Tag: obesity

More Fun With Nutritional Insanity

We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.

–Harold MacMillan

This morning I opened my news feed, then ran to get my shotgun.

My barrel of fish had arrived.

This headline was purportedly about cancer, not about nutrition, but you’ll see if you read it that nutrition, exercise, and obesity all play an important part in the article. Thus it got my attention. The title of this wondrous piece is “Americans Confused About Cancer Risk” on Philly.com. (And elsewhere.)
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Oh the Humanity!

Diet Coke with lemon…didn’t that used to be called Pledge? 

–Jay Leno

Not long ago I was at a friend’s house. My friends are pretty typical Americans. They have a large kitchen with two long counters, a normal American-sized fridge and freezer, above- and below-counter cabinets, and a pantry. Here’s what was in them:

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No Hospitality For Trouble

You can’t keep trouble from coming, but you don’t have to give it a chair to sit on. 

–New England Proverb

When I was visiting Brother #3 in this summer he asked me:

Is there anything your magic diet doesn’t help with?

We both laughed–it was meant in jest, and he himself had seen some real benefits from changing up his way of eating. But what I said and thought at the time is: No. It does help just about everything.

Even though you weren’t there at the time, I’d like to clarify that statement for you. By it, I do not mean that I think eschewing grains, sugars, and Frankenfats and eating lots of saturated fat and meat is a miracle cure of any ailment. There are three things I do mean:

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The Taft Way

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.

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It’s Not A Diet, Actually

Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, ‘No thank you’ to dessert that night. And for what?! 

― Erma Bombeck

In a previous post, I mentioned seeing an old, sugar-addicted friend who had some snarky things to say about my dislike of sugar. That’s a common reaction from some people. Whether they label it “Atkins” or not, they treat what I’m doing as “a diet.”

I dislike this.

There are several reasons why.

This is your last chance to go over to awkwardfamilyphotos before I get into it. Run.

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Busted

But the chief penalty is to be governed by someone worse if a man will not himself hold office and rule.

–Plato

Not long ago, I wrote a post about the miracle obesity drug, Belviq. Then I wrote another one about bariatric surgery and the new “obesity as disease” pronouncement.

Little did I know how closely they were linked. Follow the money too far and you might end up with half your intestines cut out.

Calories In, Calories Out

If the mind, that rules the body, ever so far forgets itself as to trample on its slave, the slave is never generous enough to forgive the injury, but will rise and smite the oppressor.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If you’re not familiar with the term “calories in, calories out,” or CICO, it refers to the dearly held belief that somehow the laws of thermodynamics demand that if we eat X number of calories (energy in) and expend Y number of calories (energy out) that our weight will change by Z according to how much we over- or under- ate our caloric needs. This formula is trotted out as the ultimate answer for obesity.

And it’s idiotic.

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It Ain’t

‘Contrariwise,’ continued Tweedledee, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.’ 

–Lewis Carroll

When I first read Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes, and even more so when I delved into his longer book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, I felt a kind of mental relief, as if someone had removed a splinter from my brain.

Continue reading It Ain’t