My Girl Pearl

I'd just returned from my annual doctor's visit with new resolve to eat more salad and less candy for a few weeks to drop the winter flab-ola. Seemed a small price to pay for postponing if not avoiding my cardiac destiny.

I thought I had come to terms with the luck of my genetic draw.  If I can't eat unlimited Cheetohs and Ring-Dings, I won't cry. But then I read about Pearl Catrell.  Boo-hoo! Hand me my hankie!

Pearl just celebrated her 105th birthday with a ride in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.  Why did this lovely lady get such a treat?  Because she attributes her longevity to her daily consumption of bacon--crispy bacon--two slices for breakfast and maybe another couple of slices for lunch. Bacon! Demon bacon! Who knew?

Truthfully, I suspect Pearl's longevity comes from her ancestors who appear to be a lot of hard-working Texas farmers who actually worked on the land instead of collecting enormous subsidies from the pork barrel. For Pearl, the bacon is the gravy, the ice cream, the hot fudge sauce on top of that pile of lucky genes. 

But, what if?  If only she were right.  If only eating a couple of strips of salty, fatty, nitrate-laden char was the real fountain of youth.  





Nutrition information comes and goes in a Seussian whirl of no-fat, low-fat, good-fat, bad-fat. 

Worry floats from additive to additive. Remember the cyclamates that gave Tab it's polarizing taste:  can't live without it/wouldn't drink it if I were in the middle of the Mojave dying? 

Now we are told to worry/not worry about high-fructose corn syrup, to worry/not worry about about GMO's, to worry/not worry about aspartame.  (All I can say is, at least I don't live in China where I might have to worry about rat meat sold as lamb.)

I'd like to believe that Pearl is right, but the nasty voice of reason whispers, "Dream on."  So, I'll dream. But, if movies are our dreams, then I'll take comfort in this scene from Woody Allen's Sleeper (1973), in which, according to the IMDb, "A nerdish store owner is revived out of cryostasis into a future world to fight an oppressive government." Not nutritionally oppressive, though.

Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."

Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.

Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?

Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.

Dr. Melik: Incredible.

Trouserville: We should all live so long!


Fun (?) Fact from the Trouserville Memory Bank:  While Tiger's Milk is now a brand of nutrition bar, it was a canister of dried up nutrition popular in the 1970's. Don't ask me how I know that it tasted like garbage.

Trouserville Thank You to my sister Trish for letting me know about Pearl.