Another great quote

[wosnes]

Yesterday I was reading an excerpt from a book on the Today Show web site and noticed a link to an article called "Live and let diet: 5 great books about losing weight." I was curious about what they were recommending. I'd heard of all but one, Portion Savvy: The 30-Day Smart Plan for Eating Well by Carrie Latt Wiatt, published in 2000. I decided to check it out at Amazon, though I have no interest in buying it.

The first several paragraphs of the introduction are on target:

No country in the world eats as much as we do or struggles so with weight problems and the attendant high rates of life-threatening disease. Overeating has become a dangerous epidemic. We can't rely on the food-pushers in the food industry or the social structures of an overindulgent culture to save us from this catastrophe. We have to save ourselves.

Americans are deeply conditioned to overeat. From birth onward, we're presented with servings of food far in excess of our actual needs -- at home, in restaurants, at the sandwich counter and the supermarket. Compounding the problem is scientific evidence that it's perfectly natural for animals confronted with abundant food to eat themselves silly. The result is that the blueprint we carry around in our minds for how much is enough is wrong.

We may live in the land of the free, but our culture has come to be characterized by complete lack of control. The dark underbelly of the American dream is the drive to acquire to the point of excess, and this culture of consumption has rubbed of on our eating habits. Just as having too many material goods can rob each one of its meaning, eating too much can erode our ability to derive pleasure and satisfaction from food. Overeating works like a drug in the body, numbing us to our feelings and preventing us from facing that profound, self-defining question: How much is enough?

Most people reading this book have probably been trained to overeat, and the first thing I was to say is, overeating is not your fault. It's simply the continuation of a historical trend, begun at the beginning of the twentieth century, in which affluence, a sedentary life-style, and lack of nutritional understanding have combined to create the American eating paradigm that more is better.

The facts in this book clearly prove this paradigm to be false. When it comes to the food you put in your body, the true paradigm is, enough is enough. Excess energy intake stresses out your system at every level -- and though we now have the medical technology to live longer than ever before, we won't be able to unless we stop this killer habit. All the stress management in the world can't save you if you continue to stress your body with too much food.

As a nation, we've lost control -- and the statistics show that it's getting worse every day. At this rate, we'll meet the new millennium devastated by nutritional disease. If we are to realize our potential and create a safe environment for our children, we must stop allowing ourselves to be victims of food-pushers. We must find a new path to healthy bodies and minds.

[kccc]

That is a great quote.

It sparks a memory, only tangentially related. One of the Zencasts I listened to talked about how we think of "stages of development" with regard to children, but conceive of adults as kind of "done." Except we're not - we continue to develop throughout our lives. The point was that it was best to be somewhat intentional about your development, because if YOU weren't, then you were susceptible to other pressures... like "being a good consumer."

That really got my attention, because I have felt for some time that the pressures of American consumerism are SO intense and pervasive. (I notice it particularly in parenting, where my lone voice is expected to counteract the combined pressures of thousands of marketers whose job it is to make junk food enticing to my child...)

No-S is a great way to take charge of one's own development in terms of reasonable eating.

[Blithe Morning]

Great thoughts. Following up with KCCC's thoughts, one of the things I love is that No S requires you to be a grown up. It requires you to be reasonable about expectations, sensible about what to eat, and to say no to yourself.

No S is one of the most counter-cultural things you can do. It's my little form of protesting The Man (whoever that is).

[oolala53]

Ah, who would have thought it would be Subversive to decreases S's.