Just as I was about to extol the many virtues of Peter Kaminsky’s new book, brilliantly titled Culinary Intelligence: The Art of Eating Healthy (and Really Well), I happened upon a dose of Culinary Insanity in the food pages of today’s New York Times. In an article about an exemplary initiative to teach doctors about nutrition, a recipe appears that is so unhealthy as to render the project questionable.
Who’s in charge here? Who makes the decisions about what is healthy? And why would anyone choose a drink that contains more sugar than a Coke to illustrate the idea behind healthful food consumption? Not only does the simple recipe for limeade contain 24 grams of refined white sugar per serving (that’s 90 calories worth of sugar alone), but it is made with peanuts, which may trigger a bout of allergies for some. Really, what were they thinking? It reminds me a bit of the book Why French Women Don’t Get Fat, where the premise is certainly laudable — eat small portions of delicious things — but, alas, there was not a nutritional analysis in sight and many of the recipes that looked healthy were not, even in petit portions.
