Mom went to the doctor a few days ago and found out that she, like the rest of America, has high cholesterol. I'm not sure if she actually has high cholesterol, or if she has average cholesterol that only looks high thanks to new federal guidelines (that I can't find a link to) recommending that cholesterol levels previously thought healthy aren't so. Either way, Mom's freaking.

Making matters worse, over the past few weeks, my jeans have been telling me that I'm getting a bit tubby. I've gained twenty or so pounds in the last year; my doctor told me, "It's all muscle," but I couldn't tell whether he was joking or not.

Now, there's an easy solution to all these health concerns and its name is Lipitor. But for Mom, getting loaded on high-cholesterol medicine isn't gonna happen. Instead, she insists on making, ugh, dietary changes. In other words, if it's not low-fat, low-sodium, low-carb — if it's not healthy, it's not coming in our house and it's not going in her mouth.

Only one problem: this is America, where nothing is healthy. First, Mom cut back on red meat — she now feels guilty, for example, buying me roast beef. And pasta's out 'cause it's too high in carbohydrates. Ditto with pretty much all bread products, or actually, all grains (except rice for some reason). Basically, nothing in our house is any longer edible, so I asked Mom, "What do we eat?"

Mom: Vegetables.

Eeewww. Plant matter. Besides, you can't eat vegetables either; they're full of pesticides. And fish, which contains the "good" cholesterol, also contains high levels of mercury. Chicken has salmonella, you get trichinosis from pork, and veal is just plain evil. In short, there's only one ultra-innocuous thing left in the world that you can eat without worrying that it'll kill you: tofu.