Make the healthy choice. Choose gravy.

Whenever I'm confronted with gravy, while my mouth salivates, my brain yells at me, "STOP! Gravy is bad for you!". However, is this really true? I found myself examining this belief after Friday night, where I and some friends partook in a banquet of beer and poutine.

Poutine: an anorexic's kryptonite

I think few would disagree that poutine, a French Canadien creation of fries, cheese curds, and gravy is bad for you. But if asked which of the 3 components is the worst, most would demonize gravy. This discrimination must stop! Examine exhibit A:

Exhibit A. Nutritional breakdown of poutine.

The gravy is clearly the winner in low calorie content. And this is with roughly equal portions of gravy, cheese curds, and french fries. Clearly these proportions are ludicrous. This isn't some sort of delicious poutine soup, afterall.

Now, a person might note the amount of sodium and shout, "AHA! The salt content will kill you! Gravy is indeed unhealthy!" To address this, I present exhibit B:

Exhibit B. Comparison of gravy and salad dressing. Calories (left) and nutritional information (right) for 100 grams (~6 tbsps) of the various foods. Salad dressings are from Kraft. For nutritional information, fat and carbohydrate content is shown on the left axis (grams) and salt content on the right axis (milligrams).

Exhibit B, derived largely from http://caloriecount.about.com/, clearly demonstrates that gravy is better for you than salad dressing. Even restaurant grade, delicious KFC gravy! It has comparable calories to the fat free variety of salad dressing, less sodium, and more delicious animal fat. Fat free salad dressing is actually inflated in calorie content by addition of sugars. Those sneaky bastards! So the next time you reach for the salad dressing, fatty, grab some piping hot gravy instead.

The media has been deceiving us. People recognized the value of gravy decades ago, but these ads were subsequently subverted to sell cigarettes.

An original gravy ad. Doctors of previous generations promoted it as a healthy drink alternative.

Gravy recently tried to make a comeback with a new "Got gravy?" campaign featuring many celebrities (below Lauren Conrad). But in this case, the powerful dairy industry continues to subvert these ads to their own nefarious purposes.

Recent gravy ad, ultimately crushed by dairy

Get the message out my friends. Say no to milk! Say maybe to cigarettes! And say yes to gravy!