Re: Chips and Dips

[Guest guest]

I love this excerpt:

" This leads me to a preliminary conclusion:

nutritionists are making it up as they go along. They

don't know. When I was a child, physicians had no training

in nutrition. They ignored the subject. When I was in my

twenties, they were dead set against the health food

industry. They were insistent that the Shute brothers,

the two Canadian physicians/nutritionists, were all wrong

about vitamin E vs. heart disease. Today they recommend E,

but none of them seems to remember the Shutes and the war

against them. (http://snipurl.com/b0nk) In short,

physicians get caught up in fads, just like millions of

other Americans do. Fads come and go. "

and this:

" The biggest profit in groceries is in the packaged,

processed foods. Here's the rule: " If it's in a brightly

colored package, it's going to make you fat. " In the

supermarket, stick with the food that is uncovered --

fruits, vegetables -- or packaged in undistinguished

plastic or cardboard: meats, dairy products, eggs.

Stay away from the aisles with food types listed on

overhead signs. These aisles will kill you. "

Enjoy!

############

CHIPS, DIPS, AND RED INK

<snip>

Meanwhile, as a people, we are eating our way to

national bankruptcy.

<snip>

DIET WARS

" Frontline " recently re-ran a show that it first

broadcast on PBS in April, 2004: " Diet Wars. "

(http://snipurl.com/b0nb) It surveyed the various popular

weight-loss diets, which are in conflict: Atkins, Pritikin,

South Beach, Weight Watchers, the U.S. government's food

group pyramid, and a few others. They all have one thing

in common: most fat people do not stick with them.

According to one of the physicians interviewed, a Pritikin

man, between 80% and 95% of people who lose weight gain it

back in five years. So, Pareto's 20-80 law rules in

weight-loss, too. The statistical range of those who keep

the weight off is between 20% and 20% of 20% (4%).

The narrator of the show was also the central figure.

He had been a child actor on " Leave It to Beaver. " He was

putting on weight. His wife had been nagging him to change

his eating habits for years. At the time the taping began,

he was age 55, 5-11, and 210 pounds. A physician told him

he was borderline obese. Well, he was not waist-line

obese. You would not have noticed him in a crowd. There

was only a trace of belly on him.

This leads me to a preliminary conclusion:

nutritionists are making it up as they go along. They

don't know. When I was a child, physicians had no training

in nutrition. They ignored the subject. When I was in my

twenties, they were dead set against the health food

industry. They were insistent that the Shute brothers,

the two Canadian physicians/nutritionists, were all wrong

about vitamin E vs. heart disease. Today they recommend E,

but none of them seems to remember the Shutes and the war

against them. (http://snipurl.com/b0nk) In short,

physicians get caught up in fads, just like millions of

other Americans do. Fads come and go.

One of the experts interviewed insisted that there is

an epidemic of obesity among Americans. (This phrase has

become a rhetorical epidemic.) She said that increased

weight " is associated with " -- note: she did not say

" causes " -- heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. She

warned that this epidemic will overwhelm the health care

delivery system. I have no doubt that she is correct. The

American health-care system is increasingly funded by, and

regulated by, the U.S. government. It is slowly turning

into something resembling the Post Office.

What is going to overwhelm the system is extended old

age. Americans -- victims of a pandemic -- are living far

longer than ever before. Degenerative diseases rather than

pneumonia are killing us. Unlike pneumonia, which would

come without warning and kill an old person within a few

days, degenerative diseases cost a fortune to treat over

long periods of time. The government has promised to pick

up the tab. That means you and I will write the checks.

Anyway, you will. At my age, I'm planning to be the

middleman between you, the government, and my physician.

Years ago, the late Redd Foxx made a sagacious

observation: " I feel sorry for all those health food

people. Someday, they will be lying in a hospital bed,

dying of nothing. " His point was on target: something is

going to kill us. It's not that we willingly " give up the

ghost. " Something kills us: a fall, a disease, an auto

accident, re-runs of " That 70s Show. "

This raises three statistically inevitable political

questions: (1) Will the onslaught against all of us by

microbes, known and unknown, bankrupt the government? (2)

Will it instead produce a political transformation that

saves the government's budget by requiring oldsters to die

at home in their beds at their families' expense? (3)

First one, then the other?

