Genetic!  Not Behavioral.
April 1, 2011 by Joseph De Matteo

 I stepped onto the scale this morning and the digital read out showed: 192. 

“WOW!!!,”  I screamed, “what have I been doing to cause this weight loss?”  My face beaming, smiling ear to ear, so to speak, I looked all around the bathroom from my perch on the comfortable scale.  The walls looked brighter, the clock look more marvelous-what an instrument, through the window I could see the wonderful neighborhood I live in and even some of my fantastic neighbors; life was great. 

I dared another look at those, my new favorite numbers…

The digital read out was changed.  It was now showing a marquee style message:
A-P-R-I-L F-O-O-L-S . . .  2-2-5-!  A-P-R-I-L F-O-O-L-S . . .  2-2-5-!  A-P-R-I-L F-O-O-L-S . . .  2-2-5-! 
A-P-R-I-L F-O-O-L-S . . .  2-2-5-!

 You know people, I’m sure, that like to play tricks, poke fun, tell jokes all at someone else’s expense, right?  Well, obviously, people like that have gotten jobs in technology.  

As much as I would like to be stuck at 192 pounds and trying to lose weight, it is not true, but neither is the 225 number accurate.  Reality is that I’m stuck at 196 and trying to lose weight.  A recent picture of me taken with a group of men at an event, show all who see it, just how much I need to lose weight.  I look fat!  But I come from a long line of overweight people.  Sure they were slim 2 and 3 generations back, but that wasn’t because they controlled their food intake, it was because they didn’t have the abundance of food we have today.  This proves that genetics has a big roll in my weight problem.

There’s a fun movie with Kevin Kline, Tracey Ullman, River Phoenix, William Hurt, and Keanu Reeves from 1990 entitled I Love You to Death.  Joey Boca (Kevin Kline) is cheating on Rosalie (Tracey Ullman) every chance he gets, and he gets a lot of chances.  Finally Rosalie finds out that her husband is regularly – daily – having sex with other women.  We see her commiserating with her mother, she is reluctant to leave him.  It’s quiet for a moment and she off handedly says to her mother, “You know, he can eat anything he wants, and he never gains weight.”  Her head snaps up and their eyes lock, and, at the same moment they say, “LET’S KILL HIM!”  We all know people like Joey Boca, who have the genetic gift that lets them eat anything and everything, at all times of the day and night, and never gain weight.  I do not condone killing anyone, however, let me tell you: these people do not deserve the sleek and slim bodies they sport around in!  And I should look like the urbane, worldly, and ruggedly handsome man that I truly am.  BUT I DON’T!

And here’s another foul trick played by nature: I used to eat tons of food and not gain a single pound!  Even when I reached twenty, I could eat a whole pizza, and often did; same with a pound of pasta and 10 or so meatballs (I’m a first generation American of the Eastern-Central Italy gene pool) and my weight stayed the same.   

When we (my boyhood friends and I) got our hands on some money, we’d head for the local deli and have them make each of us a hero sandwich – a real hero sandwich – which is made on a full-size loaf of Italian bread.  That is a loaf of bread that is 14 to 16 inches long and 5 or 6 inches across the center, tapering off to a 1 ½ to 2 inches elbow at the ends.   I can remember one time in particular; I think it was the spring of 1960.  The new deli owner introduced roasted pork in his cold cut case.  It was rubbed with salt and black pepper.  And garlic.  And rosemary.  And olive oil.  (My mouth is watering; I have to get a paper towel or something.  I’ll be right back.)  It was a wonderful treat.  Thinly sliced the fat was savory and delicious.  (Give me another minute.)

I just got back from C-Town our local supermarket with a Loin of Pork.  Unfortunately, they’ve taken off the layer of fat that should be there.  It’s all rubbed up and in the oven.  I’m roasting the whole loin, so their will definitely be some left over for sandwiches.  I’ll go right to Ossining bakery tomorrow for the bread.  This is wonderful.  I’ve very happy.

 (Mantra: I can eat anything I want and never gain weight.  I can eat anything I want and never gain weight. No, wait.  Ah, this is it: I can eat anything I want and get down to 150 pounds and then never gain weight.  I can eat anything I want and get down to 150 pounds and then never gain weight.)

 So, back to the sandwich: He’d make us these big sandwiches with the roast pork and iceberg lettuce, tomato and onion, all sliced thin on the slicing machine; with mayonnaise, salt and pepper: they were gifts from heaven, those sandwiches were.  That summer we’d plan sandwich eating events two or three days in advance.  Our families didn’t have the money to give us to buy a sandwich, so we’d had to go find odd jobs to get the money for the sandwich and a soda.   

