Fast-and lose.

LYON IS the city where the cooking of France's north meets that of the south. The north is home to haute cuisine, once thought by those who know to be the best in the world, the cooking of butter and cream--chickens roasted with butter; turbot, brill, and sole in buttery and creamy sauces; and, above all, high-fat cheeses such as Brie.

The healthy-diet brigade thinks it knows better. Follow its dogmas and you trample on this great tradition. Worse, you don't get to eat it.

The healthists appear to think the cuisine of the south is much "healthier," and that it consists of raw vegetables with a drizzle of olive oil. Do they not know the wonderfully fatty confits and cassoulets, the brandade of salt cod, oil, and milk, the rich beef and mutton daubes, the Arab-influenced sweetmeats, the pastries made with pork fat? The truth is simple. Follow the healthists and it is "No" to the whole of the French tradition, "No" to the best of China, "No" to much of Italy, and "No" to northern India, the four best cuisines in the world.

What can make intelligent people deny themselves all these wonderful things and eat cardboard and water instead? It is that they believe the healthists have nutritional science on their side and that it is established fact that saturated fats fur up the arteries, causing heart disease.

There is, however, no precedent in the whole of human evolutionary history for imagining food to be lethal in this way; indeed, man's enormous success as a species has depended absolutely on the ability to adapt to an infinite variety of patterns of food consumption. At a time when almost all those privileged to be born into Western societies live out their natural life span to die from diseases strongly determined by aging, it would seem highly improbable that a major cause of premature death should be some subtle imbalance of the different types of fat in the diet.

So, on simple common-sensical grounds the alleged link between "fat" and strokes, heart disease, and cancer is unlikely to be true. But the trouble with common sense, as Voltaire pointed out, is that it is not very common. And indeed over the last twenty years the harmfulness of animal fats has been promulgated by numerous expert committees, doctors, nutritionists, and health educationalists.

They naturally find it very difficult to admit they might be wrong, so we have reached the curious position that as uncertainty mounts the experts can only respond by reasserting their conviction. But shafts of doubt have now begun to penetrate the public consciousness.

There are several candidate moments for when the tide--at least in scientific terms--began to turn. There was the spectacular failure of the MRFIT Trial, the largest and most expensive medical experiment ever conceived, concluding in 1983. For almost a decade 12,000 middle-aged men had been vigorously encouraged to change their "lifestyle" and reduce the amount of fat in their diet; this turned out to have no effect on their subsequent risk of heart disease.

There was the revelation that cholesterol-lowering drugs, whatever putative benefit they might have in preventing heart disease, do no good overall because they increase the risk of other diseases.

But certainly the most graphic illustration of the failure of the attempt to prove a link between fat and heart disease was the curious case of the 88-year-old man who ate two dozen eggs a day. He was, according to the report in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1991, "an articulate, well-educated elderly widower living in a retirement home who had been eating 20 to 30 eggs a day for at least 15 years." The nurse attached to his home testified that he took daily delivery of two dozen eggs, which he ate soft-boiled regularly throughout the day, keeping a careful record, egg by egg, of the number he consumed. This was obviously an obsessive/compulsive disorder, for he said, "Eating these eggs ruins my life, but I can't help it."

This octogenarian's daily cholesterol intake was 40 times greater than currently recommended for a "healthy" diet, and yet his blood-cholesterol level, at 200, was absolutely plumb normal, and there was no clinical evidence of hardening of the arteries.

Investigating this phenomenon, Dr. Fred Kern of the University of Colorado School of Medicine found the two reasons why this enormous intake of cholesterol had no effect on blood cholesterol--80 per cent was excreted unchanged in the man's stool, and his liver had adapted by reducing its own synthesis of cholesterol.

This compulsively egg-eating senior citizen poses an insoluble conundrum for those who have insisted so vigorously that we "cut down" on our fat intake. Any physiological variable like blood pressure or blood cholesterol level is controlled by a series of different mechanisms to ensure a "steady state," as the human organism could not survive were such important functions to be readily influenced by simple alterations in the environment or changes in diet. The body has a built-in need for a certain amount of sodium, so those who consume more salt than is required excrete the excess in the urine, while those who have too little concentrate it in their kidneys.

The same is true for blood cholesterol. Reduce the amount of fat and cholesterol in a diet and more is manufactured in the liver; overconsume and the excess is excreted in the stool and the overproduction declines. This ability to adapt to changes in food consumption is, as has been noted, a prerequisite for man's survival as a species. Logically, then, only draconian changes in what we eat are likely to influence physiological variables like blood cholesterol, and, as our 88-yearold egg-beater illustrates, even severe stress of the mechanisms for coping with the intake of cholesterol may have no untoward physiological consequences.

The true significance of this is best appreciated by considering the changing pattern of heart disease in the United States over the last fifty years. From the 1940s, incrementally every year its incidence rose relentlessly among middle-aged males to become much the commonest cause of premature death. Then suddenly, in 1968, it began declining equally precipitously, and has declined ever since.

Now this recent decline in heart disease has been attributed to greater health conscientiousness and a shift to a "healthy diet," but clearly this cannot be the cause. To begin to explain such drastic shifts, there would have to have been revolutionary changes in the American diet which quite simply have not occurred. For the period 1950-1980, during which heart disease rose, peaked, and declined, the amount of fat in the diet hardly changed.

