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.
They need to get OFF of our food! (In Clint Eastwood voice)
More latkes for me
May this season of light bring joy and blessings to all
Yuck!! :(
I did know a guy who ate a lot of fried potatoes and he died. Never saw the bus coming.
I lived there when Abe was influential
I actually bought it like most did
For book review and foreign affairs and arts.....man you can’t beat them for arts and theatre coverage
They go way in depth on foreign affairs like few papers do
But man media today is a lost cause ...not just mildly liberal
Slate or Salon or Daily Beast
Those are now moderates when compared to the whole body of media online
Not to mention search engines and social apparatus sites
The left owns it
FOX is basically a 1970s Democrat middle of the road perspective which passes for conservative
Sam Nunn and Scoop Jackson would have been regulars on FOX
Potatoes cause global warming! And ate racist!
You’re such a goy.:-)
.
if they wanted to scare us, they should have said they were ALMOST as deadly as working for the Clintons while having a conscience...
I believe Arthur Jr is the only family member still active, and he’s Episcopalian. And I’m told does not like at all being mistaken for a Jew because of his grandparents. His dad was at best nominally Jewish, at least he didn’t deny it, but didn’t practice any form as did his Reform father.
I like Potatoes O’Brien, with onions and peppers. It has vegetables, so it must be healthy, right?
lol
sour cream and apple sauce!
What am I pregnant?
No fat jokes! :)
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And next will the the NYT’s attacks on gefilte fish, matzo balls, and Jewish dietary laws in general.
I ate latkes all the time as a kid and made them for my husband after we were married. He thinks it’s one of the ultimate comfort foods. My Mom was a terrific cook and when I was a young child we lived in Brooklyn surrounded by many ethnic groups. One of my favorite snacks was schmaltz(rendered chicken fat) spread on a piece of bread or a chopped chicken liver sandwich. When we moved to Long island she then became a great Italian cook. My cholesterol is just fine and she just died at 100!
They slipped up and some copy editor put the ‘potato’ bit in ... what they meant was eating is dangerous for your health - see how easily these things get blown out of proportion?
I agree. Growing up in the 1970s, the health nazis frightened my mother so much that she stopped buying eggs, replacing them with those "egg beaters" which is basically just a bunch of chemicals. Then she substituted healthy butter for sticks of chemicals saturated in trans-fats (margarine). Likewise, bacon and red meats disappeared from our refrigerator to be replaced with salt-laden processed turkey and chicken meats because they were "better" for you according to the experts. I can go on and on. Diet soda like Tab was considered a godsend and my mother drank it by the gallon.
My father had a major heart attack when he was still in his 40s. Fortunately I escaped and spent most of my adult life indulging in real butter and all the eggs and steak I want. My cholesterol is still under 200 and I have no trace of heart disease (I'm in my mid 50s).
Eat more meat. Preferably beef. A nice juicy steak. Cow farts be damned.
I think there is high correlation of reading the NYTimes and going insane.
In fairness, I'm not sure we should expect a moral conscience from the media. Factual reporting would be nice, as would be outlets reporting both sides.
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