More Perspective
A thin, healthy reporter for the New York Times finds the new food guidelines a bit hard to swallow. Although as a dieter, I read it and think, "Duh, of course you can't have nuts" and "Tuna salad with mayonnaise? Are you kidding me?"
"The guidelines were beginning to feel like wartime rationing. I walked around with a nagging feeling of being just slightly deprived. After two days, it began to haunt me."
Thanks to La Wade for the link.
"The guidelines were beginning to feel like wartime rationing. I walked around with a nagging feeling of being just slightly deprived. After two days, it began to haunt me."
Thanks to La Wade for the link.
10 Comments:
Thanks for the link. I guess as a long time dieter, there are plenty of people who don't actually read the label of every single thing they stick in their pie hole! :-)
That was a really interesting article. The first thing that caught my eye though was this whopper:
I was dismayed to find that a mere stick of butter contains a whopping 800 calories, or more than one-third of my daily allotment.Er, yeah? A mere stick of butter? Sheesh.
The comments about exercise surprised me as well. I mean, I used to be a couch potato, but even so. The author talks about trying to exercise for thirty minutes and gets bored even though he does some weights, plays a little tennis, and bikes? All that? In 30 minutes? And still bored?
The new guidelines are not just health policy, they're cultural policy, too. To comply fully, Americans will have to rethink their inherited notions of what makes a meal, and what makes a meal satisfying.The best quote in the article, IMO. I wanted to pull it out in case people didn't feel like reading through it. I agree 100% here - and I don't think its necessarily a bad thing.
I can't imagine sitting down to a meal and not having a general idea of the nutritional content or picking something up at the grocery store without reading the label. It's just such ingrained behavior at this point.
I think the reporter's very life is a testament to the fact that thinness/fatness are not just lifestyle results. He doesn't exercise and doesn't pay attention to what he eats, yet he has great numbers. And even more important, strangers on the street would likely view him as healthier than a person who outweighed him by 30 pounds, but worked out daily, and ate healthy foods.
LOL! I don't even know where to start. Great article. Yes, the "mere stick of butter" cracked me up - it's a rare day when I have a mere *teaspoon* of butter. In some ways, I want to make fun of him and feel superior, but in other ways he validates what I think about dieting - we're NOT learning to eat like normal people. We're learning to eat like people with eating disorders. HE's an example of normal - he thinks this stuff is crazy, and a lot of it is.
I don't know what the "perfect" eating guidelines are, and I don't think the USDA does either. Look at their advice about milk - there's no evidence to support the idea that human beings need dairy in their diet. Calcium and Vitamin D, yes, but they can be had from non-dairy sources. The Food Guidelines have always been HEAVILY influenced by politics and social trends, and this latest publication is no different.
I'll do what I have to do to lose weight, but I think there are a lot more factors involved than diet. For every recommendation, there's always another study showing something like "French people are healthier than Americans even though they eat more fat" and things of that ilk. I think the Food Guidelines are trying to address America's "obesity" issue much more than general good health, and there are other models for diet and health out there.
Heh. Compare that article to a similar one written by the food editor of the Austin American-Statesman:
http://www.statesman.com/life/content/auto/epaper/editions/wednesday/life_entertainment_147fe437c6daa1580011.html
As an experienced dieter, she finds the new guidelines to be restrictive, but very workable.
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I read this too, and was alternately horrified (mere? MERE?) and amused (same). My first thought was to wonder why on earth they were having a first-time dieter try to follow the guidelines, because ANY diet would have seemed impossibly restrictive to him. Except, it sort of does make sense because the first-time dieter is pretty much the person for whom the guidelines were created. I don't suppose any of us, who routinely think about food portions and ingredients and fats and proteins, gave more than a passing thought to the new USDA suggestions, because we know this stuff already.
Leaving the notion of "dieting" aside for amoment, it's a pretty sad commentary on how little the "average" person knows (or cares) about nutrition. Good lord, even my 10 year old reads food labels!
That Statesman article was interesting. I liked this random quote:
"Don't you want some cheesecake?"Its funny. Some people really don't understand that, when you're losing weight or just being health-concious that, yes, you still may want the cheesecake - but you're not going to eat it. Just as I may want to spend a ton of money to go and stay at the Ritz in Paris for a week - but don't. That's considered good fiscal sense for most of us and yet even a hint of self-restraint when it comes to food comes across as deprivation.
Weird.
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