Segal - A health economist. Not much to add, is on record with similar views as Dr Roberts above.

Dr Linda Selvey - a standard smattering of appointments to public health statutory bodies. Similar mainstream views on fat and health.

So there we have it. I suspect some people might say that well, pharmaceutical companies provide research funding! Where else are researchers supposed to get it? Sure, but it’d be nice if these interests were fully declared. And it would have been nice to see an eminently qualified researcher and academic on the Taskforce who was a proponent of Health at Every Size (yeah right, in your dreams) or at least had heard of it. They’re out there but they’re not one of the cool kids.

Not happy, Kevin and Nicola.

–

Note: Interestingly, people are all handwringing over a supposed epidemic of binge drinking (especially amongst young people) here. The available evidence on binge drinking shows that there’s been no real increase in binge drinking and alcohol-related violence is not rising. However, polls do show more people are worried about binge drinking and its effects and there’s been an epidemic of media sensationalism over those naughty naughty drunken teenagers, particularly those nasty slutty teenage girls/”ladettes” (how dare they try to have a good time). Sound familiar?

Also note: I don’t think that demonising smokers and heavy drinkers does any good. Teenagers drinking well beyond their limits on a regular basis even if it’s not an “epidemic” isn’t a great idea, but I think there are overarching societal problems that need fixing, not slapping taxes on alco-pops and various knee-jerk responses. You get the idea.

(ETA: Sorry, videos keep getting pulled from YouTube - I keep fixing the links though. Arrr.)

Check out the smokin’ hot Vânia Fernandes, Portugal’s representative at the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest, who’s made it into the final:

She faces stiff competiton from a variety of Euro-pop acts, including another Finnish metal band and the spectacularly awesome Pirates of the Sea from Latvia:

Everything’s been moved over from the Wordpress-hosted site, except the blogroll, which has to be done manually (argh). So don’t get worried if your link doesn’t show up right away - I’ll be doing them in batches.

Shinobi posted that Yogurt is gross. Which it is, generally, because most glop calling itself yoghurt these days is pretty much just that - glop. You might have to go to a fancypants deli or ethnic grocery store to find it, but real thick Greek style yoghurt is a magnificent food. (Also labelled ‘continental’ or ‘Mediterranean’ yoghurt or something similar.) It can be a little intimidating by itself, however, if you’re used to the gelatin-thickened abominations that abound, and the flavour may even be off-puttingly strong. Two very delicious ways to use this yoghurt is to make Turkish dips (which are technically ’salads’ in Turkish cuisine, a bit like a coleslaw, not appetisers or snacks). The two I like best are carrot (yoghurtlu havuc) and beetroot (kiz guzeli). There are many ways of preparing these dishes, but here are the recipes I use:

Turkish carrot dip

• 1 large or 2 small carrots
• good splash of olive oil
• 1.5 cups Greek style yoghurt (may need more or less depending on how much carrot you end up with)
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon cumin powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Grate the carrot using the fine blade on your grater or food processor.
2. Heat the olive oil in a sautee or frypan, and gently sautee the carrot until it’s tender. Set aside to cool.
3. Mix the cooled carrot, garlic, cumin and salt together in a bowl. It should have a consistency like those mayo-heavy commercial coleslaws!
4. Serve in a shallow bowl, drizzled with a little more olive oil and sprinkled with about half a teaspoon of cumin powder.

Turkish beetroot dip

• 3 medium beet bulbs
• olive oil
• 1.5 cups Greek style yoghurt (approx, as above)
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 tsp salt

1. Wash, top and tail the beets but don’t peel them. Parboil them (about 20 minutes), then drain and place on a baking tray. Drizzle with olive oil and bake in a med-hot oven until tender. This can take up to an hour depending on how big your beets are.
2. Peel the cooked beets, and chop into smaller pieces to allow faster cooling.
3. Place the cooled beet pieces, yoghurt, garlic and salt into a food processor and whiz. You can have anywhere from a chunky to smooth texture. If you don’t have a food processor, chop the beets more finely and use a stick blender, hand masher, or even a potato ricer, then mix with the yoghurt.
4. Serve in a shallow bowl or dish, drizzled with a bit of olive oil.

