Know It Some

Antifreeze kills by turning into oxalate inside your body, and spinach hands you oxalate ready-made. Ethylene glycol, the stuff in your car's radiator, tastes sweet. That's why vets see so many cats and dogs that have licked it off a garage floor. On its own it does surprisingly little. The damage starts when the liver gets to work and breaks it down, step by step, into glycolic acid and then oxalic acid. The oxalic acid pulls calcium out of the blood and turns it into calcium oxalate, a crystal. The crystals lodge in the brain, the heart and, worst of all, the tiny tubes of the kidney, which they block and tear apart. Oxalate crystals in the urine are how a doctor knows it was antifreeze. - Lethal dose: just over 1mL per kilo of body weight - For a 70kg adult: about 70mL - The classic antidote: alcohol, which ties up the liver enzyme so the oxalate never gets made Spinach, rhubarb, beet greens, almonds and black tea skip the liver step. Their oxalate arrives already made. In 2014 a 56-year-old man in Arkansas went to hospital with nausea, weakness and aches all over. His kidneys were clogged and inflamed with oxalate. There was no kidney disease in his family and nothing wrong with his gut. He drank about 16 cups of iced tea a day, which put his oxalate at 3 to 10 times what the average American takes in. His doctors wrote him up in the New England Journal of Medicine, and he went on dialysis, possibly for the rest of his life. Same crystal, same organ. A&E gives the antifreeze victim a stiff drink to stop his liver making oxalate. The salad bar serves it to everyone else pre-made and calls it a superfood.

The year is 1087. The king's forester rides up to the door. The deer in the wood are the king's now, and a man caught with venison in his pot is blinded for it. Your father ate deer. You will eat oats. The year is 1217. The king's men come every third year with a block, a chisel and a mallet. Your dog's forefoot goes on the block and three claws come off at one blow, so he can never again run down a stag. The fine for a dog with his feet intact is three shillings, a month of your labour. The law never says you may not eat meat. It only takes the dog's toes. The year is 1400. The priest comes every spring. For 40 days there is no meat, no butter, no milk, no eggs, and with the year's other fasts the Church takes about 150 days of flesh off your table. It is for your soul. The bishop keeps his capons. The year is 1649. You put your cow on the common, because the grass grows for nobody. The gentlemen ride up the hill with clubs and beat her until she is not expected to live. A poor man with a cow does not need a landlord. That was the offence. The year is 1666. Parliament declares Irish cattle a common nuisance and bars them from England. The herds that fed an island for 2,000 years go for salt beef, and the island goes onto the potato. In 1847 the ships still leave Cork with butter and bacon under armed guard, past the people dying on the quay. The year is 1915. The professors come with a calculation. The pig eats food fit for people, so the pig must go. Millions are slaughtered in a season. Then there is no pork, no lard, no manure for the fields, and around 750,000 civilians starve in the winter remembered by the turnip. The year is 1940. The man at the door has a ration book. Meat is bought by the shilling, and it stays rationed until 1954, nine years after the war ends. It is for the nation. The restaurants of Mayfair were never on the book. The year is 1961. A professor is on the cover of Time. The doctor tells you the fat on your meat is clogging your arteries, and the butter must go for the oil. The study has 6 countries in it. 22 were available. The year is 1977. A Senate committee issues the country with a diet, the first government on earth to do it. Less meat and fat, more grain. The obesity line, flat for 50 years, turns upward within the decade. The year is 1992. A pyramid arrives in every classroom, 6 to 11 servings of bread at the base and the meat squeezed up near the point. The woman who drew the first draft had put the grain at 2 to 4. The Secretary's office changed it. The year is 2015. The World Health Organization puts your bacon in the same cancer category as tobacco. The spinach carries 100 times the nitrate and no label. The year is 2019. A commission funded by a billionaire publishes a diet for the planet. Red meat: 14 grams a day. Half a rasher. The members fly in to announce it. The year is 2026. The man at the door carries no chisel, no ration book, no map. He carries a carbon target. The cattle on the hill are to be culled for the climate, the farm taxed on death until it sells, and you are asked to give up meat for the good of everyone, by people who have never gone a week without it. The deer were the king's. The cow was the lord's. The fast was God's. The fat was the heart's. The planet is the latest owner of your dinner. A thousand years, and the reason has changed every century. The plate never has. Nobody has ever banned meat for the common man. They just come to the door every generation with a very good reason, and take three claws at a time.