Government is reactionary. It changes only when

change is forced on it, either by voters or special-

interest groups. So, for as long as the post-64 voting

bloc gets out the vote in statistically significant

numbers, Congress is not going to change Medicare. But, at

some point, in a fiscal crisis, the other voting blocs will

unite, show up at the polls, and send Granny home to her

bed to die. It will take a very severe fiscal crisis to

produce this transformation. I may not live to see it. I

hope I do.

We are eating our way to national bankruptcy. Those

who eat, drink, and are merry, for tomorrow Medicare picks

up the tab, are going to be sorely tried.

MURDER ON AISLE 6

The medical refrain today is this: " America is

suffering from an epidemic of obesity. " The experts don't

want to put the blame where the blame is: the enormous

productivity of capitalism. Americans have a lot of money,

and food is cheap. The restraining factor of economic

scarcity, which kept most people slim from the dawn of the

human race, is being rolled back. We can afford to eat

what we like, and what we like is not good for a lot of us.

If you want a symbol of this, think of Wal-Mart's

masked smiley face. He is rolling back prices. But that

round face is a tip-off. This guy is fat. Why, that's not

Don Diego behind the mask. It's Sergeant !

The biggest profit in groceries is in the packaged,

processed foods. Here's the rule: " If it's in a brightly

colored package, it's going to make you fat. " In the

supermarket, stick with the food that is uncovered --

fruits, vegetables -- or packaged in undistinguished

plastic or cardboard: meats, dairy products, eggs.

Stay away from the aisles with food types listed on

overhead signs. These aisles will kill you.

Will the State protect us? Hardly. The public

schools make a bundle of money from the sale of soft

drinks. They refuse to remove the soda pop dispensers.

The government's number-one agency in our lives,

kindergarten through graduate school, has put cash flow

above service to the people. Somehow, I am not surprised.

The problem is, the foods that are best for us are

bland, common, and very price competitive -- low profit

margins per sale. The tasty foods are fattening. So it

has always been. But in eras gone by, people were not

productive enough and therefore rich enough, to indulge

their tastes. Henry VIII was, but that was because he was

the king.

Today, we eat like kings. We are beginning to look

like them, too.

In 1981, I heard a speech by Noble. Noble had

been visiting his family in Germany in December, 1941, when

Hitler declared war on the United States, so Noble was

unable to return to the United States. He was in Dresden

in 1945 during the horrendous allied firebombing. In that

year, the Soviets sent him to Siberia. Talk about being in

the wrong place at the wrong time!

He said the Russians fed the inmates mostly bread and

water, but the bread was Russian black bread. The inmates

were put to work in the mines. He said that when he was

released in 1955, he was in the best health of his life.

He was slim. He was in shape. The cheap, unprocessed

bread had sustained him. So had the work in the mines. He

complained in 1981 about putting on weight.

That's what the free market does to people. It lets

them eat what they want.

One of the experts interviewed on " Frontline " said

that nothing is going to change in the fast food industry

until the government forces companies to serve food that is

good for us.

What we need, obviously, is black bread and daily

exercise. There are those who would support such

legislation.

If you want one memorable image of what has happened

to us, think back three decades, if you are old enough.

There was a TV commercial for Lays potato chips. Burt

Lahr, once the cowardly lion, was dressed in a devil's

suit. He held a bag of Lays potato chips in one hand and a

single chip in the other. He uttered the classic line:

" Betcha can't eat just one! "

He has won the bet. Millions of Americans have lost

it.

HOW SWEET IT ISN'T

The Atkins people tell you to cut back on carbs. The

Pritikin people tell you to cut back on fats. The Weight

Watchers people tell you to cut back on calories. But

there is universal agreement on one thing: cut back on

sugar.

