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'It's your cholesterol', the specialist said wisely,
'we humans cannot eat fat meat and all those eggs,
so many heart attacks and strokes are caused precisely
by modern fatty foods, yes sir! ' - I was perplexed.
'But don't we need the stuff for daily proper thinking,
and for our hormones to be made again from scratch?
How could those scientists all over think of linking
our fatty foods to mankind's scourge, could they not match
another reason such as starches and our sweets
and hyperinsulin production as a cause?
Or are you saying, Doc, it is what someone eats
that it will kill him in the end, what if it was
not food but stress of our helter -skelter living,
you know, that common personality type A?
'Cause if you tell me that from now I must be giving
a giant berth to steaks and pork chops to obey
the rules of Medicine, not Nature's own prescription,
I would point out that I'm a peasant from the farm,
who's read the books that say that an Egyptian,
who ate low fat would find the diet did him harm.
They lost their teeth, their health and later at age fifty
would dropp quite dead into the ground from hearts so tired.
It stands to reason that they did ignore their thrifty
survival gene that should be ever more admired,
and ate their cereals and grains and crispy bread.
The author stated that their bodies were in need
of all the nutrients from animals, well-fed.
And are you telling me you know that we indeed
watch the cholesterol that nourishes the mind,
without enough of it we're senile and forget,
drift into Alzheimer's, get deaf and maybe blind? '
The doctor said: 'If we had only met
some time ago when you were in your prime!
I could have taught you to prevent the rage of age,
your Doc's before me did commit a real crime.
But let us start your life by writing a new page.'
I left the clinic shortly after this tall tale,
and just reminded him before I closed the door
that if my memory would ever really fail
I would remember still my doctors from before.
That since the fifties he had been our family quack
had been a guest on our farm, delivered babies
but, just in leaving I did say I won't be back
from what I saw he might have caught the blasted rabies.
When I got home I did remember all his words
about cholesterol and fat for man from beast.
I told the Misses that the Doc had told me turds
and to prepare a real farmer's full fat feast.
So she and grandma got the fatback from the freezer,
chunks of lard and fatty sausage with some eggs,
cups of cream with parsley for the oldest geezer
which was grandpa who was still quick on his legs.
Lots of butter on the veggies and the bread
fresh-picked berries in thick cream, a shot of liquor,
when the phone rang, said the doctor, he was dead
he had died of a cholesterol-starved ticker.
Herbert Nehrlich
Read poems about / on: remember, family, food, memory, nature, lost, home, animal
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