FACING UGLY FUTURE OF LOW-FAT NUTRITION.

Byline: Arthur R. Vinsel Personal Perspective

Picture a guy with a 32-inch waist, swaddled in sweat clothes, wet with honest aerobics-induced perspiration, jogging down a pristine Southland beach, surf wind tousling his thick hair, his mind focused on health and injury.

That was me, 30 years ago, but things can change radically over time.

Why, I turned on the radio the other day and that onetime fox, Nancy Sinatra, was singing ``These Boots Were Made for Dodderin'.'' I consider my paunch, my hips once like oak limbs puddling in my chair, and suddenly I feel like Rip Van Winkle waking up in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor.

My moustache is white. My hair is thinning. If I do somewhat resemble a movie star, think Brando, Welles or Laughton.

Be that as it may, unsolicited computer-generated notices (Junk Food Mail), recently informed me of a date with Rene Haas, a nutritionist at Long Beach Veterans Administration Medical Center. And all I had to wear was 20 extra pounds.

No, it was not my idea. The Department of Veterans Affairs has become proactive about health issues.

The new Nutrition Clinic (Low-Fat Central) is upstairs in the VAMC Building One, after years of being downstairs next-door to Outpatient Psychiatry - a good place for it.

I'd begun to wonder, just when did the VA switch from being Veterans Affairs to Vegetarian Administration?

If it hasn't yet, don't blame Renee Haas.

``I've been a vegetarian for 23 years now, except for a little dairy now and then.''

Oh. She had a half-cup of cottage cheese in 1981.

I made plans to beat it across the street for a 16-ounce Dairy Queen cherry cheesecake blizzard just as soon as this carrot-stick and celery- inspired madness ended. A few meditative moments with my comforting tobacco pipe could have helped, but the intuitive Haas next turns the discourse over to her partner nutritionist, Antonia Garrett. Tobacco, she warned, is as bad as a T-bone steak, salt, stress, certain illnesses, and slurping and swilling demon rum.

Well, la-dee-dah. I don't drink. And I'm certainly immune to sports injuries.

Nicotine, Garrett warned, is like a chemical Roto-Rooter in stripping the lining from the blood vessels, to be replaced by cholesterol plaque. Gobs of that awful stuff will anchor and pretty soon you've got a Roquefort cheese jam in your aorta the size of the iceberg that sank the Titanic.

Keep in mind, however, there's a good cholesterol that can beat Holyfield out of bad cholesterol. But even so, foods with good cholesterol may be just plain fattening and there's no getting around it.

So many of us eat so badly, at the VA they must run us through in bunches, like cattle, albeit the well-marbled kind - pampered and tender. We were five forlorn male patients and a lone blond lady with a European accent, keeping her husband's appointment, his sixth summons. I can well imagine him - a Wiener schnitzel, potato pancakes and dark beer kind of guy.

``I vill now know how to cook for him,'' the lady says huskily, in tones reminiscent of a monocled Prussian colonel toying with a swagger stick. Poor devil.

My life flashed before my very eyes as Hass brandished an ugly, phlegm- yellow glob the dimension of a 155 mm artillery shell at us. She was a smiling size 3, with the dogmatic demeanor of a civics teacher combined with the cheery devotion of a Jehovah's Witness on a Skid Row corner.

``This, is 5 pounds of body fat,'' declared Haas, a VA stafferwith nearly a quarter of a century of on-the-job experience under hertrim-fitting belt. Annually, she and Bad News Hour co-anchor Garrett lecture to about 500 persons, fatsos as well as the skinny vets who nonetheless have chunky blood.

``Actually, it's just latex rubber.''

Geeze. What a relief.

My life frittered away (no pun intended) on epicurean adventures spooled before my eyes like a caloric kaleidoscope of consumption: bacon burgers oozing cheddar cheese and mayo, whole caramel macadamia nut tarts, smoked pork rib marinated in orange and chile powder, key lime cheesecake and plump, charbroiled sea scallops.

We are asked to consider what happened to the Haas' late terrier-mix dog, Franz, when they moved to a home with an avocado tree, with oily, toasted pecans cascading down the sides. Hey, at least it doesn't have bovine growth hormones.

Franz gobbled the rich, oozy-ripe fallen fruit all year, packing on the pounds until he looked like an avocado himself, resting on four toothpicks. Once they moved away, he slenderized down and lived to age 16, the equivalent of 112 in human years.

I know one thing for certain now, after the VA cholesterol class:

Franz was surely dreaming of guacamole when he passed on.