A month or so ago, the 'chair was wondering why Americans tend to be
overweight, particularly because of the commonly rumored fat tax on foods
like McDonalds' stuff. Someone linked to a Landsburg article
(http://slate.msn.com/?id=105306) discussing reasons for the aggregate
weight gain. A nutritionist I spoke with last week shared something
interesting -- maybe some Americans just don't have _enough_ fat.
According to this nutritionist, low-fat diets will work for a while, but
after a while, they'll snap, leading to weight gain. Basically, take a
person who, instead of cutting calories, cuts fat out of their diet.
They'll lose weight for a while, but their metabolism doesn't realize
that's what going on. It'll slow down, expecting less food because of the
low amounts of fat. (In a sense, it starts storing up for the winter.)
The weight loss stops, so the incentive to stay low-fat goes away. But the
metabolism doesn't bounce back up, so weight is gained. Which leads to
more low-fat diets. Repeat.
(See http://my.webmd.com/content/article/3079.275)
This probably is more a symptom than the real disease, which is basically
nutritional ignorance. Most people couldn't guess how much fat they had in
a day, whether or not they've actually cut calories from week to week, or
what the hell dietary fiber is even good for. And that too much sodium is
bad.
Which leads me to the other point I wanted to make -- microwaves probably
add to the problem. The feed-me-now mentality which can only exist in
affluent nations isn't necessarily bad, but frozen foods are usually high
in sodium. Theoretically, the sodium intake should be matched by extra
water intake. Or something like that. But the advent of the microwave has
certainly upped the amount of preservatives/sodium in diets over the last
two decades, which would at least correspond to a lot of the weight gain
times.
Dan Lewis
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
