Belly interesting: Some theories are hard to digest

There is a fascination along with the frustration when you come up against someone who believes so entirely in what they have to say.

Someone who, no matter what other arguments are offered, knows that they are right, end of story. Try the polite route of giving your dissenting opinion calmly and clearly, or attempt to beat them into submission with a bit of choice verbal abuse, and, either way, you are the one who will come off feeling like you have beaten your head against a brick wall.

The interesting part comes if you can step back, keep your emotions in check and just look at them for who they are, people who are so righteous that they have unwittingly crossed over into blind self-righteousness.

American comic Dana Carvey lampooned that kind of character to a tee with his "Church Lady", which was a hit on Saturday Night Live in the late 1980s. Armed with an arsenal of unyielding moral and religious principles, the Church Lady set about on her crusade to put the world right.

Right now, we have our own determined social crusader, Irene, who is becoming a regular fixture on TVRI, telling us all in every nook and cranny of this land how things should and should not be done. And Irene, who must be in her 50s and is decidedly motherly, speaks softly but carries a big moral stick.

A couple of weeks ago, she took on the twin evils of fashion and food.

The former was taken to task because she believes a lot of what is showing up in boutiques and hanging in closets at the moment is really not suitable for the "essence" of the Indonesian woman (I do wish that she had instead said that all 1990s' Versace prints must be destroyed and that there should be an age limit on who could wear low-hanging hipster jeans).

But it was her spiel about western food on her moral menu that really got me thinking. I assumed that she was going to issue a warning to her compatriots that all that high-fat, high- cholesterol western junk food was going to be the death of them, offering a future of heart disease, diabetes and obesity.

Instead, Irene said that all the young Indonesians, and what she referred to as "ladies who lunch", who eat western food like pizza, hamburgers and pasta, are lying to themselves if they say they like the food and that it makes them sated.

The reason?

Indonesians have a perut nasi (rice belly) and, according to Irene, only a bowl of the white stuff is really able to make them feel content.

Even with my rather considerable perut kentang (potato belly) and the beer bellies taking up space in bars around the world, this theory of a genetically ordained food preference was news to me.

Not withstanding the fact that many Indonesians in places like Madura, with their corn bellies, and Irian Java (cassava), are exceptions to Irene's rule, there is the potential for some serious research on this subject.

A budding young behavioral scientist may be inspired to take young Indonesian infants and put them to the test, seeing which one they grab for when given the choice between some bubur (rice porridge) and some "western" oatmeal (no contest -- I would also go for the porridge).

There are also the young Indonesians born or living abroad, and the unrequited yearning of their rice belly for some real culinary satisfaction. It's also a question to ask singer Anggun C. Sasmi, who has probably been wasting away surrounded by French food in her Paris home.

Although some of my Indonesian friends tell me that pizza never really fills them up (which is what some Americans say about Chinese food), Irene's theory is still a bit hard for me to stomach.

So, all these years, I've been eating curries and fried rice and stir-fries and, if Irene's theory hold, I never knew that it was not filling me up because my potato-cheese belly wanted what was closest to its heart?

I guess I just need to think about it some more. And, because I want to, I'll do that over a plate of rendang (Padang beef stew) and rice. Sorry, Irene.

-- Kurt Vickers