A recent post about cooking latkes with less fat generated a chorus of complaints from readers.
Healthy Holidays
30 Days of Holiday Eating
A series of daily tips, tidbits and insights about holiday food.
“Spare me. I’ll take my latkes fried in lots of oil,” wrote reader VT.
“Whatever happened to ‘Eat, Drink and be Merry?’ ” Zale wrote.
“Is nothing sacred? Have we gotten so carried away with politically correct eating … that we can’t just enjoy the season and the holidays?” queried Gail Abramson.
While it’s true that eating any food in moderation is fine, the track record of most Americans is that we don’t eat in moderation, and the holiday season is typically a time of gluttony. As I wrote last year in Science Times, no holiday eating binge is risk free.
Indigestion, flatulence and the need to unbutton tight pants are the most common symptoms of overeating. But big meals also can raise the risk for heart attack, gallbladder pain and dangerous drowsiness on the drive home during the first few hours after eating.
Overeating will make your body work harder. The extra digestive workload demanded by a food binge requires the heart to pump more blood to the stomach and intestines. Heavy consumption of fatty foods can also lead to changes that cause blood to clot more easily, said Dr. Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine.
As a result, heart attack risk appears to surge. Dr. Lopez-Jimenez led one study of 2,000 people that showed a fourfold increase in heart attack risk in the two hours after eating a big meal. Israeli researchers reported a sevenfold risk. “Someone who eats three times the normal calories of a regular meal will have an extra workload for the stomach and intestines and therefore the heart,” Dr. Lopez-Jimenez said.
The digestive workout also leads to drowsiness after a meal, which is a risk for holiday travelers who get behind the wheel.
Food fatigue, along with holiday alcohol consumption, the monotony of driving and a natural circadian dip late in the day all make for a lethal combination behind the wheel.
After a high-fat meal, the gallbladder also has to work harder to help with fat digestion. Large meals with lots of fat are a frequent cause of gallstone attacks.
Click here to read the full story, “Ate Too Much? Tight Pants May Be the Smallest Worry.”
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From 1 to 25 of 124 Comments
That latke thing made me hungry. Bad cooks like moi don’t have many goodies. Probably just as well if food-induced instant death awaits…
— StarThose latke commentators (me included) weren’t saying we should binge on latkes — just that some greasy fried starch is OK once in a while. In moderation, as you say. The eating binge is probably more dangerous for what it does to our eating habits than for the risks you mention here. It feeds into perceptions of lack of self control, failure to lose weight fatalism, etc.
Aside: A seven-fold increase in the risk of a heart attack has to be kept in perspective — what is the baseline risk of a heart attack after a given meal? Relative risks are medically important but usually misunderstood by non-scientist readers (and many writers). And were those who had heart attacks at high risk already? Those of us who are going to drop dead from heart attacks might rather die a few days earlier if it means we get in one last traditional holiday meal (I’d have to think about that).
— PhilipJust noting that it’s possible to eat a few latkes fried in oil without eating three times the normal quantity of calories.
— Lisa H.Something to remember is that holiday food traditions that are high in fat and sugar - like latkes and sweets at Chanukah and Christmas, Paczkes at Shrove Tuesday, candy at Easter , all winter and early-spring holidays- derive from a time when both fats and sugar were expensive and hard to come by, food stores for the winter could run low, and high energy foods were hoarded through the winter till crops made food more readily available in late spring. When it was time to celebrate, that was really celebrating.
— morwynWe eat hardly anything BUT fat and sugar now. If we quit “celebrating” every day or every weekend, (pssst - friday is not a holiday just ‘cuz it’s friday) we could quit worrying about cutting loose on major holidays. but that has not happened yet, and given our propensity for deciding we “deserve a break today” just about every day, welllll….low fat latkes just might make sense then.
Spoil sport!!
— Harold ShaTo paraphrase Woody Allen:
My doctor told me I’d live to be 100 if only I’d stop doing the things that makes me want to live to be 100.
