What have I become, my Swedish friend?

There are dozens of cooking shows on TV now. I don't watch any of them, but from their titles I'm led to understand that in some, chefs compete to make the best iron recipes, in others they travel down to hell and challenge Satan to cooking contests to win the freedom of their loved one's souls.

As of May 31, 2010 there will be no fewer than 2 cooking channels: Food Network and The Cooking Channel. And still, dozens of other food shows on other networks. Meanwhile, we are the fattest nation on Earth. Apparently our Marines weigh so much, Guam is about to capsize under their weight. And I can't have a normal conversation with someone without their eyes drifting down to my perfectly rounded, swelling mid-section. Pardon me reader, my eyes are up here.

But the fat may actually be our friend (you will never have a closer friend). Roger Unger of the University of Texas Southwestern at Dallas (thank Emeril for Texas and their defense of the fat)contends that getting fat is not what causes metabolic syndrome (a nice way of saying the bad stuff fat people deal with: high cholesterol, fatty liver, fatty-fat-fat nickname, a greater risk for diabetes, a lower-risk of romance, heart disease, falsely identified as Santa, and stroke). These symptoms may actually be caused by the lipids in the wonderful amounts of delicious food that we eat. To handle the lipids the body increases the adipose/fat cells to keep the toxic lipids out of our internal organs (also our pipe organs, and our Oregon states).

So next time you look at your fat, bulgy body in the mirror, look at the fat a little more kindly. It may be saving your life. And who knows, if you make it mad enough, it might just release all its lipids at once, and all the Rachel Rays (which is either a kind of gun or fish) in all the world won't be able to save you then.