Dr. Arthur is famous for his home school

curriculum and his opposition to the Kyoto Treaty on carbon

dioxide emissions. Three decades ago, he was Linus

ing's senior researcher and fund-raiser. He is a

gifted direct-mail marketer. He ran a small display ad in

" The Wall Street Journal " with a great headline: " We're

bearish on sugar and bullish on Vitamin C. "

He is a fanatic about sugar. He never fed his

children refined sugar. All of them are grown. They all

avoid it today. All of them are slender. All of them are

healthy. So is he. He let them eat unprocessed grains.

He developed a multi-grain bread recipe for maximum

nutrition and minimum cost. The family runs a sheep ranch,

along with running a biological research center and a

publishing mini-empire: CD-ROM curriculum, " Access to

Energy " newsletter, and G. A. Henty's books for boys. The

s are not vegetarians. But they are absolute

abstainers when it comes to anything with processed sugar.

In 1948, I was a sickly child. I suffered from

chronic bronchitis. My mother took me to a clinic run by

the first prominent nutritionist physician, Francis

Pottenger. He put me on a diet that he had developed. His

diet fattened up scrawny people, and it slimmed down fat

people. It was heavy on beef, unprocessed grains, and

vegetables. Processed cereals were out; wheat cereal

cooked overnight was in. The diet also included certified

raw whole milk with cream on the top: fat city! But

Pottenger was death on sugar.

He got me to shake hands on a deal. I agreed not to

eat sweets, except for one scoop of ice cream per week. He

was no fool. He knew that no kid was likely to go cold

turkey on all sweets. No mother could police a child that

closely. So, he left me an out: that lonely scoop of ice

cream. He got me to promise to keep to the schedule: self-

discipline. I kept my end of the bargain. I would not eat

cake at birthday parties. I would eat one scoop of ice

cream.

He also put me on an exercise program. My parents

bought me barbells and a back-yard jungle gym. I had to do

chin-ups every other day and lift barbells on the other

days.

It was an Atkins-type diet: lots of red meat, dairy

fat allowed. It allowed carbs, but they had to be natural

grains -- no processed flour. I did get a little

unpackaged brown raw sugar for my cereal. I know my mother

did keep raw sugar around. But no white sugar for me.

In 18 months, I got well. The coughing went away. I

gained weight. Basically, I have never been seriously sick

again, except for a gall bladder flare-up in 2001. I have

never again had a weight problem, thin or fat.

My diet at ages 6 and 7 set my eating habits for a

lifetime: little sugar, very few processed grains, and meat

-- mainly beef and chicken. I eat two eggs a day. I have

not been good about eating vegetables, although I've begun

to change that. As for exercise, I'm a bona fide couch

potato. It's not good for me, I'm sure. I'm going to

start an exercise program. Real Soon Now.

FATS GOLDBERG'S SOLUTION

Larry " Fats " Goldberg wrote a diet book, " Controlled

Cheating " in 1985. Alzheimer's killed him at age 69 in

2003. Weight didn't.

He was 160 pounds. For 5 feet 6, that's not too bad.

But it was half his weight at the time when he finally

decided he was going to die if he didn't change his eating

habits.

He had tried diets. They had failed. He just could

not bring himself to give up the foods he loved. But then

he got a flash of insight. He would not give them up. He

would postpone them. So, he went on a crash diet. After

three weeks, he went off the diet for one day. He ate

whatever he wanted. Then, the next day, he went back on

his diet.

He continued this pattern for the rest of his life.

One day a week, he would eat anything he liked. He would

gain five pounds. Then he would quit.

Twice a year, he left New York City, where he ran

Goldberg's Pizzeria, to go home: Kansas City, Kansas.

There, for one glorious week, he would eat. And eat. And

eat. He would gain up to 17 pounds. Then he would fly

back to New York. New York was not fat city for Fats.

He was made famous by humorist Calvin Trillin's book,

" American Fried. " The book was about great places to eat,

all over America. Trillin had known Fats from his youth.

