Once again I feel vindicated in my eating habits.

Sure, some people consider my home alone diet of chips, Cheez-Its, bacon, pots of coffee and a few distilled beverages ghastly. But I did recently cut Skittles out of the mix, so I’m on something of a health kick.

Besides, science once again defending my taste for anything over salted, over caffeinated, high in fat or loaded with empty calories.

In case you didn’t hear the news, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention not long ago released findings that bread and rolls were the number one source of sodium clogging American arteries, accounting for seven percent of the salt consumed on any given day. Pizza, fast food burgers and processed chicken also beat out potato chips.

No wonder average lifespans in Jesus’ day were so short. He should have said “give us this day our can of Pringles.”

Over the past few decades, old dietary certainties have been debunked and conflicting advice floated to the public. Coffee--something I’ve lived on since I could toddle around the house--was supposed to stunt growth if sipped at too young an age. Then it was the source of hypertension, if I remember correctly, and heart ailments. Finally, it turns out, there are antioxidants and other benefits lurking in the morning cup. Red meat was presumably such a killer that Oprah put her stamp of disapproval on it. Of course, that was before high protein diets became the rage. Eight glasses of water a day was once considered a minimum for healthy living. Scholars later debated the relevance of this, pointing out that evolutionary humans would not have had access to that much clear running liquid--and that, throughout history, contaminated water was the norm.

Settlers at Jamestown in Virginia Colony dumped waste in the river, then scooped up drinking water downstream.

For that reason, people once preferred fermented or distilled beverages. In our lifetimes, however, red wine first dulled brain cells then proved “heart healthy” in moderation. Eventually some admitted that small doses of almost any form of alcohol were just fine.

And now news that chips are less damaging, sodium-wise, than bread. Like I said, I feel vindicated.

Following my last check up (back about a decade ago--I’m notoriously afraid of anything medical), after the doctor reported normal cholesterol and other readings, I said “well, doc, that’s the result of eating high fat foods, staying up late and drinking every day.” I then explained to her my Four Food Groups theory, involving coffee, chips, candy and Scotch. “Have something from each group every day and you’re a healthy person,” I concluded. I even suggested a new hit diet book was probably in the offing.

For some reason she disagreed. Genetics, she insisted, determined how one’s body reacts to a diet, no matter how misguided.

So much for my health guru career.

In this country we seem to have an issue with what we--and others--choose to eat. Some push a vegan or raw foods lifestyle, others tout locally grown. A few follow the “super size me” guidelines. One group blames fast or processed foods for our general level of obesity, another insists on curbing access to vending machine treats or taxing cans of soda. There are those who consider meat immoral and those who scorn any form of alcohol.

That we add a moral dimension to dining and drinking habits is fascinating. There’s an impulse in this culture to legislate, control or at least influence the behavior of others. The temperance movement emerged with the Industrial Revolution, in part as a way to nudge the new working classes toward more socially acceptable conduct. You see, after a hard day of work, they liked to cut loose--an affront to the mannered, Victorian middle. Guys like Kellogg and Graham, now known for cereal and crackers, first earned fame as health and lifestyle gurus. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, natural foods advocates like  Euell Gibbons became household names. Remember his Grape Nuts commercials?

We just can’t ‘fess up to reality.

Moderation and exercise. It’s often as simple as that. Of course, I’ve never been one to live the simple life.

Now bring on the Pringles.