Slice up Turkish bread (pide), or pita bread or chips, and serve with the dips for Western style party or BBQ food. More Turkish-ly, you’d have these a side or condiment with your meat and vegetables. Example: a platter with lamb kofte or felafel, green or chunky (Greek style) salad, rice pilaf, and havuc or guzeli. Any way you eat them, they’re delicious.

Just a note, prompted by a comment on another post.

I am in fact quite fat. I don’t know exactly what I weigh but it’s a lot. I estimate it at about 120kg (265lbs) (going by various clues), and I’m 155cm (5′1″) tall, making me about 60kg “overweight”. That’s a BMI of 49.9, well into Super Extra Morbidly Death-o-matic Obese category. I wear a size 26 on the bottom. I’m fat. I know what it’s like to nearly always be the fattest person in the room and have a thousand assumptions made about my life by strangers.

I’m fat and it’s ok with me. Sure, if there was a magic wand to wave and I would wake up in the morning all slender without any side effects, I might well do it, just to get some damned respect. But that’s not fixing the real problem, is it?

Oh, how I love Indian food. I love having three million jars of spice cluttering up the kitchen cupboards. I really do! There are ways of preparing the spices differently, but I find if you’re using regular spices from the supermarket, doing them as follows turns out no differently to roasting the spices separately. If, on the other hand, you can get really really good spices from an Indian or specialist market, then it’s worth the extra step.

Delicious dal

(serves 6)
2 cups red lentils
2-3 tablespoons ghee (clarified butter) or canola or peanut oil (need a high-temp oil)
1 medium brown onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon sliced fresh ginger (optional)
3 small red chilis (or to taste), finely chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste

Spices - you can improvise with these. Just start with base amounts (about half of what’s listed) and go by the smell and taste. Add some extra chili powder if you like things hot. I am a heretic and haven’t actually learned what spice mixes make up which specific dishes. Yet.
2 teaspoons turmeric powder
1 teaspoon coriander seed (ground)
1/2 teaspoon whole coriander seed
1 teaspoon cumin seed
1 teaspoon fenugreek
5-8 cardamom pods
1/4 tsp cinnamon powder
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp clove powder (I never add this because it reminds me of the dentist’s office)
1 tsp mustard seeds
3 bay leaves
1/4 tsp nutmeg is often used too, but I don’t like it so I leave it out.

Alternately, use a high-quality curry paste (korma or generic style usually works).

1. Rinse the lentils and leave them soaking while you prepare everything else.
2. Heat the oil or ghee in a big pot or wok.
3. Add in the spices and fry them for a few seconds until the seeds start to pop and crackle.
4. Add the chili, onion, garlic, and ginger and fry on med-high until the onion is transparent.
5. Drain the lentils and add to the pot, stirring to coat with spices.
6. Add 6 cups water, bring to the boil and simmer until the lentils are soft. The consistency varies according to the taste of the chef, really. I prefer mine like a chunky thick pea soup, others prefer it more of a mush- ie, the lentils have completely disintegrated.

Serve with naan or chapati or basmati rice. Rice hint: always rinse basmati rice throughly, and throw a bay leaf or two in with the rice while it’s cooking. And some saffron or turmeric for golden rice. And for the love of Benji, buy a rice cooker. You don’t need a fancy one, the $15 bargain shop ones are fine and you get rice! Cooked by itself! I could never get rice on the stovetop just right but with the cooker it’s perfect every time.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon said one idea put forward in a submission was an annual national fitness test where citizens would receive a financial incentive if they pass. Source

I know the Australia 2020 summit was basically a brainstorming exercise and is as to actual policy as grape chewing gum is to wine, but jeez. The fact that people think these things are a good idea continues to confound me. Will people with a disability or chronic illness get a pass or will they be expected to adhere to a fitness standard? After all, there’s that paralympian dude with one leg who can ski real fast, that means that all disabled people could do it if they just put their minds to it! FFS. Think, people, think! You can bet your left nelly that there’s no thought of a HAES style individual fitness level there. I’d get penalised in that kind of test for not being able to run so fast, but I can bench press a metric fuckton and impress yoga teachers with my sideways flexibility. I knew a young woman at college who could run 100m in 12 seconds but couldn’t touch her toes. She failed one of those general fitness tests, yep. The kind of thinking that leads a person to believe that something like that is a good idea that could be implemented nationwide may be well-intentioned, but it’s very narrow, ableist, classist, and, well, silly.

