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.
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Goyim Rule!
As does my 101 yo mother and me, twice a day in my case.
Who does the cooking? ;-)
What a blessing...to have your dear mom at 101 years old.
Liberals are idiots.
Ah ha! The NY Times FAILS TO MENTION that every one of their readers dies regardless of what they consume!
Reading the NY Times is a sure cause of death.
Fortunately, we still have BACON!
Sunday breakfast is just not complete without hash browns!
The libtards just can’t stand it when anybody enjoys something in life. It just drives them nuts.
Their motto seems to be, what fun thing that other people do can we ruin today?
Got to make my deadly latkes tonight! Haven’t killed anyone yet! Thanks for the warning but no tofatkes at this house!
Hey!
Nobody gets out of here alive!
Get a grip people.
I don’t know mass55th, but my latkes are better than his or hers. ;) Mine are crispy outside, tender inside, lots of onions, absolutely killer good and I’m making my own applesauce.
(((Shhhhh... I subscribe to the cooking section. Most of the time they don’t mention trump* and they have great recipes and reviews, I get some good ideas...)))
*sometimes a snide election comment gets in
Enh. Let them get a grip. Frying potatoes is one of the few things that the French ever got right. Latkes have always been my favorite, but in Israel donuts are more popular.
I already had mine, salt, pepper, deep fried in extra virgin olive oil (I like the flavor of olive oil).
With two eggs from my hens fried sunny side up.
Slide the eggs on top of the taters then chop them all up together.
Yes; life is good.
If God had not wanted us to eat fried potatoes, Columbus would not have discovered the New World.
The new blood libel? The New York slimes claims Jews deliberately kill people by making latkes? Fried food may not be good for you, but many tasty things are not good for you.
Without the GREAT POTATO, no matter how it is cooked, life on earth would cease!
Just my opinion, I loves me some taters.
DAMN; that looks almost to good to eat, have to taste it to be sure.
YEP; it’s to beautiful for YOU to eat, I will make the sacrifice for humanity.
heh heh
Potato latkes are an adaptation of the the originals, which were chunks of cheese fried in olive oil. Oil is the thing. In Israel, the Chanukah choice is jelly doughnuts.
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