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Land of the Fat |
September 2002
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America just eats too much
The New York Times Magazine wasted several thousand words recently in a feature about the American weight problem. It seems that we are in the middle of an obesity epidemic. My most recent trip to the beach confirms this -- and although members of Greenpeace did not try to push me back into the water thinking me cetacean, I myself carry a bit extra around the waist.
As so often is the case with the New York Times, the true insight was lost among the dependent clauses while the writer went on about tertiary issues. In this case, the blather concerned whether a diet high in carbohydrates or higher in fats was the key to a thinner US. The real insight was a single sentence that announced Americans consume about 400 calories more per day than they did in the late 1970s.
I'm not a dietician, nor a particular success at keeping the pounds off, so you can consider the source here, but 400 more calories per day is the problem, not what kind of calories. After all, which weighs more a pound of steel or a pound of feathers?
A calorie is the amount of energy needed to heat 1000 grams of water 1 degree Celsius (the so-called large calorie dieticians use -- distinct from the small calorie used by chemists which heats only 1 gram). It could be fat, carbohydrates or plutonium. 400 calories of fat will heat 1000 grams of water 400degress Celsius. So will 400 calories of anything else. That energy is burned up during exercise, breathing, and even eating.
There are issues about how the body absorbs the energy, how much is expelled as waste, and how can you eat and drop a few pounds and still feel full. But the simple fact is that if you feed a sociey 400 extra calories a day for 25 years, they'll be fatter for it.
And how can I attack my spare tire? Start with those 400 calories, whatever they are.