men
A for-men-only feature dealing w ith basic Christianity/by Lloyd Hamill
Of Men, Women & Things We Eat
fat from the meat on your plate; eat fish once a week if you like it. You might even get your wife to switch to an unsaturated cooking and salad oil like Saffola (Safflower Products Corp., San Francisco). In short you’ll use moderation. Men are vitally concerned about the amount of cholesterol in their blood because medical research seems to indicate it is a matter of life and death. But medical science has only probed the periphery of this complex problem. The research will go on and the answers will become definite. And when medical science has solved the problem of heart attacks there’s not a man among us that won’t be willing to take whatever action that is necessary to be protected. Wouldn’t you? And the same goes for other realms of our life— both physical and spiritual. W e want healthy bodies. And we want a sane, serene relationship with God. It’s of interest to note what Jesus Christ said about a man’s diet. Some men of that day were worried about he relationship of diet and spiritual matters. When these men questioned Christ He answered them in words that are almost shocking in their stark sim plicity. “ Are you, too, so lacking in grasp? Do you not perceive that whatever enters the person from the outside cannot defile him, because it does not enter his heart. . . . What comes out of the man defiles him; for from within, out of a man’s heart wicked reason ings proceed— unchastities, thefts, murders, adulteries, covetings, wickednesses, falsehood, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, thoughtlessness. A ll these wicked things come from the inside and defile the man.” This is the eternal view. Man’s diet rules change with the times. His spir itual rule is fixed; eternal. W e need not wait for more light on our spiritual problem. The answer is complete in Jesus Christ. He alone can wipe out past sins; fill a man with peace that is as unbending as granite boulders. W e’ll do just about anything to prolong our physical life a few years . . . or even a few months. Isn’t it just as reasonable to take the necessary steps to assure our eternal destiny?
^ he number of middle-aged men who drop dead from unexpected heart attacks is a rather unsettling sta tistic. For a good many years doctors chalked up these deaths to the stress and strain of modem living. Wom en, so the theory went, didn’t suffer nearly as many such attacks simply because they knew how to handle stress better. A woman doesn’t mind having a good cry once in a while. And a gOod cry is a relaxing thing. The housewife can sip a cup of coffee while doing the morning dishes and cut off the vacuum long enough to hear another episode in the lives of One Man’s Family. But somehow this theory wasn’t adequate. Re searchers were baffled as to why volatile Italian busi nessmen had so few heart attacks compared with Americans. No one apparently has the answer. But one promis ing clue hinges on what we eat. An alarming per centage of men who have heart attacks also have a high amount of cholesterol in their blood. Cholesterol is found in eggs and fats, both animal and vegetable. Women under 50 rarely are bothered with an excess of cholesterol. But a man by the time he reaches 21 can be well on his way to stocking his arteries with enough of this fatty substance to cause a fatal heart attack. Further research revealed that not all fat increased the amount of cholesterol in the blood of men. Those businessmen in Italy were having no trouble appar ently because much of the fat in their diet comes from olive oil. And olive oil is classified (along with fish oils and certain untreated vegetable oils) as an un saturated oil which acts as a check on our cholesterol balance. Because Americans have a dedicated passion for efficiency, most of our naturally anti-cholesterol fats have been saturated so they won’t spoil without being kept in the refrigerator. It’s a fine idea for enterprising merchants. But it’s apparently sent a good many bread-winners to an early grave. What’s the answer to a man’s diet problems? I don’t know. But I suppose it wouldn’t be an al together worthless idea to cut down on the eggs you eat; substitute non-fat milk for whole milk; trim all
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The King's Business/April 1958
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