Last month i decided to stop taking my statin for a couple of months to see if this would help with muscle function, and it sure does feel like the experiment is working. Not that it’s without danger. After all, my next regular appointment with my internist is coming up in about a month, and my fear is that she’ll look up from my lab report, give me That Look, and ask, “How did you do this to yourself?” So as a countermeasure, i’ve been trying to cut back my fat intake.
For example, a couple of years ago at Whole Foods i found a proffered taste of Smári yogurt so utterly delicious that i reached for a tub of it in the dairy case only to recoil in horror on examining the label and discovering that it was not real yogurt at all but rather a fat-free isotope. Still, my taste buds don’t lie, so it became my “yogurt” of choice.
Then i discovered Fage yogurt at Rainbow and became an instant convert, finding it a bit better than Smári because it’s full fat. Another plus is that the owners have a sense of humor since FAGE is an acronym for Filippou Adelphoi Galaktokomikes Epicheiriseis”, i.e., “Filippou Brothers Dairy Company”. It is also the word φάγε (pronounced fa-yeh), the singular imperative verb meaning ‘eat!’
I was in Rainbow a couple of days ago and noticed that Fage offered a low fat version, so i bought it. Alas, not as thick and creamily delicious.
So now that i’m cutting back on fat, i’ll go back to Smári since i can buy it at Rainbow rather than a national conglomerate owned by a foam-spewing right wing Texan.
The folks at Smári are good marketers. On their Facebook page they say, “We are the brave yogurt of Iceland. It’s Thykk. It’s Organic. It’s Icelandic.” I do like my yogurt brave, but Icelandic my ass. The company is in Petaluma and the yogurt is actually made in Wisconsin.
Their website explains that “thykk” means “thick” in Icelandic, but they don’t explain that it’s properly spelled “þykk”.
Oh, and perhaps another reason to switch back to Smári is that i just discovered that in 2012, Fage demonstrated its patriotism by moving its headquarters from Greece to Luxembourg to obtain “more favorable tax conditions.” Yeah, we taught ’em how, but still.
Meanwhile, in a total change of subject, here’s a handsome 26-story mixed-use red granite flatiron tower at 388 Market Street that i’ve quite enjoyed since it went up in 1987.