Mamma would say, “You want a sandwich, sit down; I’ll make you a sandwich.”  She didn’t understand.  Yet. 

Four or five of us would go into the deli together, our mouths watering waiting for the sandwiches to be made.  Then we’d cross the street to the empty lot with the big rock in the center of it.  It’s a park now, but back then it was just an over grown triangular shaped empty lot. It’s directly across form Holy Rosary Church, right where Eastchester and Gun Hill roads cross each other.  There was a big mound of giant rock and dirt that we’d sit on.  We were out of sight behind the over grown grass and foliage.  What great times we’d have, eating and talking, it was like being a thousand miles away; no, ten-thousand miles away.  That mound could be in Africa or China, or in Europe and we could have been spies, waiting for the right moment to blow up a Nazi ammunition dump.  Sometimes we’d sit up there on a Saturday afternoon watching the girls going to confession at the Church. There were conflicting theories about girls going to confession and how that would affect possibilities on a movie date.  But not when we were eating.  When we were on a sandwich even it was just a hide away for a privet meal with lots of boy talk.

One time I bought one of the roast pork sandwiches and took it home to share with Mamma.  She loved food too.  We often ate something special, or made a normal dish special just by eating it together, just the two of us. 

Pierina was knocked out by that sandwich!  Indubitably (this was the word of that summer.  No matter what anyone said, someone else would say, “indubitably’). 

Mamma went so far as to get a pork roast from the butcher when Dad’s next paycheck came.  It was a great roast, but no one could slice it thin enough to duplicate the deli sandwich.  By the way, in those days, the 50s and early 60s, no one called it a deli, we call it the grocery store.  Supermarkets were just coming into being in the north Bronx, at that time.  Your mother would tell you to run up to the grocery store and get 2 pounds of spaghetti, number 8.  Oh, I digressed again.  Sorry.

Mamma told her brother, Zio Nicandro, about the sandwich.  He loved food too, and was definitely not one of those people who could eat anything he wanted without gaining weight.  This is more proof for the genetics argument.  Uncle Nick, lived in Providence, Rhode Island, where Mamma’s family settled when they came here from Italy.  The next time he came for a visit, we got two of The Sandwich and made a meal of it with my dad is my sister, Dee Dee.  My father, never fazed by any dish, gave it his greatest complement, “It isn’t bad.”   Uncle Nick, on the other hand, loved it. 

On his next visit a few months later, he brought us a slicing machine.  He also brought roast pork that he made. (Zio Nicandro also loved to cook and was very proud of his cooking skills.  In the every-day world of eating, my absolute favorite thing to eat was meatball.  And everyone knew it.  The only thing I’ve ever stolen in my life is meatballs. Mamma would give me one in a saucer every Sunday morning after Mass, with the admonition that I take no more.  She’d put the meatball in the center of the little dish and spoon on some of her wonderful tomato sauce.  Once she’d go off to doing something somewhere else in the house, I’d steal over to the stove and snatch a meatball and stuff it in my mouth and put another on the plate.  Then run back to the living room to watch TV. 

Zio Nicandro was always trying to get me to say that his meatballs were better than my mother’s.  I always sit next to him at the table and he’d say, “Pierina, the meatballs are very good.”  Then he’d look at me, bend his head over and say in a low voice, “They are good, but don’t you think mine are better?”  At his house when the meatballs where brought out and we’d all had one, he’d ask me privately, “Jo Jo, do you like the meatballs?”  “I love them Uncle Nick.”  Then he’d ask, “Tell me the truth, aren’t they better than your mother’s?”  I never answered that question.  But the fact is that whose ever meatball, Mamma’s or Zio’s, I was eating, at that moment, there was nothing better, and I wanted nothing else.) 

Now that we had the slicing machine, all the right ingredients, and Zio Nicandro’s roast pork, which he made in Rhode Island, we were going to duplicate and surpass ‘The Sandwich’ from the grocery store.

They made a great sandwich, everyone loved it, but truth be known, though Mamma and Zio applauded their sandwich, well…  That one from the grocery store reigned supreme.  But no one ever said so.

I’ve got many great food and eating stories.  There are lots of wonderful memories around eating and food in my brain.  Always with very special people; the people you eat with, their attitude and love of life, make a big difference.  There are many stories about traveling with a friend specifically to get a special meal.  Like Ralph Edwards and I going out to Philadelphia on some trumped up excuse, only to spend our time there at Gino’s eating Philly cheesesteak sandwiches.  Or our many late-night trips to Manhattan for a round of eating 3 or 4 different meals, one right after the other, the filling the car with food and beer for the ride home.

So, maybe it’s genetics and overeating.  What do you think?