Posted on 12/02/2018 10:31:59 AM PST by SJackson
It may be the most strangely-timed article in the history of moveable type.
The New York Times has chosen the week before Hanukkah to publish a long article warning about the supposed health dangers of eating fried potatoes.
The article, though, doesn’t mention the word “Hanukkah” or the latkes, or potato pancakes, often eaten to celebrate the Jewish holiday.
It’s an article so clumsily timed it seems like a parody. Imagine the Times publishing an article warning about the health risks of turkey or pumpkin pie the week before Thanksgiving — but with no reference whatsoever to the impending holiday.
It’d be one thing to publish such an article out of concern for the health of Jewish readers, in the vein of, “Okay everyone, Hanukkah is coming. Don’t eat too many latkes or you might be spending the fifth through eighth nights in, heaven forbid, the cardiac care unit of the hospital.”
But, at least to judge by the language of the Times article, the newspaper manages to publish a pre-Hanukkah warning about the health risks of fried potatoes without anyone there even realizing that the holiday is coming. A newspaper once edited by Jews such as Abe Rosenthal, Max Frankel, and Joe Lelyveld, and once owned by the Ochs-Sulzberger family that had Jewish origins, now writes about fried potatoes the week before Hanukkah and discusses as possible toppings “ketchup” and “mayonnaise” and “aioli” — without even a nod to time-honored latke accompaniments such as applesauce or sour cream or brisket juice.
I emailed the author of the Times article, Christopher Mele, to ask whether the article had been intentionally published to coincide with Hanukkah. He didn’t respond to my inquiry by the time I filed this story.
The Times article comes off as either insensitively ignorant or as, maybe even worse, a subtle yet nonetheless unmistakable effort to throw shade at a beloved Jewish delicacy.
Even the science behind it is shaky. For its click-bait claim that fried potatoes are “a weapon of dietary destruction,” the Times relies on a study that, by the Times description, “found that, controlling for other risk factors, participants who ate fried potatoes two to three times a week were at a higher risk of mortality compared with those who ate unfried potatoes.”
But the study the Times cites wasn’t a randomized trial that took the same healthy population and fed one group fried potatoes and the other group spinach, or white bread, or pastrami, or hot fudge sundaes. Instead, it was an observational study that relied on participants to self-report what they ate. That is an exercise that, when French fries or potato chips are involved, is as hazardous and potentially unreliable as polling people about their plans to vote for Donald Trump.
The participants in the study were already in poor health — they were either obese or overweight, had knee pain, or had arthritis. Furthermore, the study acknowledges that the risk of mortality may not be caused by the fried potatoes — correlation, in other words, doesn’t equal causation. The study found, for example, “Many factors could explain these findings. First, French fries and fried potatoes typically contain high amounts of dietary fat (including trans fat) and added salt, which may increase the risk of death.” In other words, it could be the added salt on the French fries, not the latke itself, that is the danger. Or, the study says, “people who consume fried potatoes more frequently might have other unhealthy dietary habits, such as increased consumption of processed red meat, salty foods, and sugar-sweetened beverages, which may increase the risk of death.” In other words, it’s not the French fries that are so dangerous, it’s the Coke and the hot dog that are the rest of the meal.
The press critic of The Algemeiner is not a physician or a nutritionist. However, my own recommendation is that if we do our best to eat healthy during the rest of the year, a latke or two on Hanukkah is not going to kill us. In fact, this year, we may even be especially justified in enjoying them. It will be an opportunity not only to remember the miracle of Hanukkah, but also to demonstrate that no matter how hard The New York Times might try, we just aren’t going to let the newspaper ruin our holiday.
OK
Did they ever write about the health danger of fasting from food and water all day and then gorging the moment the sun disappears?
No. Because they love muzzies and hate Jews.
Bump
Yeah, but our vaccines, particularly Gardasil, and pharmaceuticals are saving lives... /S
Thanks for the potato pancakes recipes. My mother made them a few times but she never liked to share how she cooked.
I always thought it was a Polish dish.
I liked latkes but my assignment was grating the potatoes and onions. my mother would not make them unless I did the grating. Yes latkes were featured at Hanukkah parties, children loved them. The basic recipe is grate potato and onion. Squeeze out all the water, Add a bit of flour, salt and pepper. And fry them up! Potato to onions in a 4 to 1 ratio.
They were fried in chicken fat aka schmaltz so were more letrhal back then but nobody knew this so we survived.
Potatoes to onions about 4 to 1 for latkes. Polish cuisine has them too.
https://www.thespruceeats.com/polish-potato-pancakes-recipe-1137080
I haven’t had a good knish in years. It’s like pretzels. If you lived in Brooklyn and moved away. Those little things in life are not the same in other places.
I love my taters too, anyway you can fix them.
I told a friend that once and he said, “what about raw?” I said yes, just put a little salt on them. Yum!
Over the years I have seen many articles saying that Muslim gain weight during ramadan. They pig out before dawn with a breakfast and go to town after the sun sets. Muslims make war during Ramadan...it is not a holy month except in the minds of Muslim nutjobs.
I’ll take my chances, Compost.
A tiny bit off topic, but have to say here that a relative who worked or works on a very large farm in North Dakota told me many moons ago that if we saw what they spray potato plants with, no one would ever eat another potato.
At least we cook potatoes-——it’s the uncooked veggies that bother me.
.
Chanuka is a holiday celebrating a miracle. The Syrian-Greeks invaded the holy Temple and defiled it with all manner of salacious acts. They deliberately broke all the vessels of consecrated oil used to light sacred lights in the Temple. When the time came to light those lights, only a small vessel--a supply sufficient only for a single day--could be found. It was a 4 day journey each way to the nearest town with a supply of the consecrated oil--8 days in all. G-d made a miracle and the little vessel of oil lasted all 8 days until a new supply could be brought. Thus, Chanukah is the Festival of Lights and oil gets top billing as a character in this play. The miracle revolved around the oil, so we commemorate this by lighting our menorah, increasing the number of candles lit by one each night, and by eating foods fried in oil. For Ashkenazic (Eastern European) Jews, fried latkes (potato pancakes) are the major Chanukah treat. Sephardic (North African and Spanish) Jews have their own special Chanukah treat - sufganiyot, a type of jelly filled fried donut. They are also delicious beyond belief, a true rival for latkes.
Who wants to live without potatoes???
The New York Times attacked Latka? How could they attack such a funny comedic character as “Latka” of “TAXI”? This is horrible, and the suggestion of putting ketchup on him is disgusting.
Next they will be attacking Carol Kane as a substitute for Candy Canes.
Have they no decency? No sense of humus? No concern for Jewish comedians esp. at Chanukah time?
What is the world coming to? Oh the tsorus of it all!
I am so sick of these social engineers telling us everything we do, that we love, that we practice, that we watch or listen to is BAD and EVIL....
Yep - add onions then garnish with hot sauce and ketchup......
I’ve eaten latkes before. They’re yummy! And I’m a Christian (though I was merely a Gentile at the time).
I’ve also had kugel a number of times, including some good stuff at the DC Chapter’s Christmas parties in the recent past.
If French fries were still fried in lard, they would actually be healthier. Nowadays, they’re typically fried in vegetable oil (trans fats), as far as I know, except maybe in places where trans fats have been banned.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.