He described one day of Fats' week off. Here is a

selection from " American Fried. "

" 'Just what did you eat on a big day in Kansas

City the week you gained seventeen pounds?' I

asked. I was prepared to make a list.

'Well, for breakfast I'd have two eggs, six

biscuits with butter and jelly, half a quart of

milk, six link sausage, six strips of bacon, and

a couple of homemade cinnamon rolls,' Fats said.

'Then I'd hit MacLean's Bakery. They have a kind

of fried cinnamon roll I love. Maybe I'd have

two or three of them. Then, on the way downtown

to have lunch with somebody, I might stop at

Kresge's and have two chili dogs and a couple of

root beers. . . . Then I'd go to lunch.' "

http://snipurl.com/axaz

And so on. For a week.

At the end of his section on Goldberg, and what he ate

for six days a week -- boiled skinned chicken -- Trillin

ended with Goldberg's overall assessment of his diet.

Goldberg spoke of the pain, the terrible pain. " I can't

emphasize this enough. "

That, of course, is the famous bottom line. For the

person addicted to anything, there is great pain in giving

it up. This is why 80% to 95% of everyone who loses weight

gains it back.

Goldberg controlled his pain with controlled cheating.

He had to allow himself some of the things he loved.

Otherwise, he would eat himself to death. This option is

not open to alcoholics. But alcoholics can live without

drinking. No one can live without eating.

WHO'S FAT? WHO ISN'T?

We are told that Americans are gaining weight. But

which Americans? When it's Americans in general, then

there is pressure on Congress to pass laws to save

Americans from themselves.

People are different. To imagine that the same diet

works equally well with all overweight people is naive.

The biochemist and nutritionist discovered

pantothenic acid. His bibliography, much of it on vitamins

and nutrition, stretched from 1919 to 1987.

(snipurl.com/b0qc) He wrote a book, " Biochemical

Individuality. " It's a warning against universal dietary

cures.

Nutritional science needs data from cooperating

control groups in order to survey long-term trends in

weight, health, and life expectancy. These groups should

be (separate categories) racial, economic, and cultural.

Are there racial groups that resist the trend? Asians

seem to. Is this genetic? Is it cultural? It surely

isn't money. They have plenty of money. Are they getting

fatter at the same percentage rate as the general

population? Are some Asian groups significantly different

from others?

Chinese food in restaurants is heavy on oil and fat.

Does this support Pritikin or Atkins? Are American Chinese

gaining more weight than American Japanese, who eat sushi

and octopus? What about on campus? Does college dorm food

fatten up Asians the way it fattens up the rest of us?

College dorms are ideal dietary laboratories. There

is no marginal cost of food. Everyone pays a flat fee.

It's all you can eat, no extra charge, day after day, for a

year or two. Does this affect different groups

differently?

It seems to me that genetics could be involved.

thought so. But more important is future-

orientation. As children, we establish eating habits.

Children are notoriously present-oriented. They discount

the future. This is the outlook of the addict. It is

difficult to break our eating habits. I was fortunate that

I got sick young, my mother found Pottenger, and I decided

to cooperate.

Another segregating factor, usually ignored, is

confessional. If I had a research grant of millions of

dollars to spend on a dietary study, I would target

religious groups. I would see if there is a connection

between confession and shape.

I would begin with Orthodox Jews. Judaism uses diet

and circumcision to screen access to membership, and this

works. ( " You're going to do WHAT? " ) You must be future-

oriented to join. Jews don't eat pork but do eat beef:

Atkins types. Are Orthodox Jews more or less fat than the

general public? What about heart disease?

Then I would survey Seventh Day Adventists, who tend

to be vegetarians but who eat grains; Mormons, who don't

consume alcohol; and Baptists, who say they don't consume

alcohol. I would survey white Baptists and black Baptists.

