Let’s go large today

In the Middle Ages, sugar was a treasured luxury costing 9 times as much as milk. Ironically, now that sugar is plentiful, sugar-free products are more popular than ever before. Every year, more than $40 billion are spent on imitation fats and sugar substitutes and a further $80 billion are spent on diet programs.

The servants of Queen Isabeau (the wife of King Charles VI who ruled France from 1380 to 1422) may have appreciated diet products. Because the queen decreed that the waistline of her ladies-in-waiting should not exceed 13 inches (33 cm), causing a few of them to starve to death.

A less-than-size-zero diet must have been especially difficult on the poor girls considering that the world’s most expensive – and by many considered the best – jelly (jam) hails from that era and that area. Confiture de groseilles is a white current – or alternatively red current – jelly still based on the 14th century recipe. Made in the tiny French town of Bar-Le-Duc, each berry is washed and has its seeds extracted with a finely tapered goose quill. The flap of the skin is then replaced. This is repeated 200 times to make just one 3-ounce (85 gram) jar. Only 30,000 small jars are produced each year and costs about $100 each.

But consider honey: to make 2 lb (0,9 kg) of honey bees have to visit 4 million flowers, traveling a distance equal to 4 times around the earth.

Let’s go LARGE today!

With such wonderfully sweet and tasty products – made with such huge effort – available there is no reason for Size Zero (size 4 in the UK) diets. Studies show that men do not even like those pathetically skinny numbers of 30-22-32 inches (76-56-81 cm).

So, bring out the sugar, bring out the honey and – within reason – let’s go large today!

Quip:
The closer to the bone the sweeter the meat;
but when you get there, there’s too little to eat!
Be healthy, be happy.