— S. McConnaugheySo the fact that gross overeating can increase the risk of drowsiness and/or heart attack means that latkes should be baked, not fried? I’m curious about the relative risk of such behaviors. Does a healthy 30 year old woman who works out regularly and has low/normal cholesterol and blood pressure really need to worry that enjoying grandma’s latkes will lead to a heart attack? Somehow I suspect she’s at greater risk of being hit by a drunk driver on the drive home from grandma’s house.
Seriously? We must live in a really safe world if the consumption of an OILY LATKE is our big concern for personal health over the holidays.
You write that holiday binge eating isn’t risk free. LIFE isn’t risk free. You could catch salmonella from your holiday salad. Why not focus on the bigger health issues over the holidays, like how to avoid overeating for two weeks straight rather than simply enjoying one or two good holiday meals, how to enjoy a traditional holiday treat in moderation, how to motivate one’s self to take a long brisk walk every day, how effective a daily weigh-in can be for keeping track of one’s weight.
That’s the real issue. It’s not latkes for Pete’s sake!
— MTThe development of gallstones is caused by low fat diets that inhibit the gall bladder from fully and vigorously emptying its contents. Switching suddenly from a low fat regimen to one with more fat can stimulate the stones to be released with the bile needed to digest the fat, triggering an attack. But it’s not the fat that’s the cause of the stones. So, basically, we should just eat whatever holiday foods we desire in moderation, including latkes fried in oil. Quality above quantity.
— KatyI do think part of our problem in terms of weight in our culture is the idea that pig outs are ok once in awhile. As long as you have that desire for high-fat indulgence, you will struggle with eating healthy and reasonably. It’s hard, which is why you got such annoyed comments. But it’s a question for our times– do we stay on the path of loving foods that originated in times when we knew less and worked harder physically, but also lived shorter lives? Or do we take our current knowledge, such as provided here, to find new ways to enjoy food? Digestive distress is our body’s way of trying to tell us something (we’ve overwhelmed its capacity and capabilities), and I am learning in these mid-life years, we ignore those messages at our peril.
My parallel is pirogi, which I grew up guzzling on Christmas Eve. My grandmother made hundreds of them, and they were sublime. A few years ago, my grandmother long gone, my sister and I decided to make them, and I was shocked at how rich the recipe was– cheese, eggs, butter, cream and potatoes. Well, they were marvelous, and we gorged, but my daughter, who didn’t grow up eating them, got sick after eating just one. It was too rich for her. I made them once more after that, and decided that all the work and mess just weren’t worth it. You can’t make just a few pirogi, and I can’t eat just a few.
Maybe I’ll make them again in the future, but in the meantime, I’m working on having a healthier approach to celebrating and avoiding gaining the typical 5 pounds I gain between Thanksgiving and New Years, because they don’t come off by Valentine’s Day like they used to.
— FrancoisAfter taking readers to task for asking to be left alone to make their own decisions about holiday eating, you get right back into the lectures. Don’t you have anything else to do?
— Dr Sheldon BergerAll this glutenous talk about food gives me acid indigestion before I even get near the stuff. I will never understand some people’s obsession with food, either taking it in or taking it off. They spend their time fruitlessly apologising for what they do ingest with a smirky , “ooo, I shouldn’t,” , when it’s apparent they do, and often. After this season of indulgence no doubt there will be columns written ” What Is Your favourite Diet?”, and ” How Do You Lose Weight”.
— elizabethGreat post. I did not know that a large meal increased the risk of heart attacks by that much.
— James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.Happy Holidays?
Why do you insist on conflating the consumption of a high-fat food with overeating?
Yes, if what you’re eating (either quality or quantity) is leading to “indigestion, flatulence and the need to unbutton tight pants” or worse, then maybe you should exercise some restraint. Otherwise spare us the lecture.
— BH“Heavy consumption of fatty foods can also lead to changes that cause blood to clot more easily”
Hmm…through experience, I found that eating a lot of leafy green vegetables increased my dose of Coumadin. I wonder why there are no warnings about eating vegetables…
— HI don’t want my husband to die of a heart attack by age 42 like every other male in his family. There are times when fats and fried food cannot be avoided - like our drive on the Indiana turnpike post-Thanksgiving. So, if food is coming out of my kitchen, I do what I can to reduce the fat (I lightly saute my latkes in olive oil.)
