(BTW: Chocolate-covered espresso beans? Now you’re talking my language.)

There are people out there getting 70 percent of their calories from fat and they are healthy as horses.

Butter in a brownie would be a selling point to me. Ditto for coconut oil. I’ve no use for canola, which might as well be liquid plastic. Soybean oil can be destructive to the thyroid (as virtually all soy foods are).

It amazes me, with everything I’ve learned, that the focus with healthy eating is so often centered upon fruits and vegetables. For a confirmed picky eater who refuses to touch animal fats or liver, fruits and veggies have a certain role–they contain micronutrients you should have been getting from organ meats. But the minerals are not as easily absorbed, and the vitamins are not always in their best form. I’m given to understand based on the sources I’ve read that as many as 40 to 50% of the population can’t convert enough beta carotene to use it as their only vitamin A source. Yet, many do use it that way. Hasn’t anyone found it odd that so many people need Lasik surgery now? Or that urinary tract defects are the most common class of birth defects in the United States? The development of the urinary tract is governed in part by vitamin A. So’s external symmetry–how many people with crooked faces do you run into nowadays? I’ve got one.

They’re telling pregnant women not to eat liver. Good lord.

I hate liver. And I’m starting to look for recipes that incorporate it in a way that makes it palatable to me because you know something? Whether I sneak it into meatloaf or eat it sauteed with onions (OMG EW, I hate those too), it’s going to have the same nutritional profile either way, or close enough to count. Who cares whether I *suffer* through it or not? It’s all a matter of opinion as to how these foods should be prepared and eaten. Did you know coffee beans used to be eaten instead of made into a drink? True story. Coffee beans are actually edible roasted, as any aficionado of chocolate-covered espresso beans will tell you. Most of us, though, consume them as a drink brewed through the ground beans. Is that wrong? Of course not. Is eating them wrong? Of course not. Are you going to get your caffeine either way? You bet you will.

You’re going to show your kids how to cook anyway, right? So the veggies are your special secret ingredients that make your foods taste better than anybody else’s. Big deal. Most of us don’t teach our kids to cook at age three (though if you want to start trying then, I sure won’t judge you–some kids just have the ability that early), so there’s no reason to share all our ingredient secrets with them either, until they’re ready to hear it.

It doesn’t matter. Their bodies are not going to obligingly wait to need those nutrients until you can force them to eat veggies in (to them) unappetizing ways. Just get it into their meals and worry about the fine print later.