| Diagnosing Our Weight Problems |  |
The US government just announced that Medicare can pay for
obesity treatment, officially making excess weight a
"disease." But this gross influenza of the waistline is
particularly American. Why is that?
A generation ago, American families were thinner while
eating eggs, breads, butter, vegetables . REAL foods. Then
they were told to eat low fat processed items, pressed
orange cheese slices euphemistically called a "food
product", and that most respectable heart-saver . margarine.
Since then, the collapse of the entire low fat idea has
given way to its equally bizarre twin sister, the "low carb
revolution."
Shoppers who once could not believe it was not butter, now
indulge in food products just as oxymoronic as fat free
Half-n-Half.
What in the world would a "low carb" pasta or "carb free"
bread be?
There must be a clinical explanation to explain the bizarre
lemming effect of galloping from low fat packing materials
to low carb oxymorons. Maybe there's a cultural pathology to
explain these epileptic swings.
But what would it be? What would we, as a cultural patient,
reveal under careful observation?
In nailing down our particular malady, the key is to look at
the problem from a dispassionate, clinical perspective.
Observation:
Patient adopts irrational behavioral mood swings brought on
by prolonged demoralizing failure (i.e., low fat eating
never worked).
Diagnosis 1a:
The observation may indicate either a mild or a severe
condition. The mild condition is commonly experienced when a
patient is "jilted" after a hopeful relationship goes bad.
The one spurned typical leaps after the very opposite of
their jilter - the "hiker to biker" effect.
Diagnosis 1b:
However, the complete and irrational embrace of this
particular low carb "biker" may indicate a more serious
problem, not with the heart but with the mind. Such severe
changes strongly indicate a brain condition on the order of
dietary Bipolar Disease. Should this prove to be the case,
only a national inoculation program of very strong drugs
could reverse the symptoms.
Diagnosis 2:
Having consulted brilliant physicians, another possibility
knocks at the door. Perhaps it's not so much that our
culture's collective brain cells are fried in too much Olio,
but that the patient has simple myopia.
Yes, near-sightedness is indicated by the fact that other
cultures don't share these food aversions. No other country
invents things and then advises their people to eat them.
All skinny cultures eat real food, eat at meal times, and
eat at a table.
The extent that this particular patient cannot see this
fact, indicates a strong need for coke-bottle-bottom glasses
of Mr. Magoo proportions (pardon the medical jargon).
Of course the problem with myopia as a diagnosis is the
difficulty of getting pharmaceutical reimbursements for
prescribing glasses. Thus, until an anti-near-sightedness
drug is developed, the condition obviously cannot be
diagnosed in this way.
Diagnosis 3:
Old fashioned country doctors would squint at our patient
and pronounce their educated opinions in the most concise
manner known to the medical arcana: "they're nuts".
This pithy point of view is not without merit. After all,
what would any sane business do if its people got together
and agreed on a strategy (like the low fat dogma), did that,
and then failed with flying colors? Would they rely on the
same group to come up with some other idea? That would be,
well, nuts.
Any sane, rational CEO worth the standard 42 billion dollar
salary would look outside the company's own people for
answers, find ideas that already work, and then steal them.
That the patient has not done this supports Diagnosis #3.
Diagnosis 4:
Although "wacko" can explain such passing cultural norms as
disco, professional wrestling, and the 1980's era of the
effeminate rock star, a kinder gentler possibility for this
subject remains: the patient merely has a national
short-term memory loss - possibly suffered by a conk on the
head or sniffing too many greenhouse gasses.
This debilitating disease, now known as Dori's Disease
(after the fishy medical case study in Finding Nemo), causes
the sufferer to lose all but the most recent of memories.
The observation that most clearly argues for Dori's Disease
is the fact that the patient can't seem to remember being
very slim. The patient was once proud of its control over
weight.
Sadly, however, prodding the patient to recall a time when
weight was not a problem only results in denial of
governmental proportions. Rather than return to eating the
diet of those skinny days (fruits, veggies, meats, eggs,
dairy, fats, carbs, and proteins) the patient blindly
reinvents the dietary wheel and creates new ways to eat.
Certainly, this behavior argues for the "wacko" hypothesis,
although it may be compounded by any of the other
possibilities.
Summary:
Unfortunately, a grim outlook is ahead for the patient due
to the most likely possibility - that some alchemy of all
these psychological, social, and mental problems have
conspired to produce the observed irrationality.
Prescription:
Drugs. Lots of drugs.
Alternatively, psycho-babble (non-drug-industry supported)
behavioral therapy could also be tried once the medicine
cabinet is exhausted. Getting the patient to understand the
problem better could prevent yet another mass lemming
migration among the stable of new theories.
Such intense counseling might include:
A look to other traditional cultures of eating. France
provides a perfect example of a dietary lifestyle that
works. The reason why it works may be a "paradox", but the
bottom line is that it worked while this patient was eating
processed cheese food, and it still works while the same
subject gulps zero-calorie sweeteners and chews on carb-free
breads.
While dietary fads lurch from one bizarre extreme to the
other, the cultural habits of thin, healthy cultures have
stayed the same. A common sense solution would be to find
approaches that remain successful (Asian, French, Indian,
etc.), and then do that.
Understanding this will show the patient HOW to eat, WHAT to
eat, and stabilize the bi-polar tendency to ricochet between
the oddities of newly invented dietary extremes.
Dr Will Clower is the award-winning author of
The Fat Fallacy and founder of The PATH,
the only source to get the sumptuous healthy
Mediterranean Diet, here at home.
Get on The PATH: http://www.fatfallacy.com/SignUpToday.html
|
|
