It is a shame that no one – or very few people – remembers the figure of who was one of the most prominent scientists and healthcare professionals in the seventies, eighties and nineties. This is not the place to gloss the career or milestones of D. Great Francisco Covian; for that we already have the Wikipediathe website of the foundation that bears his name and so many other pages focused on the world of nutrition that, at some point, have decided to pay tribute to his person and legacy.
In addition to his scientific publications, his professorship of medicine at the University of Zaragoza and many other things, Mr. Francisco stood out for being the author of various works of general dissemination that were tremendously popular in those decades. Rare was the house in which, in those years, there were not some of his books. The best known, Food and nutrition or the best seller Nutrition and health. The latter was in my parents’ house in its 1988 edition (today it is in mine, of course).
Classic phrases from Grande Covián that have transcended
There are several recommendations and lapidary reflections that D. Francisco bequeathed us. But before listing them, two warnings should be made. The first refers to authorship, that is, the phrases that follow may be originally his or they may be phrases or ideas that he was responsible for disseminating repeatedly without being certain that he was their author. And second, a disclaimer: while some of these phrases are still totally valid, others have not aged well. That is to say, some made perfect sense at the time they were spoken, in that precise social, cultural and temporal context, but not today. Let’s see them:
- The only thing that doesn’t make you fat is what stays on the plate.
- You have to eat everything, but in dessert plate.
- The key to not gaining weight (or to lose weight) is less plate and more shoe.
- There are no good or bad foods (…you have to judge them in the diet as a whole).
- It is easier to change religion than eating habits.
- The Iberian pig is an olive tree with legs.
- Man first wanted to eat to survive, then he wanted to eat well and incorporated gastronomy into his cultural world. Now, in addition, he wants eat health (institutional quote on the Foundation’s website).
- Nothing more natural, ecological and biological than cholera bacteria, and nothing more artificial, synthetic and chemical than chlorine. But thanks to chlorinated water we do not die from cholera.
It is not a phrase as such, but Mr. Francisco always conveyed a special interest in going to the original sources of information. We can see him defend this principle in that interview on the legendary program Thoroughly (TVE1976; minute 9:15, although I recommend watching it in full).
I imagine that, if not all of them, many of these phrases will sound familiar to you, others will grate on you and, it is possible, that you will not fully understand some of them, at least out of their context. In any case, it seems that if Mr. Francisco had had Instagram at that time, I don’t know if he would have been an influencer, but he certainly would have had a good number of followers. I among them.
In future articles we will break down and dissect the meaning of the most relevant ones. In this way we will contrast how much truth they have today and which ones are more dangerous than beneficial at the time when the ultra-processed industry He has appropriated them, twisted them and turned them into a sales pitch.
