The thread last week about a new study showing that DHA might not always be totally positive made me think of a commentary in the Guardian Weekly the same week.  Written by a French woman, it took issue with the English predilection for eating ingredients rather than food.  She grew up in France but moved to England, and was a representative of the French paradox, in that her own dietary fat consumption was much higher than that of her British friends, but she was the slimmest one of the bunch.  She had never thought of food in terms of protein, carbohydrates, glycemic indices, or long-chain fatty acids, though she was much more versed in gourmet arts than any of her friends, simply from having grown up in France.  For her food was more like a recreational drug, something to be savored and enjoyed for its taste rather than endured for its beneficial effects on the state of her arteries.  As she said, 'Why would you want a low-carb, low-fat blueberry muffin? Either eat the real thing, or don't bother.'  And she ate her favorite brand of French farm butter by the spoonful, without bread to spread it on.  It rang true for me, because I also love eating food for its taste and the sheer physical enjoyment of different flavors and textures in the raw ingredients, and not for how much of my daily need for each individual nutrient it contributes to my diet.

We all know that artificial baby milks contain exact amounts of individual 'nutrients' determined by close study of what breastmilk contains, and we all know that it tastes nothing like the real thing.  The real thing is made with no technical aids, without the slightest intellectual effort by the producer and responds dynamically to the baby's appetite and microbial ecology as well.  Why should we expect the addition of one more specific component to fix everything that is wrong with a diet based on things made in factories?   Why should we think that any laboratory analysis can tell us just how much DHA there should be in every drop of breastmilk?  

I still take pharmaceutical grade cod liver oil daily as a Vitamin D supplement at my sub-arctic latitude, because I am skeptical to eating fish liver that hasn't had all the environmental toxins removed - but I savor that spoonful with my juice at breakfast and consider it food.  

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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