Where's The Fat?

[avevale_intelligencer]

A while back there was a Facebook graphic showing a beef steak which was exactly the same shape as the United States of America. I forget what the point was--presumably it wasn't a miracle on the order of the Blessed Virgin's face appearing in a cucumber--but I posted a flip, throwaway comment to the effect that "it's always better when the fat's evenly distributed."

Which is certainly true of steaks and other cuts of beef--it's called marbling, and a good cut has a lot of it--and also true in the economic sense to which I was alluding, but it occurred to me afterwards that it's true in many other ways as well.

One of Maggie's numerous dark legacies was an obsession with leanness. Whether this has anything to do with our vanishing supermodels I don't know, but I do know that businesses all seemed suddenly to aspire to be "lean and hungry." If you recall, when Caesar said this of Cassius he wasn't exactly delivering a compliment, and it didn't do Cassius much good either in the long run, but that seems to escape most businesses. "Lean", of course, in this context, means shedding as many staff and as much in the way of non-liquid assets as possible; you don't have stock hanging around in a warehouse tying up your capital if you can order it on next day delivery and push it out of the door on the same day it comes in. Which is fine till the next day delivery doesn't happen for some reason, or your one pusher-out-of-the-door calls in sick. Lean and hungry animals, like lean and hungry businesses, live on the ragged edge, and that's seldom good for anyone for very long.

With text, the appropriate word is "spare." A famous rule of style is "Omit needless words," which as I've said before ignores the fact that the vast majority of words in the world are needless in some sense. To be verbose, or long-winded, not to mention circumlocutory, sesquipedalian or repetitious, is a big no-no. I'm sure you can think of other examples of the general craze for "leanness."

I used to be lean. But I've had several decades now of eating things I enjoy, not doing things I don't enjoy where I had a choice (like exercise), and let's not forget the vital importance of things like bread, pasta and potatoes in the diet of the less wealthy person, and I am lean no longer. On the whole, I'm comfy with that. And I've come to the conclusion that it really is better in almost every sphere of life if the fat's evenly distributed, because the fat is where the flavour is. You look at a pork loin steak, and you see a solid oval of pink muscle with maybe a sixteenth of an inch of white around one edge, and you know that unless you get artful with marinades and sauces and such that meat is going to be as dry and tasteless as the polystyrene package it probably came in. Fat is necessary. Fat is good. I don't subscribe to the notion that eating fat necessarily makes you fat, though a diet of nothing else would almost certainly make you ill--for my money it's the carbohydrates, the bread and pasta and potatoes I mentioned earlier, that produce the bulk. There are experts on both sides of that one; you pays your money and you takes your choice.

So with businesses. Being lean and hungry may increase the profit margin, and if that were all a business was for that would be fine, but in any society like ours a business has many more purposes. It gives employment to people. It provides a service to customers. It keeps the area it's based in alive. It hopefully tries to do as little damage to the environment as possible, maybe by maintaining stock and so minimising the road transport it uses. And all these needs are served very much better if a business allows itself a little fat.

So with writing. One can write in basic English, using a vocabulary of two hundred words or less, and get one's meaning across. One can confine oneself strictly to the point and omit needless words to the point where one's short story reads like a slightly wordy telegram. But I think the reader, whether for business or pleasure, enjoys the odd digression or the occasional interesting turn of phrase, and I've never seen why even a business letter shouldn't be allowed to be fun to read. And when one's novel is the size of a house brick, and contains not one needless word, I think that's just boring. Outside legal documents, which have to be precise and concise or somebody gets into trouble, I can't think of a single kind of writing that doesn't benefit from a little fat.

So with music. A spare, minimal arrangement is nice sometimes, and doesn't get in the way of the words...but for myself, I've always been a fan of the Trevor Horn approach, bunging in strings and brass and odd Eastern woodwind and gamelan percussion and sound effects and whatever else I can find. Maybe I'm excessive, but there's a middle ground, and I think music often sounds better for the addition of a little fat.

SO with the world. At the moment our country-shaped steaks are all lean and getting leaner, the marbling and the flavour disappearing (and let's not forget that some countries are barely more than bones) while what fat there is is mostly concentrated in one little nubbin somewhere off in a corner, where the conscientious cook can snip it off completely. That's not good for anyone, and I don't care how often we're told that it is, that we all need to tighten our belts and slim ourselves down and fit into smaller and smaller clothes and prepare for more and more austerity. We don't. Not when a very few people are so morbidly obese (metaphorically speaking, of course) that they can't even see the rest of us over the monstrous swell of their incomes. What we need--what the world needs now--is more marbling. An even distribution of a little fat.

It would make life taste so much better for everybody.

Comments

Do you have a vegetarian alternative? (j/k!) :-D

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I like this analogy, it works well from more than one viewpoint ... not just in the taste sense, but also in the health sense.

The human body is *designed* have fat, it is an essential energy store, so that we don't have to spend 90% of our waking hours eating grass ... we carry some reserves with us, and when the glucogen in our muscles runs out, we break down some more fat to give us the energy to carry on.

It also provides a level of protection (from injury and from cold) and provides fuel for when we are ill.

In business, there has to be a certain amount of "contingency" ... what if the pushing-it-out-the-door guy is sick? What if the parts are stuck in customs for a day? What if the power supply fails? What happens if a new big contract comes in, can we handle it?

Like most things, too little can be as bad as too much. Too little salt, not enough carbs, too little sleep, too bland an arrangement (14 verses with exactly the same accompaniement had damn well better have some excellent lyrics!)

so yes, I agree with you.

[donnacat60.livejournal.com]

I do so agree with you. Well put, Zander.

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

That's a very good analogy.

[lastalda.livejournal.com]

Wow, what a great analogy. And agreed full-heartedly.