Maybe I’m neurotic, but I cannot help it because:
1) I’m Jewish
2) I love my husband
3) I was diagnosed with cancer at age 27 and know that the unthinkable happens when you least expect it.
http://everythingchangesbook.blogspot.com/
— Kairol RosenthalIt doesn’t matter how good that roast beef is, how special Grandma’s lemon meringue pie, how delicious the champagne. Don’t you dare have a second helping!
This is the kind of “health” reporting that overly worries about your arteries but doesn’t think about your mental health.
I’m having a second or third helping of creamy potatoes and a few more cookies. It’s Christmas, for God’s sake!!!
— JasonThat’s right Tara! You show those boneheads who got up in arms yesterday simply because you tried to offer a few helpful ways to make a holiday favorite a little less unhealthy.
— JaneMaybe that’s one small factor driving the nationwide obesity epidemic. Give someone a few tips on ways to make their food a little healthier, and they get angry and ferocious, like a dog that snaps and growls when its owner tries to pull its bowl away for a second to add some more kibbles n’ bits.
To all the boneheads who threw tantrums yesterday at the mere suggestion that you think about making a latke with a little less fat, I say it’s time to grow up. Why are you reading a health blog if you don’t want health tips? Shouldn’t you be on a blog called Indulgence instead of Wellness?????
…can’t talk, can’t think, can’t type a reply — too stuffed and drunk. ZZZZ ZZZZ ZZZZ
— Massive in MarylandThank you. I’m tired of feeling like the lone killjoy/borderline anorexic at the party. Not that I say anything about what other people eat, but it stresses me out to be surrounded by mountains of high-calorie food that I have no need for and to see people who are seriously overweight or obese pigging out. At least one person I’m thinking of is alive only because of surgical intervention.
I end up eating more than I should, and am always terrified that this year I won’t be able to lose the few pounds I gain over the holidays.
I and other people who watch their weight and try to get in some exercise don’t understand the feeling of entitlement of overweight people to eat whatever they want in whatever quantity. But they also seem to feel entitled not to think about the consequences.
— chrisYou know, nothing is risk-free. Even if you stay in bed all day, the ceiling could collapse on you. I doubt a few latkes or a big meal on one occasion is going to lead to severe, life-threatening complications for most of us. One simple precaution: if you eat a lot, don’t drive.
— ArtieThank you TPP. I’ll try to remember this during all our coming holiday parties, although it’s already too late for all the parties that preceded today. :)
Now that you’ve actually given us a health rationale to avoid pigging out, that may strengthen my resolve. Worrying about weight gain didn’t do much to prevent me from indulging.
— Shanageeezzzz - so now the nannys are after your holiday meals. where doers it end? i guess the old joke about the guy living to old age saying it was because he avoided booze, cigs, and fatty foods is right - it wasn’t so much he lived so long than that it seemed so long because it was so boring.
there has to be a balance here. sure, smoking is bad, but food? as my father hit old age (86) and his health went downhill, he often encouraged me to eat whatever i liked saying “later, they’ll take all of the good stuff away anyway so eat it now.” face it - you’re going to die of something at some stage of the game. should it be after a life of repressed joys and boring but healthy habits or after a life filled with the celbration of good food and drink - all in moderation.
my choice is the occassional big meal and yet another glass of that ‘healthy’ red wine and an after-dinner snifter (or two) of grand marnier.
— shamanA quote from the post: “Someone who eats three times the normal calories of a regular meal will have an extra workload for the stomach and intestines and therefore the heart.” Is this extra workload any greater than the extra workload brought on by a brisk workout (something that people should be doing everyday)? Honest question.
— jhSo…being drowsy, drunk, dulled, and dumb enough to drive in such circumstances mean that big holiday meals are out?
You’ll forgive me if I find this so patently obvious that it actually completely undermines the argument you were trying to make.
— KennethDoes anyone here know what a “Bacon Butty” is?
— elizabeth