A recent trip to a movie theater had me nostalgic for a time when irony was funny, when smart… A recent trip to a movie theater had me nostalgic for a time when irony was funny, when smart was sexy and when Dennis Miller made sense. That’s right — the ’90s, that flannel decade of economic prosperity and wars we could blame on NATO.

As I sat in the theater listening to some sponsor chick make a pitch for a ubiquitous bread-making chain’s new “carb-conscious” menu, I did what I normally do: make obnoxious comments about how carb consciousness isn’t a religious decision and, therefore, should just be called “dieting.”

And the person to whom I said it called me harsh. It was sarcastic, yeah, and the sponsor chick was just doing her job, but I had a larger point.

Look what our dual obsession with eating and thinness is doing to us. “Carb-conscious” sounds like some New Age, ’70s, Manson (Charles, not Marilyn) cult-thing. “C’mon, get carb conscious. Get on the bandwagon. Next, we’ll gaze into crystals and then realign our auras and our steering columns.”

It’s a diet, people. It works because all diets that limit caloric intake work. If the diet works, great, but don’t trumpet eating less to lose weight as a bold, new discovery. This is not rocket science. In fact, if it were, I’d rather hear about it, because the people who talk about rocket science make up much better terms than “carb-conscious” and “Atkins-friendly.” I saw some chocolate product called Endulge, and it burned me in my very soul, provided I still have one. This hurt my sense of decency on two accounts — being an anal English major and ardent chocoholic — since they made up a stupid word to describe an adulterated chocolate product.

Fat Americans are getting fatter. (There’s some debate as to whether the overall national average is changing.) Something obviously needs to be done, but demonizing a food group is not the way to a balanced diet.

If these are truly desperate times, then we should overhaul, not just our national Fritos addiction, but also our attitudes. We need to reexamine how we think about food and why we are increasingly sedentary. These are issues that delve into postindustrial society, prosperity, depression and the perception that crime is worse now than it was 30 years ago (it’s better, in fact, according to a June 18 Department of Justice press release) so we’re more hesitant to let kids play outside because of some danger that the 5 o’clock news told us about. Instead, we put them in front of video games that simulate the sports they’re supposed to be playing.

But video games aren’t the sole cause of our national girth, and neither are carbs.

Rather than being thoughtful, Americans, as usual, want to scapegoat something, and this time, it’s carbohydrates. Sure, eating a bunch of refined products is bad for you, but that’s something any dietician will tell you. Rather than turning our national eye inward, we want to blame grains, the domestication of which marked the start of modern civilization.

According to a June 28 Reuters report, a recent study showed that a high-protein diet lowers female fertility, not to mention that high-fat, high-protein diets can result in high blood pressure and cholesterol, the result of scarfing down lots of fatty animal products.

Moreover, we need to revel in our food, not fear it. I remember reading an interview in W in which a French woman mentioned that she and her friends, all of whom are quite fit, actually discussed what they were going to eat, looking forward to it, rather than fearing it. The same article, I think, mentioned that the word most American women associated with chocolate cake was “guilt,” whereas the word most French women associated it with was “celebration.”

So, VH1 is introducing “I Love The ’90s,” based on the popularity of “I Love The ’80s.” And I welcome it. I yearn for a time when a proper diet was cold Pop Tarts and Marlboros, because people were too busy being all ironic and stuff to worry if their salad dressing had sugar in it.

One of my good friends recently told me she was going on a high-carbohydrate diet just to retaliate against all this hoopla. Later, she admitted that this was her normal Italian diet of crunchy breads, pasta and vegetables. But her point is a good one. She didn’t need any special menu. She didn’t need a marketing team cramming its new product down her throat so that its company could make some extra dough, or, with the “carb consciousness” in full effect, cabbage.

As for me, I’m sticking to Pop Tarts.

Sydney Bergman likes her cults tasty. E-mail her at [email protected].