Diets are For The Birds
by Richard Allin
Thanks to the level of scandal in the country, supermarket gossip weeklies are printing fewer diets on their front pages. Drug use of stars, babes born out of wedlock to the professed godly and assorted adulteries amongst the luminaries are making it easier for the pudgy such as myself to pass up the weeklies while standing in the grocery lines. Promised weight loss was once a stimulator of circulation.
I've never allowed myself to buy a gossip weekly except the time that the National Enquirer printed a short report from a town called Wad, Ark. According to the article, a state representative by name of Wallace Wad actually shipped himself by United Parcel Service to the state's capital city. It was reported as a fact.
TO TELL the truth, I've never fretted too much about being overweight. The times I have gone on diets were usually at the suggestion of somebody else. On two or three occasions these health addicts -- runners all -- came down with disabling joint ailments requiring surgery and hospitalization. It was nice to be able to visit their bedsides.
Dieting, of course, comes under a number of names. I never tried the Liz Taylor diet. I tried the Airline Stewardesses' diet until I couldn't eat another grapefruit. I've seen several people on the high protein diet lose weight, but then regain it all. Anyway, I can't eat butter without a carbohydrate to spread it on.
Diets are beginning to be exposed anyway. A Norwegian study found that chubby people live longer. A researcher of ailments of the aging said dieting among the elderly can be hazardous, because people who are too thin cannot combat diseases.
THE BEST advice regarding diets I ever heard was from a doctor who said it's best to keep eating a variety of all sorts of food, but at a reduced rate. I'm going to try it out sometime.
And it was gratifying to me to discover, by poring over calorie booklets, that biscuits and gravy have fewer calories than a cup of cottage cheese.
Admittedly, hardly anyone eats a cup of cottage cheese at one sitting, but the discovery is helpful anyway.
I have forbidden a horrid diet concoction called "Peel-a-Pound Soup" from ever appearing in my house again. It is made from bits of vegetable matter that have begun to decay in the back of the refrigerator. Rancid carrots, desiccating cabbage leaves, shriveled bell peppers that one finds in the Frigidaire after a three-week vacation are the usual ingredients. What results after boiling for an hour, with a pinch of salt, is a dish that can be eaten only by women.
"It's g-o-o-o-d!" they coo to their disgusted husbands.
It is not good. It will not support life. Husbands will not eat it. It can lead to divorce, depression, and death.
FOOD, PROPERLY prepared, is one of the great and abiding sources of pleasure during one's lifetime. Like all pleasures, it is best taken in moderation. I'll agree that the gallon of orange juice, the half a dozen eggs, the pounds of bacon and the lamb chops that Diamond Jim Brady had for breakfast is too much.
But meals are too sacred to be played around with by well-meaning women and officious men who too often use the words "diet and exercise" in the same sentence. The virtuous are certainly praiseworthy, but give me a sinner anytime for conversation.
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