6/1/2002: Diet chains

The official caption:

Diets are for the birds: Amanda Piaseki, 27, drags bathroom scales chained to her ankles -- symbols of her former obsession with dieting -- during No Diet Day in SF's Justin Herman Plaza. Anorexic and bulemic, Amanda used to weigh 105 pounds. Now she's 225 -- her "natural body size" -- and much happier.

So it's natural to be unhealthy and eat unhealthy food? One thing I noticed in Germany was how skinny most everyone was (comparitively, that is). I'm not a big guy by any means, but these people were fit and trim. I think a few points they have on us are exercise, eating healthy (at times), and eating right. I noticed that they mostly walked or traveled by bike rather than driving the 3 blocks to the store (ever see LA Story w/ Steve Martin?). Just that alone will help anyone stay trim. Also, when we ate dinner, it consisted of several kinds of bread, and usually a few sliced meats. We didn't gorge or hit the buffet at night. We went out to eat twice for dinner, and both times, I noticed the dinner portions were smaller than the lunch portions (as I have always thought they should be). They still have their Mickie-D's, and love their french fries more than we do (especially with mayo - yecch!), but their lifestyles incorporated mostly just those three points, and featured a massive difference.

Interesting. We are a diet-obsessed nation, yet we are growing fatter and fatter.

Just be healthy. Be aware of what you eat and eat good, unprocessed, whole food. Slow down and savor it!

www.slowfood.com

(A counter to the spiderization of food conglomerates.) Save the small farms. Free the Cheese!

My family had a german foreign exchange student last school year. She arrived as a thin, nice young lady. She left about 50 lbs heavier, and cranky.
Does the grease in our food make it that much tastier?

Yes, yes it does. The grease is there out of necessity, it enhances the flavor lost to hybridization (when done for handling convenience purposes), storage, processing, and shipping. We've got to keep Monsatan and Cargill in business somehow.

I tell you what, you can definitely bypass a lot of the grease out there today. Though I lovingly eat pad gai (which does have some grease in it), my diet mainly consists of various subs from Subway. I can't stress enough how much better I feel after having a footlong sub every day for about a month and a half or whatever (2 months?). I eat less and feel better, and the food isn't chock full of grease. If you can stomach eating <b>good</b> sandwiches, I highly recommend it. It maybe isn't <b>the</b> healthiest food, but it's much closer to "ideal" than the vast majority of readily available restaurant food here in the US.

There's no denying fat is flavor...choose wisely.
I salute good virgin olive oil- liquid of the gods.

And play with cooking your own food. Its a joy. Its not hard and doesnt need to be time consuming. One of the great things about getting older is the experience of many meals - I make great, simple, peasant food.

EEEEKK!!!!

I read in today's paper that some geek scientists have been starving rats and mice and all manner of critters and are now proposing to do the same to humans.

It seems that they think that about 1500 calories a day is enough to keep us alive and healthy as well as extend our lifespans significantly.

Have these whackos nothing better to do?

Brian

poor rats

There's a reason that foods with fat are tastier: many 'tastes' are esters, which non-polar or only mildly polar molecules, and as a result dissolve in fat much better than in aqueous media. Fatty food can carry more flavor than non-fatty food. It's also why there probably will never be a good non-alcoholic wine. Alcohol is a much less polar solvent than water, and therefore can carry much more flavor.

Re: EEEEKK!!!!

Smokers need not reply.

Re: Re: EEEEKK!!!!

It would be tragic to starve one's self in a plan to live to 110, and then get hit by a train at age 75.

And remember, Jim Fixx died while jogging.

I suppose this can be associated with that "Breathairians" crud...

Truth, however, is already stated. the US is probably the fattest nation in the world, and here are these people protesting that we should get fatter...

How selfish.