Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. But, today, March 30th is Vincent Van Gogh’s birthday. In honor of his birthday, I am excited to have Kaayla Daniel from the Naughty Nutritionist to share with you, her take on why Van Gogh should have eaten more bacon.
It’s Vincent Van Gogh’s birthday today, and I wish he’d eaten more bacon,
the ultimate “feel good” food. Van Gogh spent most of his short life lonely,
impoverished and certifiably mad, with self-mutilating behaviors that included
burning his fingers, cutting off part of his ear, killing his brain cells with absinthe,
and ending it all at age 37 with a gun.
Would bacon have made everything better? Hard to say, but it’s certainly
possible. Bacon could have increased his Vitamin D levels, improved his fatty
acid profile, helped his body detoxify turpentine, aided his attempts to quit
absinthe, stabilized his blood sugar, stopped the mood swings, reduced anxiety,
enhanced his coping skills and even helped him sleep. What’s more, bacon’s
salt and savory sweetness could have reduced any feelings of deprivation and
lack.
Van Gogh though preferred not to eat meat. In W. H. Auden’s 1961 book Van
Gogh: A Self-Portrait; Letters Revealing His Life as a Painter, we learn he would
eat only a “little morsel on Sundays, and then only after being urged by our
landlady for a long time. Four potatoes with a suspicion of gravy and a mouthful
of vegetable constituted his whole dinner.” No wonder he was mentally and
physically malnourished. Vegans, I suppose, will claim the fault lay in that “little
morsel” of meat and the “suspicion of gravy.”
Would Van Gogh have been pleased to see “Starry Night,” his most famous work,
swirling about the internet in a version done with strips of bacon? Probably not,
but the good news is if he’s rolling in his grave, he might get up and start painting
again. As for the rest of us, laughter is good medicine, an invitation not to take
ourselves too seriously, and a much needed reminder that bacon the “feel good”
food might be just the thing to support our inner pig.
For more from Dr. Kaayla Daniel, The Naughty Nutritionist™, visit her website
www.drkaayladaniel.com. Kaayla is Vice President of the Weston A. Price
Foundation, author of The Whole Soy Story, and a Bacon Babe who rarely starts her day
without at least two strips of the original “feel good” food.