ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 7, 1996 TAG: 9602070073
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Ben Beagle
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
I decided to put my body on the line for my fellow countrypersons.
Which is to say I'll gorge myself on potato chips made with Olestra - the stuff that makes things taste like they have fat in them but don't - and see if the critics are right about certain side effects.
I'll say right now that in my opinion this is one of the great nutritional/scientific breakthroughs of the century - which is a lot more than you can say for that bacon made out of turkey.
But there are naysayers. They say Olestra will cause stomach problems - the details of which we won't get into here - and steal nutrients from your body.
Well, I'll just dig in with a bag of those ruffled jobs and a quart or so of dip and see what happens.
What can I lose? Except for the flab around the middle that makes you go out and buy these nutty britches that have sliding panels in the waistband and will fall right off your body in the middle of Tanglewood Mall if you aren't careful.
Think about it. People who have stomach trouble are usually relatively slim. And their britches stay up good all the time.
Never having to worry about my britches falling off in the middle of Tanglewood Mall would be the best thing in the world for my digestion.
They say Olestra will steal vitamins from my body, but I don't remember having a lot of them in the first place. Besides, Procter & Gamble, developer of the modern miracle, has promised to put vitamins in Olestra.
So, I go around looking a little gray for a while. I've gone around for years looking kind of red and it may be time for a change. I've been red for a long time, pal. They put "ruddy complexion" on my first draft card when I was 18.
If you're a gray person, people take this as a sign that you are an intellectual, a deep thinker, a talented writer.
Certain women believe you look that way because you are handling some deep personal tragedy, which makes them want to put the blast on you.
Others think you are pale because you spend a lot of time indoors trying to understand life and thinking up ways to make life on Earth better for everybody.
If you're just red, they think you drink too much and then they notice the liver spots on your hands, and it's all over after that.
My. Time does go by, doesn't it? That bag of ruffled jobs is gone already and we're nearly out of dip.
LENGTH: Medium: 51 linesby CNB