Weighing In

It is news to nobody that obesity is a major problem in these United States. The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that despite significant efforts to improve nutrition and physical activity, 40 percent of adults and 20 percent of adolescents are obese. Not just overweight, mind you, but obese.

Suffice it to say that this poses a major health crisis, resulting in numerous diseases–specifically the increased risk of certain types of cancer, coronary disease, diabetes and stroke. Its effects are mind-boggling, from the re-design of toilets and hospital beds and ambulance gurneys to restaurants and other public venues having to replace wooden chairs with ones made of steel to accommodate the comfort and safety of the dangerously overweight. Its economic impact is staggering. And the numbers are rising.

Apparently, it is the only statistical category at this point in time in which America currently tops all other developed nations.

A studied trip through most any supermarket, along with the casual noting of what shoppers are packing into their carts, will speak volumes about our dietary habits. While the back and side walls of most grocery stores will offer fresh produce, animal-based proteins and dairy products, what’s housed up and down most of the aisles are highly processed, packaged foods whose nutritional value is as suspect as their ingredient lists. Each such listing seems to feature any number of sweeteners and play host to chemicals, additives and preservatives to “ensure freshness.”

I find little comfort in knowing that I have up to three-and-a-half years to enjoy a can of food I might have bought last week.

From what I can gather, obesity was first recognized as something for the government to watch in 1962, when it was determined that 23 percent of Americans were too fat. Prior to that, perhaps, some people were just pleasingly plump.

But in 1963 a homemaker from Queens, New York, Jean Nidetch, was quick to recognize that there were profits to be made by providing products and services to the weight-challenged and she started Weight Watchers. Today, the publicly traded company employs more than 25,000 people–one of whom is minority owner and bread-loving spokesperson Oprah Winfrey, from whom I would be loathe to take dietary advice–and its 2018 revenues are expected to top $1.55 billion.

The diet business is big business and it is, oddly enough, a business that were it truly successful would disappear. But obesity is trending upward and the diet business is keeping pace.

If I were one of those conspiracy nut jobs–like those who wasted little time in suggesting that Hillary’s French operatives arranged for Anthony Bourdain’s death this past week–I might propose the dark idea that food producers are reaping huge profits from selling us bad food and then doubling down by selling us programs that warn us not to eat the bad food they produce. Who knows what evil lurks…

I remember that for a while in the ’50s, my parents would each eat a half grapefruit a half an hour before sitting down to dinner. The theory, demonstrated by Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in George Cukor’s 1949 film, Adam’s Rib, was that the fruit would release a fat-burning enzyme and the acidic-taste would lessen one’s appetite. Considering my mother’s cooking, the grapefruit seemed superfluous to the cause.

The grapefruit diet, which was popularized by Marilyn Monroe and became known as the “Hollywood Diet,” became all the rage for a while. As rages go, this was a pretty quiet one. It was a diet plan that didn’t require membership or counseling. One merely went to the store, bought a grapefruit and ate half of it while dinner was finishing up on the stove. Other than grapefruit growers, nobody really profited.

Some idiots, of course, thought that if eating half a grapefruit before dinner was a good idea, eating nothing but grapefruit would be downright brilliant. That led to such diet crazes that restricted food consumption to high-sodium otter broth, magnetized carrot juice, re-hydrated licorice powder or sauerkraut, the latter of which gave rise to both flatulence and a sudden interest in Slavic languages.

What we swallow as nourishment–good, bad or indifferent–is nothing compared to what we might swallow as gullible consumers.

The Internet is teeming with fad diets, although I prefer the more descriptive term, wacko diets.

NOTWITHSTANDING FOOD REGIMENS inspired by faith, belief in the other-worldly, or specific types of perceived kindnesses, most of the diets being hawked by various hucksters are unappetizing scams that allow you to lose eighteen pounds of water weight by tomorrow night and gain it all back by Thursday because you fell off the fat wagon and drank a diet Pepsi with your jelly-filled doughnut.

We can start with the high-protein diets which prescribe ingestion of high-protein foods. Duh. You can pay a ton of money to read about the suggested pairings of eggs and meat (more if you’d like the food delivered) or you can simply wing it and live on a diet of eggs and meat for a couple of weeks and see what happens.

Among the high-protein regimens are the Paleo, Keto, Atkins and Scarsdale diets, along with a few hundred others, that prohibit the consumption of carbohydrates–starches that turn to sugars you don’t need unless you’re running a marathon within twelve hours of eating dinner. Of course, if you are running a marathon, your diet probably doesn’t need much tweaking.

The Paleo diet allows for the consumption of whatever it was that cavemen ate. I’m not sure what they ate other than  animals the size of school buses or the smaller rodents that lurked in the corners of the cave. I’ve been told they didn’t cultivate food, which seems reasonable since their lives were spent running away from much of the food they craved. It seems likely that their diets probably didn’t include kale, Savoy cabbage, fennel and other things one might throw into a wilted salad with olive oil and lemon thyme. If any of you find a good source for mastodon, by the way, please pass it along.

The Atkins and Scarsdale diets are variations on the same theme, with the latter being more intriguing because its creator was murdered by his jilted lover.

The Keto diet is the Nazi version of the high-protein diets. Created by a professor of surgery in Rome, Italy, this no-carb diet leads directly to ketosis, a condition in which you lose muscle, become extremely fatigued and enter into a trance-like state of starvation shortly before you die. The good news is, of course, that you die a thin person.

There is a feeding-tube version of the Keto diet in which an actual tube is pushed through your nose and into your stomach. Once in place, 800 calories of liquid proteins are pumped in daily which basically takes the chore of chewing out of the whole ketosis-to-death scenario.

It’s interesting to me that an Italian would create a no-carb diet and live to promote it. Pasta is a dietary staple in that country and we need look no further than to Sophia Loren who once said about her own body, “Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.”

Of all of the wacko diets out there, my favorite is the South Beach diet. It’s the one in which you cram yourself into a too-small bathing suit, lie on a Florida beach and eat nothing until the bathing suit fits.

To me, the so-called Mediterranean diet makes the most sense. There have been countless books and articles written about it but its guiding principles seem simple and straightforward: fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, fish, lean proteins, and olive oil. Avoid processed foods. Wine is a good accompaniment. Avoid dining alone.

Provençal Vegetable Gratin (Tian)

6 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, plus more
2 large white or yellow onions, thinly sliced
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp. chopped thyme
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb. medium zucchini, cut into 1/4-inch slices
1-1/2 lbs. small eggplant, cut into 1/4-inch slices
1-1/2 lbs. ripe tomatoes, cut into 1/4-inch slices
Basil leaves

Put oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onions and season with salt and pepper. Cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add thyme, red pepper flakes, and garlic. Cook 2 minutes more.

Heat oven to 400°.

Spread the cooked onion mixture in the bottom of a large earthenware baking dish, about 9 by 13 inches. Arrange the zucchini, eggplant, and tomatoes in alternating rows: Start by making a row of overlapping zucchini slices, standing them vertically on edge. Follow with a row of eggplant, then a row of tomatoes in the same manner, packing the rows tightly together. Continue until the baking dish is filled. Sprinkle the surface of the vegetables generously with salt and pepper, and drizzle with olive oil.

Bake uncovered for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350° and continue baking for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the vegetables are quite tender. Let cool to room temperature to allow flavors to meld. Serve, garnished with torn basil leaves.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska