Tuesday, November 20, 2012

what i'd LIKE to see in the Times

"HEART-HEALTHY" POLYUNSATURATES KEEP YOU FROM BURNING YOUR OWN FAT AS FUEL, AND MAKE YOU HUNGRIER!*

HIGH CARBOHYDRATE INTAKE SETS OFF A CHAIN-REACTION THAT LEADS TO INSULIN RESISTANCE IN THE LIVER!**

Of course, if these (and other) basic truths hit the mainstream media, what would they print tomorrow?  Somehow, it seems to me that perpetuating controversy and half-truths feeds public appetite (word choice deliberate) for more and more articles that ... don't help.

It's like soap operas and dramatic "comic" strips:  they're all about cliffhangers that promise that if you keep coming back for more, you'll eventually get mental/emotional satisfaction.  Like 900-number psychics, who are free for the first five minutes, and you hope that five MORE minutes will reveal something valuable.  

Nobody wants to say that to improve your health (and incidentally lower your weight) you'll have to give up something you like FOREVER, for all intents and purposes.  That's depressing and bleak to a lot of people, and it will drive them away from a dietary program or a newspaper/magazine that announces it.  Never mind that it's TRUE.  No, diet books adopt a cheery, optimistic you-can-do-it-it's-EASY tone, promises of steady loss, and implications that in maintenance you can enjoy again all those goodies that got you in trouble in the first place.  SURE you can enjoy them again -- about once a month, not every day.

I'd like to see a headline that says MEDICAL SCIENCE CAN'T SAVE YOU FROM A BAD DIET with the follow-up article HEALTH OR HEDONISM -- YOU CHOOSE.  Now, we in this little blog-circle of ours know that our real-food diets, be they very-low-carb or moderate, are NOT pleasureless, even though they seem spartan to "outsiders."  But we DO, for the sake of our well-being, forgo a lot of foods we enjoy because our bodies punish us if we consume them.  We make sacrifices of convenience and give ourselves reputations of being weird, which tends to set us apart.  It's a good thing most of us are independent-minded in the first place!

But no mainstream publication wants to print these things.  They're not Harvard-approved or ADA-recommended.  And they're off-putting!  The media want their customers to feel GOOD and MOTIVATED, even THOUGHTFUL, but not hopeless, discouraged or daunted.  Consumers mustn't be convinced that power is in their own hands to improve their lives, although to do so they're gonna have to do things they'd rather not.  People are supposed to go to their doctors regularly, and take their expert dietary advice.  Doesn't matter that most doctors know diddly-squat about nutrition.

It's more appealing for periodicals to print articles about individuals in the public eye who have health and weight problems -- that makes John and Marsha, sitting there reading on their 50 excess pounds, feel more like everyone else, and also UNDERSTOOD.  Printing stories about how "dangerous" very-low-carb programs are make people feel better about not WANTING to change their diets.  Gushing about the superfood-du-jour today allows them to write about the superfood-de-demain tomorrow.
_____
*  http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2012/11/protons-physiological-insulin-resistance.html
**  http://kindkehealthnotes.blogspot.com/2012/11/high-carbohydrate-diets-induce-hepatic.html

5 comments:

  1. The truth is scary until you face up to it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. which is probably why this past election got so ugly -- people ARE/WERE scared.... but i tend to agree with the epigram about the truth setting one free. the worst part of the situation is just getting used to the idea.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tangent: I once called a corny phone psychic number with the intent of proving to my friends that they were frauds, and I would intelligently not be led into a Nicky Dane script of leading generalizations. Well, one hour and 400.00$ later I sat with my mouth agape, head spinning wondering how this asshole knew so many intimate details about my life. He was never wrong once. I kept waiting and waiting for him to speak a falsehood out of desperation since I gave not one word of info about myself. I simply sat and listened to him speak about my life as if Id been spooked. My stomach was sick for days. It was the first and last psychic I ever spoke too. Im not sure how they do it , but it scares me severely.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. a real psychic sees some amazing things. but who would expect one of them to work for a cheesy service like that?

      Delete
  4. Right? Id mocked those 900 # shakedowns for years. I bet most ppl in those organizasions are trained actors, but for some reason some force wanted to prove to me that the nether world beyond our senses does exist. Course like hurricanes its something Im not comfortable getting close to. Life is already complex enough what with the dimension we gotta navigate.

    ReplyDelete