Confounded by these unpalatable facts, the proponents of the harmfulness of a "high fat" diet have responded by telling lies. They have deceived the public about the complex physiology of cholesterol metabolism, implying it is readily influenceable by small changes in diet like switching to skimmed milk or replacing butter with margarine. They have deceived the public into believing that the recent decline in heart disease is attributable to changes in diet, when the only changes that have occurred have been far too trivial to explain the trends in the disease.

Their propaganda has had three substantial adverse consequences. It has generated a widespread public neurosis in which the risks of food have become so exaggerated that otherwise sane people quake at the sight of a hamburger for fear of the harm it might do to their arteries. Further, it has promoted the widespread use of cholesterol-lowering drugs in otherwise healthy people, which cause a substantial burden of side-effects.

Finally the obsession with "lifestyle" has diverted researchers from seeking more plausible explanations. The true cause of heart disease remains as mysterious as ever, but the pattern of this dramatic rise and fall over fifty years is strongly suggestive of a unitary biological cause.

"When we summon the wisest of doctors to our aid," the celebrated hypochondriac Marcel Proust once observed, "the chances are they will be relying on scientific truths the errors of which will be recognized in a few years' time." This would certainly seem to be the case with the great cholesterol scare.

The time has come for all sensible people to turn their backs on this anxiety mongering, and where better to start than with a typical healthy Andalusian breakfast: a cup of whole milk and chocolate, followed by bread dripping with goose fat, and rounded off with a slug of brandy and a cigarette. What pleasure!

FEW MOMENTS in a day match the simple ritual of preparing a cigar for smoking. A careful examination of the humidor yields the right cigar for the occasion. The chosen cigar is taken in hand, and its closed end is clipped to expose the tightly rolled leaf. A match or lighter is struck and the cigar's foot, or open end, is rotated just above the flame's tip to light it evenly. The first inhalation is savored, the smoke rolled around the mouth and then deliberately exhaled. In our hectic, pell-mell era, the brief focus on something pleasurable is a welcome, short escape into a more sedate, relaxed world.

The last three decades of anti-cigarette furor have obscured the profound attractions of high-quality tobacco. The fanatics lump all tobacco together into some single hellhole where no intelligent person would ever venture. Not that lovers of tobacco, or those who make the products, have helped their own cause. The focus on mass-marketed, fast-burning, chemical-laden cigarettes meant to be consumed in quantities measured in packs per day has relegated fine, hand-rolled versions of the finest hand-selected leaves to the back shelves. It's as if the only wines available today came with names like Night Train, and the Chateau Lafite Rothschilds were sold as an afterthought.

Hand-rolled cigars represent one thing: the best. They are the product of skilled craftsmen at every step of the way making decisions based on years of experience. It starts in the fields, where harvesters are as skilled as gem appraisers, picking the leaves at the precisely right time. The dedication to quality continues in the curing barns and warehouses, where temperature and humidity gauges are really just aids to the touch and feel of the tobacco man, who relies on the experience of every harvest he has lived.

The operation at the rolling desks epitomizes the term "by hand." The rollers clutch the tobacco leaves together-often three or four different varieties go into a cigar's blend-- squeeze them into a form, lay them out on a binder, roll them, put the bunch in a press for a few minutes, then select an outer wrapper and roll the pressed bunch tightly with the wrapper, using a deeply ingrained sense of just the right amount of pressure to fashion a cigar with a perfect draw. In every factory, the skills are passed along at the benches, as older rollers teach younger ones the fine points of their craft.

We've all heard the phrase, "Things aren't made the way they used to be." It's applied to cars, appliances, clothes; just about all manufactured products. But with cigars, the truth is that they are made just the way they were one hundred years ago. If there have been improvements, it has been in the ability to keep cigars moist in regulated humidors, aging slowly at the proper temperature and humidity. When it comes to premium cigars, there is still only one accepted standard: handmade.

As such, a particular cigar may have the imperfections that occur when anything is touched by human hands. Some wrappers may have a blotch here or there. Some cigars will draw hard. Some will burn slightly unevenly. But that's part of their charm. You are accepting the fact that the uniformity that is possible, even expected, in machine-made products will not be there. As a result, you can't just light up a cigar and ignore it. To smoke a cigar you must pay attention to it.

In short, you must devote yourself to it. For some, the cigar is a stimulant, a way to focus the mind on a particular task or problem or thought. For others, it is a true escape, a time to forget the world's cares and ponder the smoke curling to the ceiling.

Whatever the motivation or the benefit, cigar smoking is nowadays a very public declaration of independence. Flying in the face of years of isolation and outright hostility, you announce that you are willing to flaunt your politically incorrect behavior... for the joy that a fine cigar brings.

Mr. Shanken is editor and publisher of Cigar Aficionado.

Digby Anderson's Special Cholesterol Dinner

Assiette de charcuterie--A selection of salamis, rillettes, pates, and terrines, all packing up to 50 per cent fat, and the only vegetable in sight is a few midget gherkins (only one per person, mind).

The Aveyron omelette--Squares of potato fried in lots of duck fat, with beaten eggs (add three extra yolks) poured over at the last minute and sprinkled with garlic and parsley.

Poulet d l'intellectuel--A large chicken (leave the skin on--it is a particularly rich source of fat) roasted golden in butter and stuffed with calf's brain. (Even among organ meat, brains stand out; kidneys, for example, have seven times more cholesterol than beef, but brains have nearly forty times more.)

Steamed chocolate pudding with cream--It must be good pudding made of suet--i.e., fat from the beef kidney--with heavy cream.

Stilton--The best high-fat cheeses are Gorgonzola and Roquefort, but Stilton has more fat than either.

Manzanilla, Burgundy, and Port. Punch cigars.