Lauredhel at Hoyden about Town posted some thoughts on stuff that seemed notably absent from the summit. I commented on something found in the quick summary report:

“Have health policy focused on prevention – across not just health, but across Government and the whole community, with “zero tolerance” of unhealthy actions”.

Who gets to decide what’s healthy and unhealthy? What would be the consequences of disobeying zero tolerance policies?

Seriously, WTF.

Surprisingly, the summary report doesn’t mention obesity, but it does mention things like a ‘fat tax’ on junk food, and making office buildings open up their stairwells so people can walk more, and incorporating 30 minutes of activity into every sedentary job. Bear in mind that these are nowhere near being actual policy proposals, really they’re just brainstorming, but I’m a bit disheartened (but sadly not surprised) at the lack of critical and lateral thinking going on.

Fat tax on junk food. Who gets to classify what food is junk? Low-carb diet fans would probably rate pasta as undesirable, low-fat diet fans would rate cheesy broccoli as a no. Personally I rate every item of Weight Watchers branded food as junk, but hey. More likely the ‘fat tax’ would be about hiking up prices on fast food franchise items. I really don’t like the idea, despite being a supposedly tax-’em!-lovin’ lefty. So $1 or whatever is added to the price of a Big Mac - but I can still buy a huge cheese, egg, cream and bacon laden carbonara from the Italian stand next to the McD’s in the food court, at its regular price? Will yaki gyoza (deep-fried meat dumplings) from the sushi place escape the tax while battered chicken strips from KFC get the hike? I could go to the market and buy Wagyu beef mince, olive oil, fancy rolls, fancier cheese,  pricey organic salad and make a burger that’s more fat and salt laden than any commercial burger. It just smacks of snobbery: a certain kind of interfering middle-class person who is aghast at what those poor people/children/etc eat and must set them on the path of righteousness.

Making office buildings open up their stairwells so people will walk more. I’ve got news for whoever thought of this one: they’re closed so that you can more safely escape in a fire or emergency, you twit, not because of some insidious corporate plan to hide the fact that manual escalation is in fact possible.

30 minutes of exercise required for every sedentary job. Well, it’s nice to encourage fun physical activity, but you know, I’m not confident this will actually do so. If you already go to the gym for a standard 30-60 minutes, as many of office workers tend to, can you get a note from the manager excusing you? Can I show a statutory declaration saying I don’t have a car, I already get plenty of walking time in, thanks? How on earth is this going to work? North Korean style where a severe person in a tracksuit shouts instructions via megaphone? The only way I can see it having a chance is that it’s not compulsory to attend, but it is compulsory for employers to allow you 30 minutes in addition to lunch/breaks, to go for a walk or whatever. 30 minutes isn’t actually that long if you have to include time at the start and end to get changed and have a shower (coworkers who come back from the gym without showering are gross). How many office buildings even have showers? For the love of Benji, people, use your noodle!

I suspect fat-haters would call my criticisms proof that fat people hate exercise and such. Far from it. I rather enjoy it myself, but I definitely do not want to see anyone penalised or further ostracised for not participating in athletic or sporting culture. Hell, offer free yoga classes and dancing and swimming, give free fruit to kids at school and subsidise fruit and vegetables all you want, but for fuck’s sake, don’t make it about weight. Don’t make it a social imperative to meet some arbitrary standard of fitness or health. Don’t doom peopel to dysfunctional relationships with their bodies. Moving and eating should be happy activities, and genuine health comes from that - on an individual level.

I have discovered quinoa! and lo, it is tasty. A few people it mentioned in the comments of my last post, so here’s the last thing I made with it, which was pretty tasty, reheated well, and you could probably modify it infinitely. And after that, a tasty beanburger recipe.

Quinoa and chickpea pilaf-biryani-couscousy-thing