No real gentleman weighs more than 300 pounds.
–William Howard Taft
It’s been all over the news the last few days: William Howard Taft, our 27th president and later supreme court justice, struggled with his weight just like you and me, the lowly peons, do.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
–Martin Luther King, Jr.
I had intended to write another post about information from the last Scientific American article. I also plan another recipes post. But my attention was drawn last night to this article, and the stupidity involved was so spectacular that I couldn’t let it pass without a comment.
It really makes me depressed, and what makes me depressed isn’t the behavior of the McDonald’s patrons. Instead it’s the spectacular ignorance of human nature displayed by the designers, analyzers and reporters in question. It’s so stupid that I sat here for a few seconds just now trying to decide if I even had the heart to discuss it.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.
–Albert Einstein
I picked up an issue of Scientific American while in the airport recently. I’ve gone to doing all my travel reading on electronic devices, for convenience. But, inconveniently, there are those long periods on flights when one cannot use electronic devices, even if they aren’t cell phone capable and have everything about them that transmits turned off. I’m very tempted at this point to go off on a tangent, but I’ll show some rare self-restraint and come back to the main point. Continue reading I’m an American, Scientifically
It is easy to confuse a fantasy for a reality.
― Duop Chak Wuol
For your reading pleasure, a deconstruction of an insane article on Health.com, by Tom Naughton
It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication, and a government bureaucracy to administer it.
–Thomas Sowell
A little insanity is good early in the morning. It keeps you young. It revives your zest for life. When I was staying with Brother 4 a few weeks ago, their 1-year-old provided that for me in the form of various games such as “Crazy Head.”
Now that I’m away from their place, I am forced to search for insanity in the news. Thankfully, it’s not hard to find. I was assaulted by an insane article a little bit ago in Time. The gist of the article is a common one:
Not really, and actually my cholesterol was 190 when I had the heart attack. 190, which isn’t that high.
–Mike Ditka
Guess who else’s cholesterol was well within the Mythical Safe Range when he had his first heart attack? Dwight Eisenhower, who was the ideal weight for his height and was very fit when his first heart attack hit at age 64. His cholesterol was 165.
So of course he was put on the now ubiquitous low-fat diet, which included lots of healthy whole grains like oatmeal and lots of margarine, almost no meat, and no fats but margarine and corn oil. What was the result of this amazingly healthy diet? Well, strangely he started gaining weight for the first time in his life. So much so that he kept cutting his food portions down till he was nearly starving: to no avail. Even more oddly, his cholesterol just kept going up and up. From 165 to 259. Just a couple days after Eisenhower got that highest reading, Ancel Keys got his face on the cover of Time for promoting the new “lipid hypothesis,” which blamed fat for everything and advocated, for the first time, a low-fat diet as the cure for all America’s heart disease problems.
Which, as we all know, has clearly been an incredible success, since Americans have no heart disease anymore.
Continue reading Cholesterol Mythology
Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another.
–George Bernard Shaw
This is another common reaction I get when people ask me what I’m doing that is so obviously making me healthier: That’s wonderful that you found something that works for you.
They then go on to explain why obviously it wouldn’t work for them, because they are completely different.
Now when someone says this to me and they are in robust good health themselves, I have nothing to say. But I don’t meet too many of those. What I normally meet are people who are not healthy at all. But they’re pretty sure that even though they don’t feel well, and even though they have a lot of health problems, that however they’re now eating is the best way to eat. Many seem to attribute certain things to old age, even though they aren’t actually all that old.
I know about this. I used to do it too.
Continue reading Everybody’s Different
Vegetables are interesting, but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.
–Fran Lebowitz
I spent some time this week with The Vegetarian. I just met her, but I think she’s due her own capitalized title. A lovely person and not at all evangelistic about her food choices. Credit where credit is due, after all. She doesn’t do it because of any religious or ethical scruples, but because she believes it to be the best way to avoid cancer. But when you’re eating butter, oil, and steaks, and she’s eating chips and salads, one of you is bound to notice something. We didn’t argue or even really discuss, but we did briefly explain our opposing views.
She got where she is by reading, if I recall the title correctly, The Food Revolution. In another post we’ll take a look at that book, but for now let’s go paradoxing, shall we? It’s a little like parasailing, only not at all.
I would like to promise it’ll be fun, but as I’m now in a plane at 38,000 feet crossing the entire United States–and we are currently over North Dakota–I’m afraid we’re shockingly short on fun. And room. And food. Thank goodness I don’t need to eat every two hours, because I don’t have $17 to shell out for a tiny box of “food.”
Tradition is an explanation for acting without thinking.
–Grace McGarvie
He’s at it again! SOMEONE STOP HIM.
I’m talking about Dr. Oz trying to scare you about eating high fat foods. This time he was on with Piers Morgan talking about the untimely demise of an actor: James Gandolfini. Mr. Gandolfini died recently of a massive heart attack.
First I would just like to say that I find it highly reprehensible to use the tragic death of a relatively young man–who left behind a widow and two children, one of them an infant–in this way. Mr. Gandolfini’s death also apparently occurred while he was on the toilet, something which hardly anyone would even know had not Mehmet Oz (which is an awesome name for a comic book villain, by the way) told the entire world about it on Piers Morgan’s show.
Continue reading Holy Partially-Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Batman!
I love to eat–Kit Kats or cookies-and-cream ice cream. I need sugar like five times a day. –Kim Kardashian
Doesn’t that quote rattle your brain a little bit?
I mean, would anyone argue that a diet like that is healthy? I don’t think so. And yet do people publicly denounce Ms. Kardashian as unhealthy, or suggest she needs to change up her diet? No. Why not?
Dare I suggest it’s because she’s not fat?
Ask Me How It Happened 