Is cake "Healthy" ? Part 1

Part of the hotel breakfast buffet (Ravenna, Italy) enjoyed by Ken, (hospitality guru and IT social media trainer) while playing in Italy. This is hotel hospitality certainly, but it does illustrate the Italian concept of breakfast - coffee and  pastry.  (Aussie tourists faced with this, apparently have a meltdown.)

Few would disagree that the "Mediterranean Diet", so called, has given us a blue print for better eating - smaller portions of meat, if any, more fish, lots of vegetables, real bread and fruit as the sweet component.
As Michael Pollan says "Eat food, not too much, mainly plants".

Guido Brunetti, Donna Leon's Venetian policeman,  throws back a tiny espresso for breakfast but later interrupts his morning at a local café with a small glass of white wine and a couple of tramezzini.** 

So without muesli, yoghurt, celery juice and turmeric lattes, Italians have managed to develop a working (sort of) government and legal system, raise families, produce great art, composers, architecture, poets, beautiful cars and great shoes.

Meanwhile in Britain, there have been some changes in eating - aided by yummy lunches of Ottolenghi salads.  But nonetheless, with a breakfast of bacon, blood pudding, fried bread, eggs, white toast, mushrooms and tomato ketchup followed by dinners of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and roast potatoes, somehow, the Brits have managed to develop  a working (sort of) government and legal system, produce  great art, composers, architecture, poets, sensible cars and Harris Tweed.

Over the Channel, the French still breakfast on coffee and a carbohydrate, often dunking the baguette or croissant for better slurping. During the day they gorge themselves on dairy products and fats of various provenance - duck, goose, pork, olive, hazelnut, walnut oil, washed down with wine. The French have managed to  develop a working (sort of) government and legal system, produce  great art, composers, architecture, poets, the Citroën DS 19 and Krug.

​I could go on, travelling around the world.

Now this isn't a very scientific analysis, but I think you get my drift. Just eat food, stay away from engineered food-like substances that need labels, avoid anything that has been known to "heal" for thousands of years, avoid anything that needs to tell you it's healthy, avoid  the very word "healthy".  Just be.

**Tramezzini -little sandwiches, creatively seasoned fillings, more filling than bread, soft white bread, crusts off. (Soft white bread? Go on, you know you want it.)


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But we consider this Japanese conundrum next.

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