Black Baptists have weight problems. One of the

people interviewed on " Frontline " said that black churches

had come to him to develop a weight-loss program involving

diet and exercise. Obesity is a major problem in black

churches. As for white Baptists, I don't know. Are they

the norm -- gaining weight along with the general

population? Is the genetic difference a distinguishing

feature, assuming that Baptist confessions are similar?

Someone ought to find out.

I would study the Reformed Episcopal Church, the one

Protestant denomination that has had racial equality since

1873, but whose congregations are not racially mixed. By

equality, I mean governmentally: black bishops are equal in

authority in church councils to white bishops, and the

numbers are similar. Catholics are also mixed racially,

but there are too many cultural and racial groups who are

American Catholics, and too many recent immigrant groups.

The REC would be an ideal test: same confession, same

liturgy, different income, different races. What about

weight?

I am a Presbyterian. Presbyterians have money, behind

Jews and Episcopalians. We can afford to eat as much as we

like. This has been true for generations. We are highly

educated -- probably the most formally educated of all

Protestant groups. It's built into our form of government:

an educated clergy is required by church law. There are

very few overweight people in theologically conservative

Presbyterian denominations. (I have no experience inside

mainline Presbyterianism.)

When I say Presbyterian, I include Dutch Reformed, who

don't call themselves Presbyterians. Both groups are

Calvinistic and bureaucratically hierarchical. The rural

Dutch are dairymen, and they are famous for their pastries.

Three decades ago, I lived in a semi-rural Dutch community,

and I don't recall that the men were overweight. The women

tended toward plumpness, but they were rarely fat. (The

teenage girls tended toward Kim Novak fatness, which

repulsed none of the boys.) Yet, in terms of their

favorite foods, the Dutch should have been fat.

You can't solve a problem if you don't ask the right

questions. If we get a legislated solution, we will get

worse problems, plus we will still be fat.

NO SWEAT, MORE POTATOES

If we were Israelites in 's day, walking to and

from Jerusalem three times a year, we could afford some

extra weight. Fat is desirable, says the Old Testament.

It's a sign of God's blessing. Priests ate meat all the

time. It was their portion of the sacrifices. The priests

were Atkins people, not Pritikin people. But they were

physically active, all day long. They were not couch

potatoes. We are.

In the second half of the twentieth century, most

Americans overcame this curse:

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,

till thou return unto the ground; for out of it

wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust

shalt thou return (Genesis 3:19).

McCormick invented the reaper. Then Edison and

Westinghouse delivered electricity. Then r invented

air conditioning. So, we no longer sweat to eat our bread.

We sit. We make deals. We worry. We eat. Our stomachs,

not our sweat glands, are today the battleground in which

the curse wrecks havoc. Lesson: we will one day be lying

in bed, dying of something.

We are losing the battle of the bulge. We hate to say

no, and we can afford not to. We no longer stink.

Instead, we bulge. A century ago, they could smell us

coming. Now, they can see us coming before we turn the

corner.

There is a solution to the weight problem:

When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider

diligently what is before thee: And put a knife

to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite

(Proverbs 23:1-2).

The free market has given us low-cost lunches, but we

prefer " dainties " -- refined sugar and refined flour. We

have not put a knife to our throats. Whose fault is that?

There are well-organized political pressure groups

that plan to have the U.S. government put a knife to our

throats for our own good. The debate rages as to who

should control the menu. But when all the rhetoric is

stripped away, it's the same old menu: a Stalin sandwich --

black bread -- and water. Then it's off to the mines.

CONCLUSION

It's the holiday season. Some of you had better not

participate in a feast. If you were following Fats

Goldberg's plan, and if you had been on schedule for the

past six months, you could make December 25 to January 1

your week in Kansas City. But you're not a Goldberg

disciple. So, the feast is your enemy.

My family will celebrate Christmas as we have for two

decades: at a Chinese restaurant, just like in " A Christmas

Story. " For my personal response to the menu-Stalinists, I

shall use my rice to soak up any excess garlic sauce. But,

in honor of Dr. Pottenger, it will be brown rice.

North