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I love Chef Emeril. Not only is he kinda cute, but oh, can he cook!

I will watch him any time. With his high-spirited theatrics, love of food and cooking, and a large dose of natural 'ham,' Emeril makes my mouth water. He elicits in me a yearning for him to come to my house and wield those culinary skills just for me.

During the Holiday Season, I turned on Food TV to see if Emeril was on and lo and behold, he was making Christmas cakes.

Emeril has a passionate and devoted following. And no wonder, many of his dishes incorporate ingredients that most "good, diet-abiding citizens" do not use.

For those of you not familiar with Emeril and his show, he has a way of getting the audience worked up over some of his favorite things, like: Pork fat, Garlic, Cayenne, and Grand Marnier. As he cooks and puts things together, explaining as he goes, the audience ooohs and aaahs with lust and pleasure. Then, with a flourish and a Bam!, he adds garlic or cayenne -- or his own special blend, "Essence" -- and the crowd goes wild.

At the end of this show, Emeril placed a piece of gingerbread cake on a plate holding a pool of hot custard sauce, topped it with homemade whipped cream, added another piece of gingerbread cake, and topped it all with another huge dollop of whipped cream. He proceeded to face-dive into the whipped cream with a gusto, enthusiasm, and expression of blissful delight that flipped a deja vu switch and reminded me of a lover's face during other, oral adventures. The audience was going crazy, and Emeril was totally into it, sliding his face from side to side and licking his lips. The frenzy of the crowd makes me wonder if some of these couples go straight home to do a little cookin' of their own, if ya know what I mean.

Historically, food has always been fuel -- to be enjoyed or not, but nevertheless a necessity. It seems that back in the old days, food wasn't deemed to be quite so sinful. Perhaps prohibitively expensive, depending on the item, but not sinful. It was sinful to waste, not sinful to want.

Today, however, foods -- particularly rich, fattening foods -- are described as Sinfully Delicious, Devilishly Good, Orgasmic, So Good it Should be Illegal, and similar terms. People -- women, mostly -- eating these foods are thought to be bad or cheating, and the only way to redeem oneself is to pay the penance of working out extra long and hard.

In a day and age where control is played out as self-discipline and self-denial in the arena of eating, those of us with extra fat deposits supposedly are displaying evidence that we have been -- and are, by nature -- bad. I suppose that in the minds of those individuals who play the food-control game, we are naughty, naughty people who have been enjoying ourselves way too much by indulging in sinful behavior rather than practicing righteous, rigid eating habits. And I think that in some ironic way they might be jealous. Certainly the last thing these people want is to be fat… but it seems plain to me that what the gastronomically repressed truly want is to be able to eat the things they really love -- to enjoy their food -- and lots of it. To be wanton.

I would bet anything that if, given a choice to either: 1) be able to have an affair without ever being found out, or 2) be able to eat what ever one desires without gaining weight, most people probably would choose to eat, eat, eat! Especially women, the ones who are particularly encouraged to be gastronomically repressed in our society.

Okay, another day, another Emeril show. This one is all about his favorite thing: pork and pork fat. He's making his own bacon and stuffing pork loins, a dish called Pork Roulades. The crowd is diverse, fat, thin, young, and old. Just like anywhere in the world. But one thing remains constant, mouths water, eyes gaze lustfully at the delicious-looking food, and when Emeril says, Bam! the crowd ooohs and ahhhs excitedly -- while the rest of America obsesses over each calorie consumed. Business as usual.

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